 Welcome back. You're still watching the run-up on plus TV Africa and time to shift to another aspect of the election. We're talking about the 2023 Acquire Boom State governorship election, which will of course now take place on the 18th of March, as in the case with other parts of the country. And this time, we're going to elect the governor of Acquire Boom State concurrent with elections to the Acquire Boom State House of Assembly as well as 27 other governorship elections to all other state houses of assembly. In Cumbart, PDP governor Udom Gabriel Emmanuel is term limited and cannot seek re-election to a certain term. Well, architect Ezekiel Anya Utok is running for the 2023 governorship election in Acquire Boom State under the umbrella of the African Democracy Congress as the ADC. Anya Utok said that he is out to create a dependency system for the people of the state to live and have a means of livelihood without begging in order to prove to Acquire Boom people that they can be professionals without begging and take the youth to the government house to be involved in leadership because they cannot move ahead in their current situation. Well, you are welcome to the program architect Ezekiel Anya Utok. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be on your program. All right. Well, your mantra has been vote competency and not party zone. Why have you chosen that mantra? Yeah, that's because we need to understand that government is not another game like football or anything. Government is the institution that is the most important after God. Government is the institution that manages the collective destiny of the people. And as a result, if you are to have such an important institution, the leadership recruitment must understand the essence and that makes it imperative that people must know that government is so serious, so important that you can only believe it in the hands of the most competent. That is why competence, right, ranks very high in my scale of preference on leadership recruitment for the governorship of our state. Clearly, you are a professional being an architect and you've not really been, you're not one of those that would be described as political or career politicians. Actually, I have never accepted any paying office in my life. And that's very deliberate and very intentional. And it is people to know that you can be a professional, a career professional and successful. And at the risk of sounding immodest, I've been extremely successful at the highest level in my chosen profession. And I would say that two things. Number one, I have never accepted any paying appointment in my life. Second, since a quibomb state was created 35 years ago, nobody in the state can bring out four jobs that I have done in the state. So I don't depend on appointment. I don't depend on government. I work strictly as an architect. And God has helped me to rise to the point of being a fellow of the Nigerians instead of architects and being one that has a name in the area of real estate and architectural practice in Nigeria to the end that a certain aspect of housing delivery, which is called social housing, is attributed to me as an individual by the grace of God, as somebody who from no mention brought social housing to become the national mantra with a full chapter in the current national housing policy. These are the things that God has helped me to put together. I've been able to, I mean, in any way you can imagine, establish myself as a success by the grace of God without, without, without appointment. OK, well, having worked so hard all your life, I mean, one would have expected that you just retire. Enjoy your wife, enjoy your children, enjoy your wealth. But here you are going into the race to become governor of a state. Why do you want to become the governor of a quibum state? It's the, it's a problem that we, we, we, the elites, we, the enlightened, we, the privileged, you know, run into. Somewhere in Hilton, when Madame Okonjoy Wehala was the Minister of Finance and the Coordinated Minister of the Economy, CME, we had a meeting and I said something. She, she called me back and said, repeat what you said, and I did. And she said, please, can you put that down on record? What did I say? I said that this country, I owe this country, I owe Nigeria, because Nigeria gave to me what any country in the world could have given to any citizen as its best. And what was that? From nowhere, I got into federal government college worry knowing nobody then rated the best in West Africa and the ninth best in the Commonwealth. And this country gave me the education that, I mean, could compare with anyone anywhere in the world. And on account of that education, the son of a nobody, so to speak, that I was has become not just a national, but an international reference point in success. And as a result, I owe this country to give back. I owe the people of this country. Let me tell you, by the grace of God, at 21, I had my first degree. 23, I had my masters. 25, I got married. 30, I had my three children. 37, I became the first Nigerian to get a shelter of free facility for any state government, and I build a shelter of free estate in Uyo. At 45, two of my sons have three children, two boys and a girl. At 45, my two sons had graduated from the university, from Covenant University. At 50, my third child, the lady, graduated from the same university, while my first son had his masters from University of Manchester. Now, if this is not the goodness of God that at 50, all your children have graduated, they are stabilized and they are doing well, why can't you just use the rest of your time to give back to the system? I've been doing that, giving hundreds of scholarships, giving lots of, you know, entrepreneurial support as an individual. But I realize that getting into government, all this money that this people steal in, in, in, in, in quantums that are just, that just blow the mind. I could channel those resources, manage them well, affect the people at a much larger scale than I would, and