Rev. Sam K. Ken is the transition committee chairman, Warri South West Local Government Area. A proactive participant in local, state and national politics as far back as 1979 when he joined the then National Party of Nigeria (NPN), Ken has been very visible in politics since. In this interview with newsmen, he speaks on his performance, the need for Nigerians to awake to their civic responsibilities and other issues. Copy Editor Peter Ekanem brings excerpts of the chat.
How will you describe your appointment by Governor Uduaghan in 2012?
I will describe my appointment as the handiwork of God because I did not lobby for it. Having said that, it is also a reflection of my contribution to the system because I have being a major participant in the political equation in the state and in my local government.
Can you tell us what you have achieved so far?
First of all, I would like you to know that my administration is a caretaker administration. There is a lacuna between an elected government and interim one; it is in that regard that we were brought in. So we have come in as a caretaker committee to fill the gap pending the conduct of local government elections in Delta State. That is the foundation I want to lay. Caretaker committees do not engage themselves in a lot of activities, they constrain themselves to few areas because their tenure is supposed to be brief. But for me as Rev. Sam Ken and my background, I do not feel constrained by time because they are people who will be in government for three to four years and won’t do anything. As far as I am concerned, it’s a matter of commitment and determination. It’s a matter of understanding what public office is all about and I feel that even if you are there for six months, you should be able to make an impact. So I have deliberately decided to go against the tide of general opinion that caretaker committees don’t really do anything. I have decided to prove that notion wrong that caretaker committee can do a lot. So with the support of my vice chairman, secretary and members of the committee, we have decided to follow a different path and behave as if we are elected people and do what elected councils would do.
What is your time frame?
We want to do that in six months or one year as the case may be; but how long we would stay depends on the Delta State governor.
But we have done much in the past six months. I started with the local government headquarters which is rural and we have staff strength of over 600 people, yet they don’t stay in this town because they don’t have accommodation. There’s no staff quarter, not even a block. So with my team’s support, we embarked on the construction of staff quarters. We have decided to build 50 units of self-contained apartment that would serve as takeoff.
What do you want to achieve with this plan aside providing accommodation for the people?
If for example 50 staff members stay there, it will boost the economy of the place. This will give the people a sense of belonging that this government is not alien. They will now see that the staff are part of them as they intermingle every day, as these households and their families patronize the ‘akara’ sellers, garri sellers and so on to boost the economy of the place. There will be a social intercourse that will lead to better understanding. The first 25 units are already completed and we are going into the second phase.
We went further and discovered that the community is already choked-up in terms of land; meanwhile there is adequate land in the forest so we decided to open up the forest area of this community by creating about 13 interlinking earth roads which has now become the G.R.A of Ogbe-Ijoh because everybody is now struggling to go and build their structure thereby reducing the tension that we were having within the community when people were fighting for the available little space of land.
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