Ahead of the 2025 governorship election in Anambra State, the Senator representing Anambra South Senatorial Zone, Dr Ifeanyi Ubah, has indicated his intention to gun for the seat of the incumbent governor, Prof Chukwuma Soludo; even as he explains that he will only spend a single term to make up for the full slot of Anambra South.
Ubah’s explanation came amid the usual doubts by the people of the state about the sincerity of candidates who promise one term to make up for any zone’s full tenure. In the run up to the 2018 guber election in the state, the candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, Mr Oseloka Obaze, gave same promise but was not believed.
But Ubah, at a meeting with newsmen in his Nnewi home, recently, said he would not only spend four years but would commit his promise in a signed statement to signal his true intentions. This comes as he also assured that four years were enough for him to change the governance narrative of the state.
‘I repeat; I will do a single term in office if I win the election. I don’t need more than four years to develop the state, I don’t need four years to implement some of the plans I have.
‘A single tenure of four years is my commitment to Anambra people. I will give them quality, robust and direction-driven leadership.
‘I will shrink the current and past governments into 20 percent. 80 percent of the content I intend to bring in Anambra has not been discussed before. In four months of being elected, I intend to conduct local government elections and they will stay for four years. This will shed the weight of governance off the governor and the 21 local governments will run on their own and development will be simultaneous.
‘I know you will say that others have made such promises, but this is my commitment with the people that I will do a single term. I’m different from those who have given this promise before. My people know me as one who sticks to his word. I will have resounding engagements with stakeholders, and some of them will be written and others verbal.
‘I am not saying you must be rich to become governor, but you must have key assets, and the people know that you are one of them and have assets that make you a stakeholder in the state.
‘It will not be fair to me to put the kind of investments I have in Anambra and my children cannot come home to Anambra because of insecurity. We need to fix Anambra and that is the passion I have, and that is why I will be contesting the next governorship election,’ Ubah assured.
Ubah expressed his burning desire to contest the next governorship election in Anambra because the current government and those before it, according to him, had not been able to put the state in the development trajectory that matched the desire of the people of the state.
‘We have a need to create support for our commerce, we have to develop our sector to make it a hub for health tourists and we have to accelerate community development through local government elections.
‘Voting people with over-bloated personality and structure has failed us; it time we voted for people with passion, people with a track record. That is what I represent. I am prepared to change the narrative, that is why my manifesto has remained the same from 2013 till date,’ Ubah explained.