then show people how governance ought to be and what the essence of government is. So rather than retire and, I mean, if I stop, we'll add the, you know, this could be misunderstood, but when is it within the context of the grace of God? If I retire today, I could never beg till I die, no matter how long I live. God has helped me. But can I say that to all my workers that have been working for me, all the young people that have been my drivers, my cooks, my architects, why can't I come in and help them have to sort of close as much as possible to the sort of Nigeria that I had. I feel bad about all the people at my age category because they went to public schools. They paid next to nothing. They got a good quality of education. And today they are the same people that are raking the public institutions. They are the same people that are raking the future of the young people. We are the same people that have turned Nigeria to become the poverty capital of the world. They ought to be people from my generation that should come out and say, in office enough, let me give back. And I think that this is the very least I could do. You know, you are sounding so fresh to me. Why? Because, you know, it's not often you hear people talk about giving back to Nigeria. There are people who have really benefited from Nigeria, who haven't given back to Nigeria, but instead have depleted Nigeria, destroyed Nigeria. And so this generation of Nigerians have nothing to show, nothing to say they are proud about, you know, the country. And so when people like you have benefited from the country, when the systems were working, so to speak, when you could turn on the tap and have water, when there was light electricity, and before light went off, you were given notification that, OK, between this hour and this hour, there's going to be maintenance, when the public schools were good. So it's so refreshing to have someone from that generation say, I want to restore things back to the way it used to be. I want to say thank you to my country for building me. However, one of the problems that we have with governors in most of our states is the fact that they are not, as I've said on this program, they are not creative enough to make the states viable, which is why I have so many people tripping to Lagos and the FCT. How do you plan to make a Kwaibon vibe? We have the population of about 5.5 million people. How do you intend to make that place viable and not have it be known as the civil service state, as it is known today? I'll tell you one, two, three things about a Kwaibon state. Number one, a Kwaibon state is one of the most blessed states in the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Number two, a Kwaibon people are about the most trusting people, their prayerful spiritual and everything. Number three, a Kwaibon youth in particular are about the most gifted in the Federal Republic of Nigeria in the areas of music and dance, we talk about the arts generally, entertainment and of course, particularly in the area of ICT. After Lagos and Abuja, the next ICT hope in Nigeria is Uyo. Now, with all these things put together, all you need is somebody, let me show you something. When we had the debate, this is the dress I wore. I deliberately wore the dress again today. Have you seen something? My name is there and then you have my account detail. I want to say this on my integrity that nobody in the whole world can say that he or she has contributed 6 million to my campaign. Nobody. You know why? Because he who pays the piper dictates the tune and the greatest problem that we have in a Kwaibon is that the governorship candidates are largely sponsored by external forces who see so much resources in a Kwaibon state. And as a result, they want to get that state by all means for one purpose, state capture. So you have a state that has so much resources and yet when you come to a Kwaibon, you cannot see 70% of the resources of a Kwaibon in a Kwaibon. And that is on account of one thing, capital flight. And if I believe in integrity, I'm not gonna take your money and then turn my back on you. I'm going to go with the people of a Kwaibon state. We actually should be having a election next tomorrow, which means we had almost come to the end of the journey successfully, strictly on account of the contributions of the people of Kwaibon. The governorship election has been postponed, you know? Yeah, I said we should have been. Oh, okay. Yeah, we should have been having, which means that we had effectively come about to the end very successfully and done what we needed to do without defending on external hands to fund our campaign. 99% of our campaign is funded between myself and my people in a Kwaibon state. On account of that, we cannot have what we call a Kwaibon for a Kwaibon ideology. By the time you bring in 70% of the resources of a Kwaibon state and put in a Kwaibon state, you will completely transform this area. Let me give you a very little illustration, very small that will blow your mind. Do you know that we have 5, we have 2,226 villages in a Kwaibon state, villages where you have a village head, 2,226 of them. Now, if I put 500,000 Naira in every village every month for their development and transformation, every village, 500,000 every month, it will say, where do you get such money from? Do you know that? Just listen to this. The total amount I've done the math comes about 1.1 billion. 