Distinguished Senator Stella Oduah, is an amazon,
a colossus, a shrewd professional. She is the indefatigable representative of
our good people of Anambra North at the 8th National assembly where
she is already churning out sterling performances by sponsoring and proposing
remarkable Bills and Motions to register her presence as an achiever and not a
mere nominal status quo participant or member anywhere she finds her self.
The amazon being celebrated today, belongs to
that group of few who have contributed much already to her generation. Her
personae symbolizes hard work, dedication, finesse, excellence, intelligence,
transformation and paradigm shift from status quo performance to watershed
performances in every sector she finds herself.
She epitomizes doggedness and shattering of
barriers in all areas she has ventured in, in life regardless of the
historicals she met in place. Even though she has been in politics for just few
years, but her records portray and out weigh that of those who have practically
spent decades in politics but have done little to impact the lives of their people
either directly or indirectly.
She demonstrated the great ideas incubated in her
within the short time she was the aviation Minister. She met a moribund and
dysfunctional ministry that lacked vision, efficiency, effectiveness and
creativity required to compete in the global market. All airports were stinking
shanties without any facility at all to attract investment into that sector or
customer growth due to dilapidated and deteriorating facilities that made
Nigerians hitherto before her to refer our air traffic as road to hell.
It’s on record that Senator Oduah met our
airports in total ruins, neglect, decay and abandonment that extends to more
than 30 years without any significant project or investment to improve the
facilities on ground. Without fear she embraced the challenges and was poised
to rewriting our history, but in a country like Nigeria where everything and
everybody is viewed from ethnic interest and colouration, it is a sin to be a
super performer especially when you are Igbo.
Chief Oduah, was not cowed or intimidated by the
wroth in this sector when she took over as she was poised and committed to
clean up the wroth and put our aviation sector to the road to recovery, growth
and greater investments both locally and abroad.
She met a sector being run by self serving
individuals who cared only about what they will earn from that sector and cared
less about its safety, growth and greater investments to compete globally with
other countries. Their interest was only how to shortchange the Federal Govt to
the detriment of lives of Nigerians and future of our aviation industry.
She was never intimidated by the status quo that
was bent on ridiculing her and bringing her down to rubbish her reputation
which she built in the private sector as an achiever and a shrewd manager of
resources who is result driven and can get result even from the desert if
engaged to work there.
She rolled her sleeves and went straight to work.
She was working day and night tirelessly, staying in the office till midnight
just to clean the mess left behind by many who were before her and appropriated
billions to the ministry but there was nothing on ground to support such yearly
appropriations.
Our distinguished Senator did not sit down to
complain and accuse her predecessors of not doing enough with all the billions
that were allocated to the ministry for years. Rather she went to work
immediately. She made it clear that it was not going to be business as usual as
our airports must be brought up to international standards if we must compete
globally in that critical sector. Also considering our burgeoning population,
it is high time we started planning on how to improve our air transport to
attract businesses and investment into the sector to help reduce the pressure
on our roads.
Immediately she started work she designed a road
map for the aviation sector, that will make that sector compete globally. She
kicked off the road map with rehabilitation and refurbishment of many of our
airports in phases across all geo political zones without any segregation.
I remember listening to her over and over again
on TV about her plans to make our airports aerotropolis that represents a
business community where people can even travel to, do their businesses and go
back to their country even without entering the city if they so wish.
Today, the relics and vestiges of her vision are
being commissioned across all geo political zones today. From Port Harcourt to
Abuja the President is commissioning the woks Senator Stella Oduah started and
the process is ongoing. She simply deserves a lot of credit and commendation.
Today, distinguished Senator Oduah is continuing
where she stopped as minister at the National Assembly where she represents our
good people of Anambra North as their Senator. During her campaign trips, she
told our people to wait and see until she finishes her tenure as Senator and
they can juxtapose her achievements and that of her predecessors that have
represented the zone to compare their achievements to the development of
Anambra North and hers. She is strongly living up to her promises.
As at today, she has about 40 Bills and Motions
that are undergoing legislative process at the National Assembly. Most
prominent of them all is the South East Development Commission Bill (SEDC) she
proposed and co-sponsored by Senator Anyanwu, which has just been passed into
law.
During the lead debates of the SEDC which was
read on the floor by Senator Anyanwu, she said and I quote:
“The Enactment of this Bill will help to
rebuild the South East and provide opportunity for the people to display their
talent and contribute immensely to the development of the country”
What more can you expect from a representative of
her people more than such an unprecedented achievement by breaking the age long
marginalization and barrier that has been ignored by all the Senators from the
South East since after the civil war, even when they are living witnesses to
the destruction and devastation that took place there which prompted the then
Federal Govt to pledge to Rehabilitate, Reconstruct and Reintegrate (RRR) the
entire zone, a promise that was never fulfilled. 48 years after, Senator Oduah
initiated a bill that is poised to correct these wrongs and bring our zone at
par with other zones that have faced similar devastation one way or the other
and got similar commission to address the challenges like NDDC and the recently
accented North East Development Commission (NEDC) Bill. With this singular Bill
alone, she has shattered every record by any Senator that ever came out of the
South East since after the civil war.
In the areas of projects, she has attracted many
constituency projects to Anambra North, a record that is unprecedented in the history
of Anambra North representation in National Assembly.
Please note however that these projects are
executed by the executive that also awards and monitors them. The Executive
does not pay Senators for the constituency project allocations rather they
directly allocate to contractors, pay and monitor all the projects as proposed
by every senator just like Senator Oduah. Also note that Federal Government
recently has faced budget implementation crisis in all the budgets since this administration
which is not peculiar to Anambra North projects alone, so any delay on any
project is not caused by Senator Stella Oduah who initiated the projects. So it
wont be out of place to see that most of these projects are either not
completed or still under incubation stage while man are also at the completion
stage.
One thing about Distinguished Senator Stella
Oduah, is that she is a silent performer. She does not walk up to the roof top
with media following her every day just to create publicity for her
achievements. She rather believes in doing the work silently and allow the
people evaluate her performance and that of her predecessors.
Distinguished Senator Stella Oduah is a trail
blazer worthy of celebration as she marks her birthday today. History will
forever be kind to her over her contributions to the growth of Nigeria and
Anambra North in particular.
Distinguished Senator Stella Oduah is a reformer
who left aviation sector with watershed performance that is unprecedented in
the history of that sector if not our nation at large. No single minister
in the history of Nigeria has been able to undertake the number of projects she
undertook to rewrite the history of her ministry even when she spent barely
three years in that sector. It shows you that when you engage a leader who
understands his onions, time constraint will not be an excuse to unleash his or
her plan and ensure its implementation at least for the period he or she
occupies that position of leadership.
Distinguished Senator Stella Oduah is a reformer
anywhere she goes and our nation will be blessed to have someone like her
saddle the leadership of this nation or even a state someday. Our country or
the state as the case may be will be the end beneficiaries from her knowledge,
expertise, infatuation with excellent performance for the interest of the
grassroots and our country at large.
Happy Birthday Distinguished Senator Stella
Oduah. Igbo gburu gburu celebrates an icon like you today.
We wish you many more years of impact driven
representation in Senate come 9th National Assembly.
Anayo
Ekeanya (MBA, BSc, DAIT) writes from Abuja
Blog:
www.getmotivatedng.com
Twitter:
@getmotivatedng
Facebook:
GetMotivated Naija
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