Why Frank Ibezim Remains the Issue
By Anthony Iwuoma
Almost one year after his exit from the Red Chamber of the National Assembly, Senator Chukwuma Frank Ibezim has continued to give jitters and sleepless nights to many. Well, one would be tempted to assume that the Distinguished Senator is harassing anybody. No, not at all!
Frank Ibezim’s project.
The problem is coming from Imo North Senatorial District, which he represented in the Ninth Senate. Almost all past representatives of the zone failed woefully but some people are riled by his humongous accomplishments and would rather drag him to the mud to wrestle with them.
Unfortunately for them, just like while in office, self-effacing and almost shy Ibezim is not ready to drag anything with anybody. He prefers that his projects scattered across the six local governments of Imo North should speak for him.
It needs to be stated that Ibezim spent only two years in the National Assembly. He was sworn in on April 27, 2021, as the Senator, after surmounting a hard-fought legal ambush, comprising a record 28 cases that traversed various courts and eventually climaxed at the Supreme Court.
He was elected to complete the remaining two years of the tenure of Senator Ben Uwajumogu, who died suddenly on December 18, 2019.
Indeed, Ibezim set an exceptional record of representation as far as the zone’s history is concerned, dwarfing the cumulative achievements of his predecessors.
Until he came to the rescue, Imo North had not been represented in the Senate for over two years, following the demise of Uwajumogu and the protracted legal tussle over his replacement; hence the zone was left tottering at ground zero.
Nevertheless, Ibezim was not afraid to build from there. He surprised his detractors with his zestful approach to the Herculean task set before him. Pressed for time, he plunged into the work headlong as if he knew he would not be getting a second chance. It is self-evident that he left huge, indelible marks, which have brought Imo North from the boondocks to the limelight.
Ibezim’s strength was anchored on his friendly disposition and ability to synergise with people that matter in the Senate and outside the Senate. His collaboration with Hon. Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba and Gov. Hope Uzodimma is legendary. This was what others before him failed to achieve because of their haughty and crabby nature. However, Ibezim gave honour to these two gentlemen being the highest political leaders in his zone and the state, as minister and governor, respectively. It paid off handsomely for him as both gave him maximum support. Even in the Senate, he also connected well with the Senate leadership and colleagues to the extent that he broke into powerful committees that ordinarily would have been a no-go area for a fresher like him.
So, he was able to attract so many transforming democracy dividends and infrastructural developments to the zone that one wonders if his successors could match the pace he had set for them.
Apart from lawmaking, his core assignment, Ibezim attracted many transforming democracy dividends and infrastructural developments to the zone that one wonders if he had not created a problem for his successors, as they would have to grapple to fit into the giant shoe he left behind.
Ibezim’s highly impactful achievements in the Red Chamber are amazing. He was hyperactive in the race against time, participating in most plenary activities, moving or supporting motions; sponsoring vital bills, and establishing his presence during the Senate oversight functions.
Within his brief two-year tenure in the Senate, Ibezim sponsored the bills for the establishment of an Information and Communications Technology, ICT, Institute; a Federal Orthopedic Hospital as well as concurring with the establishment of a Federal Medical Centre, FMC, in the zone, and securing legal teeth for the PRODA in Enugu through the bill he also sponsored.
As the Vice Chairman of the Senate Committee on Industry and a member of the Senate Committee on Basic and Primary Education, he was outstanding on duty. His call for the upgrade of the Sam Mbakwe Cargo Airport, Owerri, during an oversight inspection was unmistakably loud and hit the appropriate quarters.
Ibezim secured several major Federal Government interventions, such as the N30,000 Survival Funds from the Bank of Industry from which not less than 400 persons of Imo North benefitted; N60,000 Special Public Works Programme, with not less than 300 beneficiaries; N500,000 Covid-19 Relief Loan, with over 200 beneficiaries; N60, 000 Job Security Stipends and N100, 000 National Directorate of Employment Loan, targeting not less than 600 persons. Over 1000 Imo North constituents benefitted from these palliative programmes, which alleviated the pains and boosted the economy of many households, families, and communities in the zone.
He also sponsored digital training for youths. This involved a total of 30 beneficiaries from across the zone. The programme targeted training participants to become experts in videography, documentary photography, video, and picture editing. Many more were trained in other trades, such as fashion designing and catering services. He also collaborated with SMEDAN and other federal agencies to bring about skills acquisition and other empowerment programmes and in the end distributed startup equipment, etc., as all participants of Ibezim’s empowerment training also received free work tools and take-off capital.
