Hon. Engr. Chika Madumere the silent achiever

... Doing so much without hype and media frenzy.

By Francis Udoka Ndimkoha

Hon. Engr. Chika Madumere

It is rather a sad realization that we live in a society chastised for giving publicity to the work of his hands, and at the same time, the man who chose to work in silence is hounded and accused of laxity and inactivity.

This situation above explains the complex situation in which a public servant or public spirited individual is compelled to have and to keep the empirical evidence of his achievements, and put same in public glare, else be ready to be accused of having nothing to his credit.

Hon. Engr. Chika Madumere, the member representing Nkwerre State constituency in the Imo State House of Assembly is an unassuming, cool and calm individual who even as as a politician, has chosen to do more for his people than the media can see. His time out on today on Orient 94.4 FM, Owerri was an apt opportunity to tell it to the world, that there are just a few house of Assembly members in the country, in this current administration that has put in so much, in terms of human and material resources, to serve his constituents.

I shall briefly point out some of his modest achievements so far and I hope to see these records being put to a real test of objectivity.

Bills and motions
The primary Job of a legislator, without fear of contradiction, is lawmaking. As a house of Assembly member, is expected that the lawmaker must have the intellectual capacity to sponsor bills, move motions as well as join in meaningful debates on the floor of house which will form part of the laws guiding the actions of the executive. Hon. Engr. Chika Madumere has so far not been found wanting in this area.

Brand prototype ICT CENTRE attracted by Hon. Engr. Chika Madumere fully completed

To state in clear terms, he was the 6th of the 27 house members to sponsor a bill on the floor of the House.. Hon. Chika Madumere has a number of bills at various stages of the legislative process, in House of Assembly, but I'm particular about two of those bills, viz:

"A Bill for a law to impose a tax to be known as General sales tax on specified goods and services rendered for monetary gains and consideration within the territory of Imo State and other related matters". This happens to be the 7th bill that was passed into law by the current house and he had to travel to Lagos State for three weeks, to understudy their Internally Generated Revenue system, to enable him come up with this bill.

Another one is "A Bill for a law to provide for the consolidation of all property and land based rates and charges payable in Imo State into a new land based charge to be called Property Land Use Charge, to provide for levying and collection of the charge and for related matters." This Bill is also geared towards blocking leakages in revenue collection by providing for a central collection of these charges and better accountability instead of collecting from several points in the Local Government Areas with attendant tendencies of loosing revenue therein. If passed into law the Bill will also boost our State's Internally Generated Revenue.

Again, among the various motions he has moved on the floor of the House, I have spotted "A motion to urge his Excellency, the Executive Governor of Imo State to appoint forensic experts to in conjunction with the House Ad-hoc committee, reconcile and recover excess bank charges that might have been erroneously charged on all bank accounts of Imo State Government by the banks from 2004 till date, with a view to recovering same."

The motion was to help the state recover Billions of Naira arbitrarily charged by their bankers over a period. The CBN gave the directive in 2004 to commercial banks who were in the habit incorporating arbitrary deductions that do not conform to the "Guide to bank charges" as agreed between the CBN and bank stakeholders.
It is noteworthy that Bauchi state government recovered about N1.8 billion naira while their Abia State counterpart recovered about N1.6 billion naira when they carried out this exercise.
And so he sought to give Imo State government the requisite legislative apparatus with which to do the needful.

A quick glance on some of the above stated will reveal that Hon. Chika Madumere believes not in churning out huge quantity of bills and motions, and playing to the gallery, rather, he goes for bills that are relevant and necessary.

This is the hallmark of an effective legislator.

Constituency briefing

A major hallmark of a legislator which is fast losing its shine is the constituency briefing. It creates the much needed feedback environment through the physical interaction between the lawmaker and his constituents.

For Hon. Engr. Chika Madumere, his first constituency briefing took place on Monday, the 21st of December 2015, barely 6months after he took the oath of office while second major constituency briefing took place on Thursday the 22nd of December 2016 at the Local Government Council ground in Nkwerre LGA. Each of these briefing had for their high points the empowerment of the constituents which ran into tens of millions of Naira. We'll get to that in subsequent articles.

His N10m Naira empowerment programme, skill acquisition program, agricultural initiatives and scholarship scheme will form part of the next article and I ask again, is it better to do nothing but hire media goons to create a busy atmosphere or to work in silence knowing that posterity is the best judge?

- Francis Udoka Ndimkoha writes from Owerri.