It is instructive that this time the people of Benue state should pay attention to the phrase political will. It is also very vital that as we approach 2023, our people must understand why the next occupant of the Benue state seat of power should be different.
Before Engineer George Nduul conceived the vision of running for the seat of the governor of Benue state which he hasn’t yet declared, he already has a considerable level of successes in his public life. He rose steadily and pragmatically to the rank of a chief cngineer in the federal civil service. He is widely travelled both within and outside the shores of this country and, in the process, he has been exposed to the giant strides that are possible where visionary leadership is at work. With Engr Nduul’s experience and background, this is possible from 2023. We could see our state reinventing itself and running away from the rest developmentally in spite of the general dependence on crude oil earnings and the blight of federal efforts to the state.
Nduul was exhilarated by the change which swept the nation on May 29, 2015, when President Muhammadu Buhari swept political changes across the country to be sworn in as the country’s new president. He believes this is possible in Benue state with him in 2023. With Nduul contesting in 2023, Benue people should realise that an opportunity almost as great as the one of 1999, when Nigeria returned to civil rule, has once again provided itself. Nduul reckoned that it was an opportunity for discerning state like Benue to reinvent itself and the fortunes of its people with him as governor in the new epoch just beginning. He has resolved to do so for Benue people, if God and the people provide him the opportunity.
For the sake of the people, he is today collecting his ideas a drop box of possibilities. Some of these ideas he would release later as his manifestoes. Today, the governorship hopeful is finding those ideas exciting and this is strengthening his resolve which by the grace of God would even double, triple or quadruple his resolve to lead his people.
In the fullness of the divinely appointed time and by the concatenations of the predictable and unforeseen hands, he believes when he fully declares, he would be elected governor in 2023. Today, Nduul is always having brainstorming sessions which would lead to an amplification of ideas that would match his ideas into a blueprint and his campaign promises and in the process build a technical infrastructure for its delivery. He is doing this because he has heard his people’s call clearly and when he finally decides to run, he would be the most prepared governor ever in the history of Benue state.
His brainstorming team would expand the data given and capture the stated aim and aspirations of the whole Benue citizens based on empirical evidence from social research. Nduul has identified the needs of our people and has prioritised them into five thematic areas: education for all; health is wealth; job creation, youth engagements and new ventures; iInfrastructure and utilities; andr productive public services and pensions reforms.
Nduul’s blueprint would therefore be a compendium of his mission, vision, political strategies, targets and expected outcomes which would together define his direction for the accelerated development he craves for Benue state. The five thematic areas are merely convenient docks from which to unlock the blueprint of his and launch the action plans on a turnkey basis. They interlock into all ministries, departments and agencies in Benue state. Each would find that one or more areas, if not all of these focus areas, touch on their work.
Nduul’s blueprint is certainly not the first roadmap that highlights the direction a politician aspiring for office of governor of the state would highlight, but certainly his would be different because of the political will that he is investing and would continue to invest in its implementation, when elected.
Benue people need to welcome this blueprint of Nduul as an overarching marketing instrument and not an expenditure tool. For Benue, George Nduul would be a vehicle of development and it is his wish to reduce poverty in the state within the next four years when elected by over 1,000,000 which is 25 percent of the population over the multi dimensional poverty index.
Nduul, who is currently an with the Federal Ministry of Works, is a professional engineer and of Tiv descent. He is highly detribalissed, believing that where a man hails from should not determine what he becomes in life but his competence. As an engineer in the ministry of works, his experience in that department stands him in good stead to give the state the needed advantage in project execution and building of the state’s critical infrastructure.
Nduul as a man of competence believes that when he decides to contest the election, his would be the entrenchment of a new type of politics dispensation in the state and his politics would be entirely about the people. He is a man that believes that his administration would be judged by the performance of preceding administrations in the state. Nduul, today, is regarded as the new deal for the people’s emancipation.
His goverrnment would be about good governance which was cut short from the state by previous administrations. He knows that the state has deviated from the progressive values which its founding fathers desired to a retrogressive dispensation which excludes the people. He is in this purely for the people’s sake.
Comrade Moses writes from
North Bank, Makurdi, Benue state.
