‘We want to draw from Abians in Diaspora’

Abia State governor, Okezie Ikpeazu took the campaign for the development of his state to the United States of America where he sought the support of his compatriots residing there. He disclosed the gains of the trip to GORDI UDEAJAH in this interview. Excerpts:

Impact of the American trip on Abia   
Not long from now, the benefits of the trip to the state will begin to unfold. During the visit, I attended the convention of Ndi Abia, which is the body of Abians resident North America comprising USA and Canada and interfaced with them. I gave them a rundown of what our administration has done in the state and presented an overview of our economic agenda that would put us on a forward march. I believe firmly in the concept that even as we desire foreign investment, the best way to start is to urge or persuade Ndi Abian in Diaspora to show faith in their state by domesticating home some of their investments abroad.

Doing this could be by way of cash and or expertise. It was my submission to them that for now, the way to begin is for them to show faith. Hence it is only when they do so that the foreigners (Europeans and Americans) will begin to respond to our investment and collaboration invitation.  Otherwise, they will ask this inevitable question, “Why haven’t you gone home and join your people in the development of your state?”
To my mind, this submission touched their conscience and yielded what I consider as positive fruit, especially in the health sector where we made contact for medical equipment to be used for the reactivation of our healthcare delivery system starting from the primary health care units.

Abia state is richly endowed with globally rated professionals. You may not know that an Abian is one of the best Organs Transplant Surgeons in the USA. An Abian is also a top Cardiologist performing open-heart surgery. And they have indicated desire to be in their own state of Abia. Of course when they are involved in our healthcare delivery efforts, we are going to witness tremendous growth in the sector.

Collaboration with American state of Georgia
Yes, we are also expecting collaboration with the state of Georgia specifically in agriculture, especially in the area of Green House farming and poultry because Georgia state is the poultry headquarters of the world. We will soon unveil our initiative in terms of poultry farming in which the American technology and expertise will be brought to bear. Few months from now, the fruits of this our current visit will become palpable. We are already involved in the collaborative efforts and the assistance, of course will come from their expertise in these areas. This will certainly have positive effects in our economy and the productive capacity of our agricultural sector.

Tackling the problems at the home front
One of the major problems we have is getting enough financial muscles to carry our loads and deliver on our electoral promises to the people. For instance, we spent more of state resources to maintain a workforce that is a small percentage of our population. This however, is not peculiar to Abia State alone.

In Abia today, 80 percent or more of our resources go to recurrent expenditure which implies that 80 percent of what we get or earn is spent on recurrent expenditures including salaries and overheads after which we are left with less than 20 percent for capital expenditure including infrastructural development.

The import of this is that as this scenario subsists, our intended speeding rate to develop the state would be reduced. That is why it must be pointed out to the workers that to whom much is given, much is expected hence they ought to reciprocate by working hard and ensure that where applicable, they should enhance internal revenue generation and avoid wastages.

Financial leakage is a major problem in the state and we have blocked it in the in the Ministries, Departments and Agencies and not less than N270million have been saved from this continuous exercise. With this, we have kept the 31 contractors working for us. The state has also received N14.15b bail out fund from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and that would be for the payment of arrears of salary owed to workers. Already a committee has been set up with Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) leadership inclusive to manage the fund. It is not for the payment of contractors but strictly for workers salaries and pensions alone. No lobby will divert the fund.

On these foundations, we have set another 100 days projects target with emphasis on fighting ghost workers and other economic saboteurs in the state who must be brought to book. Also we will launch the state’s industrial cluster, which has the overall aim to create employment for Abia youths.
Coping with low revenue

Towards the end of last year, we started to notice a consistent downward trend in our economy, occasioned by the changes in the dynamics inherent in Nigeria’s sole dependency on oil. And with the cut on the price of oil, the Federal Government cut down on revenue that is available to states.

Consequently, we in Abia resolved that we would not remain among those who complain but rather, create ways of responding to this scenario. So we decided to focus on the economy of the state to redefine our ability to do things ourselves through a competitive economy since the centre is becoming weak.

In this regard, we looked at those areas where we have comparative advantage over others and that led us to develop five pillars of our template which are medium and small scale enterprises where emphasis would be laid on leather and garment industry, agriculture to increase yield in cassava, cocoa and oil palm, oil and gas and others. Power, roads, education and other sectors are part of our programmes.

In the past one hundred days, we have focused on these to support the main pillars of our development and that is why on the first day of my assumption of duty, we resumed in Aba where we flagged off seven roads. Within our first 100 days in office, we embarked on 31 roads across the state, which are at various levels of completion.

We could not do much because of rain but it is good at this period to enable us know the drainage that need to be de-silted to avoid flooding. For sixty days, we have consistently concentrated on de-silting of drainages and removal of materials in Aba on daily basis. This has led to Abia not being part of flooding this year and no destruction of lives and property. The contractors are challenged to stone base the roads with metal network before asphalt and with this, the state will come up with strong infrastructure that would stand the test of time.

Beyond our activities on the roads, we have also built a solid foundation for the take off of our industrial cluster. To start with, we took 29 shoe and garment makers from Aba Chambers of Commerce and the one in Umuahia led by their leadership to Turkey to study foreign technology in shoe and garment making and the idea is to make sure that made in Nigeria and not made in Aba shoes would compete favorably with those in the Western world.

In the area of agriculture, the state has concluded arrangement to send 40 young farmers to Songhai farms Port Novo to understudy Professor Nzamunjo’s template for integrated agriculture. Apart from this, we plan to do massive planting of exotic species of Oil Palm and our target is to plant at least 400,000 stands. Before the year 2018, Abia State would be great in the production of oil palm.

The state has also launched our Education for Employment initiative, which is hinged on the reactivation of technical education in the state. Government Trade Centre Aba, Technical School Afara and Technical School at Ohafia are pilot schools. The aim is to produce young school leavers that are capable of operating machines that would be procured for mechanized leather, shoe and garment products making.

Picking members of the State Executive Council
The nominees’ profiles are clear indication that our direction is to bring people that have vast experience in the various fields of endeavors and are professionals considered very capable to drive our forward moving vision for Abia state. They are men and women of integrity and impeccable character, who will ensure that we cut down wastages, engage in prudent management of scarce resources and save cost. All these are geared towards trying to achieve maximum benefit for the people. We have zero tolerance for corruption. The era of cutting corners by Commissioners is gone.

Sustaining the wage bill after the bail-out fund
In as much as I can pledge to continue to pay them regularly and avoid owing them arrears again, I must charge them to imbibe the culture of justifying their pay with corresponding output by searching their conscience every day to see if what they are paid matches their productivity.