By Adadareporters
“My greatest regret is that I have not been given the opportunity to serve my people as a political office-holder,” says Prof Godsmack Ugwu, a retired lecturer, Institute of Management and Technology, Enugu.
Ugwu, a professor of public administration, told Adadareporters at his country home, Like, in Igboeze South LGA of Enugu State that the level of poverty in Nigeria requires leaders with foresights.
According to him, present leaders at local, state and federal levels do not have the Nigerian formula.
In his words, “I have not been able to help the poor, the less privileged, and equally show Ndi Enugu and the larger Nigeria how to govern. I was educated in America, and I know what I passed through, and how I worked hard to send money back home. The truth is that there is poverty in the country, but our leaders are yet to find the formula to solve it.”
He said when he was the chairman of Igboeze South LGA, he ensured that the right thing was done, including refusal to share the council’s monthly allocations which the then military-led state demanded.
In his words, “I was a chairman of Igboeze South LGA. Then, the funds they were sending were not enough to take care of salaries of workers and other fees. I made sure that I didn’t take orders from the military leadership then. They would like us to share the money.
“We were receiving N3.5m as allocation every month, and they wanted us to share it. When they found out that I was such recalcitrant in refusing to take orders, they never wanted me to enter the leadership stool again.”