1.1 billion per month is about half what a governor gets a security vote in a Kwaibon state. What that means is that without even having to go for any appropriation or this or that, you have that money resident within you. Now, the biggest way for you to grow the economy, for you to activate the system, is for you to focus on rural economy. But what we've done is ego tripping, I built this mansion, I built that flyover, I built this, it's not about I. If you look at the constitution chapter 2, section 14, subsection 2B says, the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government. Security and welfare of the people shall, I know in legal parlance, though I'm not an architect, not a lawyer, but in legal parlance I made to understand that shall is more compelling than must. So if they say this shall be the primary purpose of government, it means that at the end of your tenure, they should not rate you by how many flyovers or roads you built, but the poverty index, what was it when you came in? What is it when you've exited? How have you made the life of the people better? That is the essence and the primary purpose of government. So for me, the moment I deploy the resources of the people of Kwaibon state, so the basics to the fundamentals, to the stimulation of the rural economy, and then you now have the Acquirebom Development Youth Bill, which is already passed into law, okay? It just means signing, and then you're able to give support. We have the money, we do have the money. You're able to give the necessary support to the startups of the ICT and make it such that right from the primary school, you must learn a computer language from the primary school. Once you have that ideology set in place, you now reposition the state in a way that in the next 20 years, their children are going to be the global players because the way of the future is ICT exclusively. Okay, well, you do sound beautiful. There's no doubt about that. You're almost convincing me, but I wonder how have you been able to convince the people of Acquirebom state in the course of your campaign? Because ADC is not particularly one of the popular parties, and of course your mantra has been, vote competence, not party and zone. Have you been able to convince them not to vote party? You see, people would have been shocked by the results of the elections by tomorrow. Acquirebom people are extremely intelligent, more than you know, and oftentimes they are taken for granted. And I have been here in Acquirebom for over 30 years. They know me very well. And each time they say, wait for the ballot, wait for the ballot, and they would have been a surprise. And you see, what happens is when you talk in terms of moving the campaign by one week, I've listened to some of the analysis people have made, you see, there are two ways you run a campaign. One way is same old, same old. You do what they do, and you don't stand a chance because where do I stand to compete with PDP that makes so much money as government in power? Or other people that have been in power for God knows how long and they've started off so much money. Yet in Acquirebom, that's what they call the big five, okay? And ADC in Acquirebom is different from ADC in other places. ADC is one of the top five in Acquirebom state. Just like Peter will be getting to any party, make the news, any way that architect in Yaitouk enters is already something like in the debates. I mean, there's no debate if they are to have four people or be one of the four. If they have three people or be one of the three, okay? I can say that much because APC, PDP, they will always be there. But there's a strong party that came up from PDP and that's YPP. So that is another strong party and then Yaitouk is there. So if you look at the top four, these are the parties you'll find in Acquirebom state. Now, there's something that, a revolution that came that works so much in my favor and that is the hashtag person, not party. Now, when you look at the parties, yes, they are there, the people are starting to look at the persons. When you bring out the people behind the parties, you cannot but say that in all modesty, Yaitouk is there at the very, very top in terms of the people, in terms of pedigree, in terms of what you've achieved, what you have established in this state, your footprints in the state over the past 20 years, I will say in all modesty that call anybody from Acquirebom, they'll tell you two things about me. Number one is that out of 10 people, at least eight will say, oh, that man has integrity, that man is somebody that is respected. All right, okay, so because time is not so much on our side, I want to ask you this question before we go. It's not even about what you feel about the postponement but local government autonomy is very crucial. If the states are going to develop, are you going to push for that, the autonomy for local government councils? Obviously, definitely. And people will even tell you, yes, before on my behalf because I am very heavy on the federating units within the state, which is the local government and I won't have what they call the fourth tier of government, which is like word governance. Now, what I tell people is that if I go to live in Uyo in Lagos and Abuja, you can come as a local government chairman and live in Uyo. But if I live in Uyo, you've got to go and live in your local government. And I am one person that committed myself to say that out of the 52 weeks of the year and the 31 local governments that we have, I will spend a weekend Friday to Monday at least once a year in every local government. So I believe in local government autonomy, allow them to use their money. It's not always bringing money to develop only Uyo Uyo Uyo so that people will now see how you have built flyovers, built these, built that. No, I want to be rated as that man that changed the lives of the people of the state by allowing local government to have their resources and putting money in every village, not even word, not even local government. Okay. Every month for four years. Architecture, Zika, Nya, Etok, the ADC governorship candidate for Akuaibom State. Well, thank you so much for your time and we do wish you the very best as you go to the polls on the 18th of March to contest the governorship. Thanks so much. And I noticed that you were looking at the account details and they're going to transfer yours. I'll be looking forward to it. Oh, well, let's see what happens. Well, thank you so much for your time. You're watching the roundup. Well, that's what you've been watching. At this point, we have to draw the curtains on the program today. Many thanks for being a part of the show.