Ebonyi Exco was like a market before my coming, say new SSG

The newly appointed Secretary to Ebonyi State Government, Dr. Hygenius Nwokwu weekend hinted that the state executive council before his appointment, was like a market, but has been trimmed down from what it used to be to give room for meaningful deliberations and policy implementations.

Nwokwu, who made this disclosure during an interaction with journalists in Abakaliki, also regretted that the Executive Council as was hitherto constituted, could not allow for effective deliberations and was rather a clog in the wheel of progress.

He noted that only Commissioners, Principal officers of government and three Senior Special Assistants (SSAs) to the Governor were currently members of the state executive council unlike the regime of his predecessor, Professor Bernard Odoh where ‘everybody’ were members of council.

“I am new in this office. I am still studying things. Basically, there are certain things that must not be the way they are currently. When I came in, I looked at Exco.

It was like a market, no effective deliberation can take place at Exco and we said look, we cannot remain like this. If the state executive council represents the highest decision organ of government, it should be trimmed down. People, who are members of Exco, take responsibilities of the place and bear whatever actions taken”.

“When you bring everybody to Exco, what are they doing? What contribution will they make rather than stay there and sleep. We resolved that they should go to field and when anything comes out, those members of the state executive council will bring their intellectual prowess to bear so that the policy of government that will come out will be such that will address our material challenges”.

“Now, we have meaningful deliberations, we now look at ministerial responsibilities. You can see now that the Exco is trimmed. The people that are in Exco now are commissioners, Principal officers of government, and three SSAs . We now look at Ministerial responsibilities; each ministry has constitutional mandate and areas of operations”.

“We follow due process we are. Before now, there was a paradigm shift!. Everything is now working and I have told members of the state executive council that if our Oga, the governor of the state who is ever ready to make progress, finds that you are lackadaisical in your approach to things, it’s an indictment on your part”, he said.