Many constituents also benefited from the Senator’s cash grants, which he generously doled out whenever the need arose. He gave out hundreds of sewing machines, grinding machines and bags of farm inputs, such as fertilizers and special breed cassava stems.
The Senator facilitated the registration of new women cooperatives and empowerment of existing ones in all the six LGAs of Imo North, equipping them with food processing machinery while awarding grants to aid their activities.
Through his pet Classroom Libraries Project, Ibezim worked to revive the reading culture in our schools, using at least, 18 primary schools in Imo North as pilots. The programme later gained wide acceptance across the country, as other distinguished colleagues collaborated with Senator Ibezim to plant the same programme in their various constituencies.
He sponsored debates among secondary schools in the zone and winners were handsomely rewarded accordingly. He also motivated teachers through cash awards to elicit their commitment and passion for their job.
During recess, he facilitated Schools Outreach programmes for substance abuse awareness and prevention to curb the rising increase in drug abuse among youths and adolescents. Such community services included anti-bullying and Sex abuse campaigns in post-secondary schools in his constituency. Through his constituency offices, he organised various contests in Substance Abuse Education with handsome rewards for participating students.
Additionally, the astute lawmaker showed his love for sports and promoted Okigwe youths and their football team to participate in competitions like the one held in Enugu. He also set up and sponsored the Senator Frank Ibezim Football Academy, which supported talented football enthusiasts in the constituency.
Senator Ibezim established and collated through his constituency offices, a data bank of job seekers and their qualifications, which enabled him to facilitate both permanent and temporary employment for them through various agencies of the Federal Government.
He also launched a campaign to ensure NIN registration for all constituents in a bid to help them become eligible and participate in available Federal Government programmes. In furtherance of this initiative, the Senator equipped his constituency offices across the zone as centers for NIN registration and capturing while select youths by setting them up as agents. This was particularly beneficial as more constituents became beneficiaries of federal government assistance.
Likewise, the lawmaker often made unannounced visits to major markets in the zone to encourage and inject monies into petty traders’ businesses through The Market Money Scheme for Rural Women and Petty Traders Scheme he initiated.
Ibezim mobilised the management of NEMA to the flood-prone Amauzari community in Isiala Mbano for quick remedial steps. He also permanently tackled the yearly flooding challenge around the 4km erosion control road at Isinweke-Lowa in Ihitte Uboma LGA.
He provided relief materials for victims of natural disasters, especially in Amauzari in Isiala Mbano Local Government Area, and also organised constituency-wide health outreaches during which all manner of sicknesses were diagnosed and treated.
Ibezim’s trump card was his efforts to bring light into the darkness that had bedeviled Imo North for long. He doggedly pursued the realisation of a power transmission substation, which had been approved for construction alongside Port Harcourt, Aba, Umuahia, and Enugu, respectively by the Federal Ministry of Power in 2003. However, while others were built, Okigwe was abandoned for almost 20 years but Ibezim followed up with the late Uwajumogu’s quest to rectify the anomalous situation in Okigwe, resulting in the Federal Ministry of Power’s approval of a mobile unit to restore the abandoned Okigwe 132/33KVA transmission substation to a district station.
Distinguished Senator Ibezim left his imprint on the installation of over 400 solar streetlights across major markets, strategic areas, villages, and churches in the zone. In the same vein, he also attracted the 60kw solar power plant completed in Umuchiaku, Ihitte Uboma LGA; it is the first of its kind in the entire South-east.
He also donated transformers and drilled boreholes for some communities as well as undertaking several infrastructural developments, such as some inland roads in Nsu, the 3km Umualumaku Road, and maintenance of the old Okigwe-Umuahia Road, etc.
Ibezim’s endeavours to revive agriculture in the zone are remarkable. His synergy with the Agricultural Development Programme empowered 128 rice farmers to cultivate 128 hectares of rice and 128 cassava farmers to cultivate 128 hectares of cassava and other cash crops in line with his ambition to make Imo North the food basket of Imo State. These are still bustling to date.
Nobody and nothing can erase the lawmaker’s signature, which is boldly etched on landmark projects in the zone, including his contribution to the siting and construction of a campus of the National Open University of Nigeria, NOUN, at Ezeoke Nsu. A visit to the edifice bore witness to this with the towering lecture halls, auditorium, and incubation centres.
This is just scratching the surface of the several projects the astute lawmaker executed across the zone in his mere two years in the Senate. As a result of his laudable roles in oversight functions, the National Institute of Legislative and Democratic Studies presented him with an award during the Nigeria Orientation Assembly Award 2022, in Abuja.
