Laurence Ani

Last year, Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi launched an ambitious mass housing programme that reduced the burden of the usually huge equity contribution on the public to a tolerable level. The Ugwuanyi administration paid  over 50 percent equity contribution for Enugu State civil servants between grade levels 01-10 for the purchase of 100 units of one-bedroom flats at Elim Estate, Ibagwa Nike, Enugu.  Barring radical gestures such as that implemented by the Enugu State government, owning personal homes was more often than not a Herculean task even for senior level public servants, let alone workers below the mid-level cadre.... Click link to read more. https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2017/05/30/enugu-shows-the-way-in-mass-housing-programme/

These two photographs were taken a few months apart at the same spot. The first paints a picture of despair and the second highlights the sort of pleasant change that a progressive vision can engender. The Inyaba River - ordinarily a natural boon to the locals' agrarian lifestyle - in Nkanu East has in large part been a nightmare for the 10 communities to which it is contiguous. The river overflows during rainy seasons, occasionally taking lives and destroying crops and the wooden structure that connects the many villages on both sides. This was the situation for decades.  But the story has changed with the near completion of a concrete structure built by the Enugu State governor, Rt. Hon. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi. That is is the power of vision!

https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2016/10/22/the-great-zik-was-here-welcome-to-the-revamped-premiers-lodge/

Although the federal government has yet to reimburse Enugu State the over N25b it has spent so far fixing federal roads, this has not dampened Governor Ugwuanyi's resolve to fix the many collapsed federal roads in the state... https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2016/12/11/for-travellers-end-to-9th-mile-anxieties-is-nigh-this-yuletide/

At 25, Enugu is a Study in Resilience By Laurence Ani * First published in ThisDay on August 27, 2016 . There are some rural visits I undertake - and there have been quite a few - that often leaves me wondering what such communities would have looked like decades back. So each time there is a debate on the aptness of creating additional states, I naturally recall such visits.  As states grapple with the challenge of paying workers' salaries in face of dwindling revenue from the federal purse, the entire process of states creation has come under fresh scrutiny, with some critics even suggesting a return to regions as was the case in the First Republic. Proponents of this bizarre step apparently attribute the current cash squeeze to Nigeria's multiple state structure. What they fail to reckon with is that the regions as constituted in the First Republic were to a large extent autonomous.  So even if all the states were collapsed into regions while the pseudo

Understanding Enugu's Silent Agricultural Revolution   By Laurence Ani * This piece was first published in ThisDay on Sunday, March 19, 2017 . At a recent conference for government spokespersons in Abuja, one of the speakers made a point suggesting that infrastructural expenditure has been implemented at a pace disproportionate to investment in intangible resources such as agriculture, education and healthcare. The reason for this, he said, is not far-fetched. Building roads or fixing collapsed ones, for example, yield outcomes that are instant whereas the results arising from agricultural investments are not immediately discernible.  While there may seem to be an excessive focus on roads rehabilitation the reason is not essentially narcissistic or driven by the desire for public acclamation. The truth is there is a yawning infrastructure deficit across the federation that even sustained rounds of extensive roads rehabilitation are often barely sufficient interventions.

http://sunnewsonline.com/rebirth-of-history-as-rangers-regains-its-groove/

https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2017/03/31/from-enugu-prisons-53-garlands-for-ugwuanyi/

On a day global news networks and the social media were dominated by reports of the devastating effects of chemical weapons in Syria, gloating remarks arising from the United States' dropping of what it termed "mother of all bombs" in Afghanistan and bizarre tales about the discovery of billions in a Lagos apartment, nothing can be more sobering than spending Easter Sunday among the infirm and those dedicated to their care. Such was the experience last Sunday at the Little Sisters of the Poor's Home for the Elderly, Awkunanaw, in Enugu, where Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi had elected - typically, as a matter of fact, to worship. The greed, hate and conceit that underlie the events recalled above were in stark contrast to the selfless love shown by the reverend sisters to their elderly wards. Indeed, the way the reverend sisters easily care for people who were complete strangers to them stands as a beacon in a world where empathy has gone so terribly cold. How of