REMARKS BY THE GOVERNOR OF ANAMBRA STATE HIS EXCELLENCY CHIEF WILLIE OBIANO AT THE TRADITIONAL RULERS SEMINAR ON WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2014
Protocol
I am delighted to be in your midst this morning to declare this all important seminar open.
1. First, I must thank you all for the support you have given my team and I since March this year when we accepted the challenge to provide political leadership to Ndi Anambra. You may recall that you were the first of the critical stakeholders that I held consultations with shortly after I was sworn in as governor. I remember that three days after I was sworn in, I met with you on March 20, 2014 and appealed for your support as we took on the challenge of piloting the affairs of Anambra State. Today, I must thank you for standing by my administration and offering timely and wise advise that have helped to stabilize this great state.
2. Ndi Igwe, when I look back to the time we started 8 months ago, it becomes clearer to me that we could not have achieved much without your support. Together with you, my administration has fought gallantly to reclaim our cities and communities from violent criminals and kidnappers that once made it impossible for our people to sleep with both eyes closed. I am optimistic that if we continue to fight together, we shall win more important battles ahead for our beloved state.
3. As custodians of the traditions and culture of our people, Traditional Rulers have a great role to play in not only reclaiming our cities and communities from gangsters and fraudsters but also in setting the moral tone that will put the entire society on the track for an ethical rebirth. Our traditional institutions must provide the missing cultural software that will help our societies to strike a perfect balance between globalization and its attendant cultural imposition and the preservation of the timeless values that mark us out as a distinct sub-group of the human community.
4. To do that however, our traditional institutions must be reinvigorated and refocused to cope with the dynamics of our time. They must be re-equipped to question change before absorbing it and to absorb change without surrendering to it totally. To do this, our political leaders have an obligation to rebuild our traditional institutions. We have a responsibility to revalidate and re-affirm the role of our traditional rulers as the final step in the administrative ladder and the keepers of our people’s ways of life. That is perhaps the reason why I consider this seminar as not only important but timely.
5. Ndi Igwe, as you are probably aware, my Team and I are doing a new thing in Anambra State. In the past 8 months, we have worked very hard to expand the frontiers of excellence in Anambra State. After chasing away the kidnappers and armed robbers that once denied us peaceful sleep, we are opening up the state to investors and businessmen from across the world.
6. In the past four months, my administration has attracted about $1.6bn dollars investments into Anambra State. This inflow is spread across agriculture, power supply, tourism and hospitality and trade and commerce. There are more investors seeking for fresh windows into other sectors of the state.
7. As our dear state opens her arms wide to receive the investment world, I urge you to be more receptive and welcoming to an emerging dispensation that will witness the influx of new cultures and new worldviews. Above all, I urge you to be more receptive of the reforms that my administration is bringing to Anambra State.
8. Ndi Igwe, the Christmas Season is a very important period for Ndi Anambra. It is the time of the year when Ndi Anambra at home and in the Diaspora look homewards for a reunion with their kit and kin. It is also a period of high festivity when marriages are sealed between families and when communal development initiatives are conceived and perfected. Let me assure you that we have made elaborate efforts to fortify the security network in the state to ensure a peaceful Christmas and New Year celebration in Anambra State. We have launched Operation Sheba to patrol the length and breadth of the state and lend critical intelligence to Operation Kpochapu in a seamless manner that will weed out the bad eggs among us.
9. Ndi Igwe, since everyone has a role to play in securing Anambra State from criminals, I urge you to always provide the timely information that the Police needs to do its work with thoroughness. We must not make the mistake of leaving the challenge of securing our dear state in the hands of security agents alone. We must work together to make our cities and communities safe from criminals.
10. Ndi Igwe, as you settle down to engage the weighty themes of this Seminar, please remember that as royal fathers in Anambra State, you occupy significant positions in the hierarchy of Igbo leadership. Do remember that your actions and inactions usually resound across Igboland and influence cultural trends across the Igbo nation. I have no doubt in my mind that the outcome of this seminar will be for the good of Anambra State and the best interest of Ndigbo in general.
11. It is on this note that I hereby declare this Seminar Open.
I wish you happy deliberations.
Thank you
Willie Obiano
Governor, Anambra State
