Akwa Ibom has seen huge leap forward in development under Udom’s administration -Udo

Charles Udo, is Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Akwa Ibom State. He believes that the Udom Emmanuel administration is poised to deliver dividends of democracy to the people. He also spoke on a wide range of issues affecting governance in the state in this interview. PATRICK OKOHUE reports.

*Governor Udom has resumed for a second term; what shape would the transformation agenda take?

In the first tenure, the governor had outlined the five-point agenda, which was the focus of his developmental and governmental initiative. But having accomplished that,

which culminated in his re-election for a second term in office, he clearly outlined another set of objectives he hopes to achieve in the next four years. Those objectives are outlined in what he called ‘The Completion Agenda’.

The new agenda encapsulates eight key areas, which includes, industrialisation, infrastructure, aviation development, rural and riverine area development, security, human capacity development, agriculture small and medium-scale enterprises. These eight points are the milestones this government hopes to accomplish in the next four years.

The milestones were arrived at following a critical review of the first four years; the impacts of the programmes and projects. As well, it included the responses from people and their expectations in the last four years.

So, all are summarised in that eight points we called ‘The Completion Agenda’. In the next four years, the government wants to be held accountable on those eight points.

**What have been the governor’s major achievements in the last four years?

In its first tenure in 2015, this government rolled out a five-point agenda, which it clearly set out to accomplish- job creation, wealth creation, poverty alleviation, infrastructural consolidation and expansion, political and economy inclusion.

The overriding objective of the agenda was to achieve the dream of industrialisation and turn the state to a tourist destination. Part of the objectives was also to make the state an agricultural hub because we have rain almost across the year.

Also, what informed the five-point agenda was the fact that since the state was created the economy has revolved around government and the political circles. When the youths leave school, they think of becoming politicians or civil servants because these were the two options the state can afford.

But developed economies do not depend on government. So, this government’s overriding goal is to diversify the economy of the state from being public sector to private sector-driven.

But in doing that, we also took cognisance of the fact that several industrial initiatives of the government and advances of government in the different parts of the country to achieve that failed, and we went to town to ask why those initiatives failed.

With that at the back of our mind, we decided that industrialisation agenda would solely be investor-driven; as government will no longer build industries.

*Has that been successful?

Experience has shown that if you do that, it would be recipe for disaster; because those industries would be run like an extension of government agency and would die a natural death because it cannot compete. The government decided it needed to create an enabling environment for investors to come in, set up their investments, run them and thrive in the state.

Some of the key things that an investor would want are confidence in governance, integrity in governance and accountability. If these are absent, you cannot have a discussion. So, the governor decided with his

background as an a accomplished private sector player to leverage on his large and rich networks of friends and business associates to establish trust, integrity, confidence, and accountability that allow investors to trust us.

The next hurdle to cross was creating infrastructure; which is roads, power and security. We took over government in 2015, and for the better part of the previous administration; crime rate was high. So, the first agenda for the government was to sanitise the system, ensure security of lives and property.

The next agenda was power. Power has been a national epidemic since independence as successive governments have tried to address the issue without success yet. We realized that if we are to thrive as an industrial entity, we need to address the issue of power.

So, government invested a lot in the Ibom power plant to generate enormous wattage of power, but unfortunately since government is not in control of the distribution network; we realised that we still had issues with the power being generated not reaching where it should reach and at the right wattage.

Today, the Transmission Company of Nigeria only evacuates about 40 percent of the generated power by Ibom power plant.

That is worrisome, because if you take all the power generated, its means that the entire state would be power sufficient. But because we do not have control of power transmission, we thought the best way to control how power is generated and when it reaches the consumers is to leverage on the technology called injectors stations.

So, we began to build injector stations in different parts of the state. The idea is to take electricity where it is generated, drive it to the nearest point to the consumer and then the distribution start from there. That means we have distribution hub, instead of generating and distributing from one source.

The idea of the distribution hub is to make sure that injector station faults and issues could easily be detected and resolved at a faster rate.

The first one we installed was in Uyo in July 2017 and it transformed power supply. The Uyo injector station covers Esonoma, Shelter Afrik, Ewe housing and its environs.

There was a drastic improvement during peak period; sometimes, you have power about 20 hours a day. Of course, there are still challenges, like aging distribution lines among others, which are not in our control.

With the success, we are doing more. Today, we have one ready at the airport to be connected to the national grid.

There is another one built in Ekum, in Npat Enin, and three others in the works now. With those three we should cover key areas, while the one in Nkpat Enin would cover industrial areas and coastal cities.

The one at the airport will cover Onna, Oron and Eket. So, we think with that we are ready to attract the world to come and invest in Akwa Ibom State. We went to town looking for investors and there are 17 industries functioning in the state, which are all investors driven.

About 16 of them are fully commissioned, the 17th one is the flour mill and it is ready as test run is ongoing. Sometimes next month, before the state anniversary, we will commission it.

Also, we have Africa’s largest syringe manufacturing company, which produces the jubilee syringe. We also have Demitry Solution Company that produces prepaid meter.

So, with that we have achieved a larger chunk of three of the Five Completion Agenda of this government. Today, we can rightly tell ourselves that employment in those areas has improved with direct and indirect employment as each distributor in that company is an employer of labour.

If you look at the community, the impact is enormous, for instance a woman who lives in any of those communities would either go to farm or do petty trading, but now the opportunity for petty trading has enlarged, because there are more people coming to that locality to do business every day.

She can even decide to run a canteen because she is guaranteed of customers, while the young man on the street can start a recharge card business.

But there are complaints by some local government areas that development is not even. In Orukanam several communities are without electricity due to the bad state of their transformers, what is the situation?

The government is responsible to provide transformers while the people protect them. If we have given transformers to communities in Orukanam and the people damaged them, we will not keep replacing them.

No government can solve every problem in four years, not in this part of the world. Every government has a focus and our key agenda like I told you is about the Nyegbono culture.

In the past, there was so much crime in the state because the youth had nothing to do. Today, we are focused on another agenda, which is to teach people how to fish, and not give them fish. The government cannot help you protect infrastructure.

In Ini Local Government Area for example; which is the rice belt of this state, the first tarred road was done by this government. It means that all the rice farmers in Ini were being exploited by people who come to buy their rice at cheap prices because of the bad road. So,

what government did was to create access road in Ini Local Government Area, linking up to Arochuckwu. Before, it takes a day with a bike to get to Arochukwu, but now it is about twenty minutes. Now, the rice farmers have more people coming to buy their products.

Our dream is that the rice sellers in Ini will sell their rice at the right price and quantity. With good roads, they will no longer be exploited as it takes maximum of one hour to get to Uyo to sell at better price.

We said if we must open up the economy of the state, we must ensure that wherever you stay, it will not take you more than one hour to get to state capital, especially the farm and coastal areas. That is why we are constructing large network of roads spanning over 1,700 kilometres.

In the health sector, we inherited deplorable facilities in the secondary hospitals across the state. From Etinan, Ikot Okoro, to Ikono, no one was functioning.

You cannot talk about being an industrialised society and a tourist destination if you do not have good secondary healthcare facilities.

The government set out to fix the secondary healthcare across the state, from Etinan, Ikot Akoro, Awa, Ipita and Anua. We have fixed them, one at a time with state-of- the-art facilities.

Quote

In the first tenure, the governor had outlined the five-point agenda, which was the focus of his developmental and governmental initiative. But having accomplished that,

which culminated in his re-election for a second term in office, he clearly outlined another set of objectives he hopes to achieve in the next four years. Those objectives are outlined in what he called ‘The Completion Agenda’.