President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday met with John Nwodo at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Speaking with State House correspondences at the end of the meeting, Nwodo said that the meeting centred on how to find solutions to the problems in the South-East.
He said “We had a frank and robust exchange, we discussed problems of the south east and as head of state he is the finale repository of an appeal for the resolutions of those problems. We went into great details about each of those problems and i have confidence that they will give it the attention there deserve.
“We dealt with problems of development in the south east; basic capital projects which have for a very long time been neglected not just from this government but for a very long time, major arteries of federal highways in the south east have been in complete state of disrepair. Enugu-Onitsha, Enugu-Port Harcourt, Aba-Ikoyi Ekpene are virtually impassable.
“We talked about the inland waterways and the dredging of the River Niger. We talked about the reticulation of gas pipeline on the south east. We export gas from the south east to the other parts of the country, but there is no reticulation of the pipeline and industrial clusters in the south east.
“We talked about the only international airport we have in the south east which has very bad infrastructure in terms of the buildings that have ravaged by …
“We got assurance from the president that he will deal with each of those problems.” he said
On whether the issue of marginalization came up, he said “That was the opening line and that was why we single out these things. Like I have said these problems have been there overtime and we have had several presidents, it didn’t just happen in the last two years. But we expressed the desire that he should be able to address them.
Asked if the president’s promises can be trusted, he said “There is no reason for me to doubt them because this is the first time I have had this interaction with him. I have the feeling that he spoke to us very frankly.
When asked if the issue of the indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) came up, he said “We came here for the issues of developments in our place. We talked about IPOB as a symptomatic consequence of the continuous marginalization of the south east over a long period of time.
“Understandably our children are restive and we want to make sure that the federal government is responsive to the issues that have cumulated in the quintessence of these agitations,” he said.
On devolution of powers, he said “We did talk about the issue of devolution of powers, the constitution, the paucity of the states and local governments in our place and the president has asked that he be given time to look at this more holistically.”
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