REMARKS BY ETIGWE UWA SAN FCIARB AT THE PRESS CONFERENCE HELD ON 10 MARCH 2022 AT THE WONDERLAND EVENT CENTRE ISI COURT UMUAHIA
Gentlemen of the fourth estate of the realm, both print, electronic and social and other media.
I thank you all for making time to attend today’s event.
As you may all already know, over the last eighteen months I have been consulting with various stakeholders in our dear state with a view to offering myself as a steward to help in the restoration of the fortunes and dignity of our state and its good people.
Those consultations have been wide and have cut across the zones and local government areas of our state. In my interaction with our people, a common refrain has been manifest. Abia needs redemption and restoration. About this there can be no doubt. This is the current pulse of the people whether they be workers who have endured several months of unpaid salaries; or retirees denied of the gratuity and pension for which they have laboured all their lives; or road users who going through the harrowing experience of traveling through our bad roads; or the businesses smothered to death in Aba on account of poor enabling environment for them to thrive.
Our state is regrettably held down by successive maladministration. Aba which was once the commercial nerve centre of the southeast and south-south is today a shadow of itself.
The ship of our state is currently in a nosedive mode heading assuredly to a place we do not desire for our state.
The time has come and now is the time for all men of goodwill who are passionate about the turning of the tide in Abia State to arise and answer the clarion call to join the movement for the restoration of Abia so that it may flourish.
Today I am happy to inform you that I have enlisted in the movement for a restored better and greater Abia. I enjoin all Abians to arise and join this movement.
We must take back Abia. Abia belongs to all Abians, and it is an insult for a person or a group of few people to arrogate to themselves the right to determine for us all who our leaders would be. Such a practice strikes at the root and core of who we as Ndi Igbo and Ndi Abia in particular. We have for centuries and millenia been republican democrats. Abia is not a monarchy, and it is time for Abians to reject the unfolding culture of leadership selection via the anointing of incumbents.
We are living in very perilous times. The state and indeed our country and the entire southeastern zone is plagued with such monstrous insecurity that our zone which is a mecca of sorts during festive and non-festive seasons is now a place where many of our people are cautious about visiting.
This is not a time to be indifferent and politically correct. This is a time to boldly confront the issues which confront us and threaten our wellbeing and existence.
This is the time to dream of a bigger and brighter Abia whose economy should be catapulted to become the First in the nation; a time to provide decent and effective primary healthcare services across the entire state planting at least 10 in every local government area within the first three years; a time to turn Aba to the manufacture hub and silicon valley of Africa; a time to have well equipped primary and secondary schools and vocational centres in all the local government areas of the state; a time when transport infrastructure can be effectively deployed across the entire state and there can be strategic connections to many neighboring states around us; a time when Aba can become the outsourcing destination for the production of garments and footwear for markets across the global; a time for the efficient and effective harnessing and exploitation of our mineral resources including our oil and gas resources most of which are not in production; a time for the encouragement of growth in the agricultural sector; a time when we can turn Abia to the renewable energy capital of West Africa and many more.
It is time for Abians to wake up to the realization that power ultimately belongs to the people and to stop the ascription of pseudo invincibility to public office holders.
I am happy to be in the forefront of the movement which I would tag the Great Exodus from the place of stagnation and retrogression induced by bad governance to the promised land prosperity.
My name is Etigwe Uwa SAN. I am from the Ohafia local Government Area of the Abia North Senatorial Zone. I a legal practitioner and Senior Partner at the Commercial Law Firm of Streamsowers & Kohn where I head the firm’s litigation and Arbitration departments. I attended Methodist Boys’ High School and King’s College, both in Lagos and I am a Law Graduate of the University of Lagos. I am a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators UK, and I was conferred with the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria during the 2009 conferments. I holds a master’s degree in international Relations and Finance from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of the Tufts University Boston. I am currently pursuing a second master’s degree in taxation at the University of Oxford. I Chair the Board of Directors of Lumos Nigeria which in partnership with MTN provides mobile electricity through solar panels to over 120 thousand customers in Nigeria. I also Chair the Board of NOI Polls Limited a company which pioneered opinion polling in Nigeria in partnership with Gallup Polls of the US. I am a Director of Mara Phones Nigeria Limited, which is part of the Mara phones group of companies and the first African company to embark on the manufacture of smartphones having ultra Modern smartphones factories in Rwanda and South Africa. Mara Phones Nigeria is in the process of setting up a smartphones manufacturing factory in Nigeria. I have variously served as Chairman of the Aviation Committee of the Nigeria Bar Association Section on Business Law; Co-Chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association Human Rights Committee between 2012 and 2014. I am Chairman of the Board of the African University for Science and Technology Abuja. I served as Chairman of TrustBond Mortgage Bank Plc between 2013 and 2019. I drafted The Civil Aviation Bill 2003 which has been passed as the Civil Aviation Act 2006. Between 2001 and 2016 I led the team of lawyers who represented the victims of the Pfizer Trovan Drug clinical trial in Kano. 11 of the children who were involved in the trial died on the spot and 189 others had varying degrees of deformity. The case was fought in Kano, Abuja and New York and went up to the United States Supreme Court before a settlement was achieved. That settlement led to the building of a $30 Million ultra Morden diagnostic hospital in Kano and payment of compensation to all the victims of the drug trial. I also pioneered securities class actions in Nigeria when in 2007 I filed a class action against a first generation bank to obtain compensation by way of interests for subscribers to the the bank’s Hybrid public offer whose monies were kept for almost 9 months and whose application for shares were rejected without payment of reasonable interests on the monies paid as deposit for shares. I am currently leading NNPC’s team of lawyers in the defence of a multi-billion Production Sharing Contracts dispute between the NNPC and many of the international oil companies. I am an Elder of the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria and I served as the National Legal Adviser of the Christian Council of Nigeria for 6 up till the year 2017. I am happily married to Thelma Etigwe Uwa, and the marriage is blessed with wonderful children.
My quest to lead the process of redemption and restoration in our state initially took me to another political where I was for some time. I made the decision to leave the party and join the All Progressives Grand Alliance and I have procured the expression of interest and nomination forms for the position of Governor of our dear state Abia.
I look forward to a fair and credible primaries at which the flagbearer of the party for the 2023 Abia Gubernatorial elections would determined.
I look forward to being elected as the flagbearer and I look to the redemption and restoration of Abia and the great exodus from poor governance, infrastructural decay and poverty to the glorious, promised land of our dreams flowing with milk and honey.Ladies and Gentlemen of the press thank you for your kind attention.
Etigwe Uwa SAN
Umuahia10 March 2022.
