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He was seated 20 minutes before the scheduled time for the interview, last Thursday, at Excel Hotel, Garki Abuja. He was there before the Apex News Exclusive team arrived, but that wasn’t shown as he wore his trademark smile, breezing through the handshake and pleasantries.
Engr. Levi Lumun Icheen, Benue State governorship candidate of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), the party which came third in the last governorship election in the state is among the parties expected to put up interesting outing, come March, 2023.
But for Icheen, it is not about alphabets and ambition, it is about vision. He believes that, the last chance to salvage Benue State is now. And his vision is clear. His tripartite proposition of uniting, securing and developing Benue State is practical. He demonstrated how it is achievable.
In the end, Engr. Icheen’s growing competence, intellectual depth about issues of development in Benue, analytical skills and engaging personality gives an impression that he is one candidate that burns his midnight oil studying about models of development.
Levi Lumun Icheen spoke to Samuel Torlumun, Editor, and Nev Titus,
Tell us about your background
By the special grace of Allmighty creator, I am a civil engineer by profession. I was in the private sector, after a while I joined the civil service. And I have worked a couple of years with the Federal Capital Development Authority, FCDA. I rose to the position of a senior engineer.
I am married with three kids. While I am from Kwande Local Government, my wife is from Otukpo Local Government, all from Benue State. I count myself privileged to be a complete Benue man.
What actually motivated you to joining the governorship race, to the point of resigning your lucrative job?
In every generation, someone must rise up against the status-quo that has been working negatively against the people. So, for me having seen what the people of Benue State are going through, I said to myself; are we going to continue like this? Today, by the special grace of Allmighty creator, I have kids, so what legacy are we going to leave behind? If things are this bad at this time, how is it going to be in the future? So, I said to myself, the time to rise up is now, and having heard from allmighty father; He said, ‘my son go ahead’.
So today, by the special grace of allmighty father, am the governorship candidate of Peoples Redemption Party, PRP for Benue State and it beholds on us to rise up to the challenges facing us; it is infrastructure wise? You can name it. But, these challenges are surmountable, if we have the right people onboard. So for me, it is a big challenge but I have laid down my life for the wellbeing of the people of Benue State.
How prepared are you for the task you are going into; what strategy do you have on ground?
I am a civil engineer by profession. Through out my profession, I have been trained to manage material and human resources. And having worked in one of the most organized institution in this country, (the FCDA), that provides a world class infrastructure, I feel I am well prepared. Why do I say so? The deference between developed and underdeveloped nations is the level of infrastructure available to its citizens, and the corresponding economic activities generated by such infrastructure. So having worked here, I believe I have what it takes to move Benue State forward.
I am going to take the experience I have garnered here all over the years to Benue, and I am assuring you that within a short time there will be massive transformation.
How confident are you; going into election with a party which many will say doesn’t have the kind of structure, PDP and APC have in Benue?
First of all, I will tell you that, in the last election, PRP came third in the governorship election in Benue State. So PRP is not new to Benue, it is certainly one of the oldest political parties in Nigeria. And as it is today, I am from Kwande Local Government, my second home is Vandeikya LG, and my wife is Idoma from Otukpo. So with right strategy and the message of hope, PRP is going to come top in this election.
What is the Nexus of your campaign?
Basically, I am looking at three key things. First, uniting the Benue people. The people of Benue have never been this divided. So, the first thing we are going to be doing as we assume office come 2023, is uniting the people.
The second thing is to secure the Benue people. You can only secure a people when they are united. And, thirdly, when the people are secured, then we will develop Benue State. So, for me these are the three key things we are going to be looking at.
How are you going provide infrastructure?
What am going to do in terms of infrastructural development is to set up construction companies in all the three zones of the state. Whatever money am going to get from Federal Allocation, or and even borrow. It will be used for direct labour. Through direct labour, the youths are going to be employed. They are going to man this construction companies. With my knowledge about construction, may I reveal to you that, only equipments are imported into the country, any other material for construction is gotten in this country. So why do we need to bring in foreigners to give them our resources when we already have what we need.
So by the time we are done with this construction, especially roads, we are going to set up toll gates to recover this money back and pay to where we have borrowed from. So, for infrastructure, direct labour is the only way to achieve it, and meet up the infrastructural deficit in the state.
How are you going to tackle unemployment?
I have just spoken about one now, which is infrastructure, because Benue people are going to be employed through direct labour. The first thing we are going to do is to send a bill to State Assembly for establishment of Infrastructure Development Commission.
What this bill seeks to achieve is to receive 50% of the IGR to fund the commission, and then 15% of the federal allocation. These monies are going to be divided into the three zones, that is A, B, and C to take care of the salaries, and maintenance of the construction equipments. So a lot of young persons are going to be employed in this Development Commission. In fact, from the analysis we have done, for the first two years, we are going to employ more than 5,000 youths cutting across all the LGs of the state into the commission for the purpose of providing infrastructure.
Then another area is Agriculture. Benue State is an agrarian state, so how do we achieve agriculture? For me, the simple thing we are going to do is to go to international market, check our farm commodities that are trading at the international market that are being grown in Benue, get the seedlings of those commodities and grow them in Benue.
For example, Sesame seeds. There is a global demand of about 4.7 million tons of Sesame seeds annually at the international market. And out of this Nigeria produces 600 thousand tons, where Benue state is one of the highest producer of sesame seed in Nigeria. So, from my analysis, each farming season we are going to be investing 2billion Naira into Sesame farming. At the end of the farming season what we are going to be generating is between 40 to 50 billions Naira. This is almost half of the annual budget of the state. This is just on one commodity.