Nevertheless, even though he has exited the Red Chamber, he has continued to help his constituents through the Senator Frank Ibezim Agricultural Foundation. The Foundation signed a Memorandum of Understanding, MOU, with the Bioresources Institute of Nigeria, BION, for training youths from all the local governments of Imo North in aquaculture at the Federal Government-owned Umuna Fish Farm and Technology Transfer Centre.
For two years, Ibezim justified the confidence the people reposed in him. Following his prodigious and unmatched service to Imo North, the constituents describe him as the best lawmaker the zone has ever produced since the return of democratic rule in Nigeria in 1999.
One antagonist was emphatic while accusing Ibezim of collecting N1 billion constituency project funds in two tranches of N500 billion for the two years he spent in the Senate, and pocketed it. this is very disappointing and sad because no lawmaker in Nigeria has access to constituency funds which are domiciled in the MDAs. The same source by a queer arithmetic insists that Ibezim was in the Senate for two and a half years whereas the records are clear. Haba! It is obvious Ibezim’s recalcitrant enemies just want to call a dog a bad name in order to hang it and so the option of peddling that the puerile lies in the hope that they would become believable when repeated often.
Therefore, they sponsor shocking but not surprising posts through hare-brained misfits, who desecrate social media because of their laughable chaka chaka ability with broken laptops or nondescript phones. They are not even capable of articulating their thoughts and would have done better communicating in Igbo language or pidgin English for clarity’s sake. Led by an apparently suborned and overly agitated ‘BOSS’, with the connivance of wicked elders that would rather watch as goats give births tethered, these mischievous elements have kept bandying accusations they are not even apprised of, sometimes citing contract awards with strange codes that Ibezim had no idea about but yet accused of pocketing the money meant for the contracts.
What is baffling is why these deluded Okigwe minions would allow themselves to be recruited to fight those far too superior to them in intellect and all aspects of life. They end up exposing their idiocy to the world, as they laboriously try to make sense out of their nonsense. One further betrayed his denseness by asking for proof of libel whereas somebody had been defamed in black and white, alleging, at least, in one instance, a N52 billion fraud.
Fortunately for them, even if they and their generations are sold together, there would not be enough money to pay for the damages, emanating from their stupid and reckless enterprise hence the decision to ignore them, especially in the spirit of Umu Nna.
Of course, it is natural to belong to diverse political or social camps. However, one does not make a public ridicule of oneself because of your hatred for someone. For goodness sake, if Ibezim is found to have messed up with funds meant for projects in the zone, as alleged, let him go in for it. It is unconscionable though to sully a man’s name because of his good deeds.
These same people who opposed Ibezim from the beginning on his way to the Senate are not tired even as Ibezim has left the Senate. The question is how much Ibezim’s replacement has done despite his futile efforts to rubbish his predecessor, which are not hidden. It is not until a woman marries two husbands that she would know which is better. Though discerning Imo North is nostalgic about Ibezim’s ultimate triumph and exemplary representation, and worried by the current tepid situation in the zone, the naysayers still refuse to acknowledge Ibezim’s verifiable big strides or, in some cases, mire them in controversies.
Some volunteers led by notable personalities like Ozo Atita and JOJ Okoroafor, Speaker and Clerk of the apex Okigwe group, Okigwe Forum, respectively, have even decided to humour these evil elements by going on a fact-finding mission of some of the projects, including functional boreholes, palm oil mills, substation, solar plants, and massive rice farms. They filed video evidence and interviews with beneficiaries, including presidents general of the host communities. It seems that the mouths of these detractors have somewhat gone quiet but have they?
However, this does not alter anything. Who is afraid of Ibezim? Even as he left the stage like the gentleman he is about a year ago and has refused to make any political statement despite the backstabbing of those he supported and even contributed funds to their emergence, why are they still uncomfortable with him?
One definite fact is that as Ibezim always says, it is God that crowns kings. If and when God decides to call him up for service again, these inane noises cannot stop him. One of my favourite quotes I learned in secondary school was, ‘One man’s hatred cannot alter another man’s destiny’. Therefore, these hatchet jobs far removed from reality and common sense, schemes, and connivances to diminish the towering stature of Ibezim rather than succeed have crashed on their head, further propelling the man to greater heights. Surely, with each passing day and unwarranted attack, Ibezim’s star keeps burning with more brilliance.
Anthony Iwuoma is a journalist and concerned Okigwe native
