South East Marginalised In Allocation Of House Committees – Hon. Obetta

The lawmaker representing Nsukka and Igboeze South federal constituency of Enugu State in the House of Representatives, Hon Chidi Obetta, has described as unfair the low number of Committee heads from the region during the recent allocation of committees in the lower chamber.

In a chat with select journalists in Abuja recently, the lawmaker said the region has suffered neglect in the exercise and called for a remediation of the situation. He also spoke about his agenda for his constituents.

He said: “The South East has not been treated fairly in terms of committees. Out of the 133 committees in the House, the South East got only 12 chairmanship positions and Enugu State got only one. This is very unfair. And I think the leadership of the House should look into it, and do justice to the South East. We cannot say that we are one Nigeria, we are preaching for one Nigeria, one nation, and the South East is not being carried along in the activities of the House. So I call on them to use their good offices to do the right thing and make sure that the South East is fully and adequately represented.”

The first-time Labour Party (LP) lawmaker also pledged that he and his colleagues would hold up the banner of the party in the chamber and live up to the expectations of Nigerians.

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“We are 35 members of Labour Party in the House of Reps out of 360 members. We have just spent two months and some few days after inauguration, and we have been on long recess and we plan to resume on September 26.

Committees have just been constituted, and from there, a lot of work will start. What I want to promise Nigerians is that all that we promised them, we will try our best to deliver on all of them,” he said.

Hon Obetta also spoke about his plans for his constituents and how he will prepare them to benefit from government’s economic programmes.

He said, “For me as the member representing Nsukka and Igboeze South federal constituency, I will focus on three cardinal areas. One of such is infrastructure development. As you’re aware, we are legislators, we are not the executive, but we can attract development infrastructure to our place and to Enugu State as a whole via our constituency projects, what they call zonal intervention projects, and also talking to the MDAs – ministry, departments and agencies – that carry out the functions of development to ensure that whatever they are doing for Nigerians cuts across every constituency and every state.

“Our people are primarily agrarian in nature. I’m already designing a structure where we are going to put them in cooperative societies, because for you to access some of the federal government agricultural schemes and programmes and also grants, you will need to be in a group or in the cooperative society, which is most times a condition precedent to accessing these grants and schemes. So we have already put the template on the ground. From next month we will begin to form these cooperative societies and we are also taking it down to the grassroots, to the ward level. At the grassroots, we shall have cooperative societies that position themselves for anything that is going to come, any scheme or grants or programme that will be championed by this new administration.

“On the areas of youth and women empowerment, we are also going to look at building different skill acquisition centres, civic centres, and also empowering our women, in the small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs).”

Obetta also pledged that he and his colleagues would put in efforts to improve security, road network and power supply in Enugu so that the state will be able to attract investors to the state.