What we are going to do is create farm settlements. This was done during Late Chief Aper Aku administration. We will get a lot of young people, divide them into farmers groups, give them seedlings and the farm inputs, after the planting and harvest, we will establish processing plants to achieve value chain. So, we are going to be employing many people into these processing industries. So jobs will be created. We are going to be selling some raw at the international market while some will be processed to international standard.
This is just one commodity, so we are going to go into others too, like Soya beans, and many other commodities. There will be be massive job creation.
Industry wise, we have a lot of moribund industries that we will look into. One; we are going to revive is Taraku Mills. When it was functional, the oil produced at Taraku Mills was the best in the country. Revitalizing it will create jobs for our teeming youths also. All the Soyabeans grown in the state are going to be bought by the state government to be processed in Taraku Mills. May I state categorically that Benue State has nothing to do with poverty. We are a blessed people. The solutions to Benue challenges are within Benue. We don’t need to start running from pillar to post looking for solutions.
You are a youth. How are you going to be taking advantage of this?
Governance has decayed in our very own eyes. The youths have the sole responsibility to take up accurate and persistent steps in changing the narrative. This is the time, we have tried the older people, and we have seen where we are today. We are not saying they are worse-off, but the time has come for them to give us opportunity to apply the experience we have garnered all these years. We have learnt from their mistakes and what they have been able to put up there. We have learnt a lot from them.
And now I think is the time to take leadership position and bring the desired direction and chart a way forward for the development of our state. There no better time than now.
One of Gov. Ortom’s complains is lack of funds. You’re going to inherit a state with a weak economy that can’t even pay salaries and pension arrears. How are you going to salvage this?
Yes, it is true that we have a challenging situation in Benue State, but just like I said, Benue solution is within Benue. It will amaze you to know that, Nigeria is blessed with about 34 mineral deposits in commercial quantities. Out of the 34, Benue is blessed with over 20 mineral deposits in commercial quantities.
So, the first thing our government is going to do is to get expertise in the exploration (Mining) sector. We will bring them to the state, give them the geographical survey of the state where the mineral deposits are located. We will partner with them and carryout what is called geo-chemical analysis of the mining deposits we have in Benue. The geo-chemical analysis will give us the exact commercial viability of the mineral deposits. And once that is done, we are going to raise a data of what we have in Benue State that will be displayed at the international market. By so doing, in a couple of months, investors will be rushing into Benue with Billions of dollars. So the issue of generating money won’t be the challenge. By the time we raise our data, and place it at international market, money will flow in. So, backlogs of salaries and pension arrears won’t be an issue for us.
How are you going to tackle the nagging issue of insecurity in Benue?
First of all, I will tell you that we have two types of security challenges in Benue State. We have the internal Security challenges and external security challenges. So for us to successfully deal with the external security challenge we must first deal with the internal security challenges. What are the internal security challenges; we have criminality, kidnapping, cultism, and a lot of the likes. So, we will successfully deal with this by way of engaging every Benue indigene. For those who are the willing tools because of lack of jobs, we are going to set up skill acquisition centers that will train them to be self reliance and stand on their own. So by the time the external aggressors come in looking for them, to be used in perpetrating crimes, they will not be available again. The truth is that those perpetrating external security challenges on Benue use the people within the state. So, at the end of the day, if we are able to take these people off the street and engage them, by the time their external sponsors come in they won’t find anybody to use. This will drastically reduce the internal security challenge.
As for the external security challenge we have to go modern. Why do I say so? We will engage drone technology that will give us real time security reports. As I speak with you, in my team we have someone who has designed a drone that has the capacity of picturing even a lizard that is moving 20 kilometers away from our boarders. So by the time we set up these drones at the borders they will able to give us a real time security situation.
Secondly, one of the issues that cause crisis between farmers and herdsmen is the issue of the green vegetation. That is because Benue valley is very nutritious for the animal husbandry. What we are going to do is to replace the grasses with economic trees, like cashew plantation, palm kernels plantation, etc. So by the time they come, they won’t find these grasses, they will find economic trees that are not eatable. Again, these trees are going to be serving as security fence at the borders.
What do have for the youths in terms of ICT?
There is a lot for the youths to benefit from ICT. In the US, ICT contributes more than 20% of jobs created. we are going to set up ICT zones and technology villages to get our youths who think outside the box to get involved into ICT. We are going to give them the comfort and training they need. This sector is about the youths. The PRP government will have a lot for the youths.
How are you going to power these industries?
We are going to think inward especially now that the National Assembly has mandated the private sector to go into power generation. In the last few years there was a visibility study that was carried out on river Katsina Ala that has the capacity of generating 450 megawatts of electricity. We will revisit this, and look at the possibility of bringing investors to this sector. This could be done in phases starting with a 150 megawatts to power our industries. We will also set up a multi purpose dam at river Katsina Ala. This dam will have the capacity of generating hydro electricity, irrigation for dry season farming and supply of portable water.
Your message to the people of Benue State
All hope is not lost. The time for Benue to rise up is now. 2023 has gone beyond party politics because the destiny of the people is at stake, so all of us have to join hands to salvage the soul of the state; the old and the young. It is not about political party, it is about those with the vision to deliver and not about ambition. The task is massive on us. 2023 is the last opportunity we have to make it right; to make or mar. If we fail in 2023, then there is no hope for Benue again.
