‘My mission is to industrialise Benue’

We noticed you have mounted billboards and your posters are all over the place. What are your chances this time?
Remember that in 2006, I was the only female gubernatorial aspirant who contested on the PDP platform in Benue State and as a PDP stalwart, after I lost the primary we worked for the party and Gabriel Suswan emerged as governor of the state and since then we have been working hand in hand with him. I was appointed General Manager of the Benue State Water Board in 2007, just a month after his swearing in, and by the grace of God as a party follower and a party faithful we worked jointly and prayed for the emergence of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to be the president of Nigeria in January 2011.
My people are saying I was not given in 2006 because the PDP had decided on the present governor but they are saying they want me to come out and lead them in the forthcoming dispensation in the state. So am making consultations while we wait for the party to tell us what is next.
So, have you answered the call of your people?
Right now it is still on consultation, waiting for the party’s directives but the important thing here is how do we work jointly to develop our state? Successive governments have tried their best in different aspects, the present government on infrastructural development. Other governors have come and tried in other sectors of development but the new thing which will come as a result of my engineering experience is total industrialisation of Benue using the local government as the focal point.
Today there’s a complete shift from the local government, if you go and take the statistics of people in Ogbadibo Local Government and take the statistics of people in Okpokwu you’ll discover that Okpokwu indigenes resident in Otupko, Makurdi and Abuja are more than those resident in the local government area and this is because of job drive; people are moving in search of jobs, people are moving because of electricity, the new dimension by the grace of God that I am bringing as a result of my engineering experience is the creation of the necessary platforms that will create jobs for our people.
In Benue State most of our products are still in raw material stage. If you take yam for example, yam is still in its natural state and until it is processed the natural value will not be high. The farmers are losing a lot of money because of the fact that each of the products is still going into the market at that stage. You take the example of cotton; cotton in bags harvested from the farm is not as expensive as a designer shirt that have been processed, the quantity of the cotton from the farm is much but the processed cotton that is now designer shirt is more valued. We need to add value to the product from Benue State. That’s where my training as an engineer will make a difference.
Are you relying on any godfather to achieve the ambition of which your people have called you?
By the grace of God,  godfather, godmother, god everything, God is everything, thank God the word is godfather, that means there should be a God, and so I rely on God. I  have support from all over, my fathers, my mothers, husband, my brothers and sisters, senior ones and junior ones all my people, if I want to call names now I will be doing a lot of injustice to some people.
As one interwoven between the two major tribes in the state, I enjoy support from both the traditional institutions,  political elite and also from the grassroots; the market women, the children the youth, the students, I have God, I have the people, the ones that are higher than me politically and the ones that are looking unto me. I think I have adequate support.