By Tony Edike
Governor Peter Ndubuisi Mbah of Enugu State has highlighted a number of ongoing projects and economic initiatives which, according to him, are contributing to the state’s rapidly expanding revenue base.
Mbah spoke when editors of print, broadcast and online media organisations visited Enugu as part of activities marking the Annual Conference of the Nigeria Guild of Editors (NGE).
The governor used the opportunity to explain the transformation taking place across the state, particularly the efforts of his administration to expand the economy and develop new sources of internally generated revenue.
He said Enugu was currently among the fastest-growing states in revenue generation, noting that taxation accounted for less than 13 per cent of the state’s revenue.
Mbah said the figure demonstrated that the administration’s strategy was not simply centred on increasing taxes but on growing the economy, creating new economic activities and developing assets capable of generating sustainable revenue for the state.
During their visit, the editors were taken on a tour of some of the major projects being executed by the administration.
Among the projects inspected were the proposed New Enugu City, which is planned to occupy about 10,000 hectares; newly constructed secondary schools; the Enugu Ranch; Pine Forest; a tourism centre; and the Enugu International Hospital, among other projects.
The project tour was similar to the one organised for editors during the Guild’s conference in Enugu last year, giving members of the media an opportunity to assess the progress of some of the projects they had previously seen.
The scale and pace of development reportedly generated considerable interest among members of the Guild, with some of the editors expressing admiration for the transformation taking place across the state.
Former Governor of Ogun State and veteran journalist, Chief Segun Osoba, as well as the President of the Nigeria Guild of Editors, Eze Anaba, were among those who commended the Enugu State Government for its development initiatives.
At the end of the tour, the editors engaged Governor Mbah in an interactive session, during which they sought explanations on the sustainability of the projects, the transformation of the state’s economy and the measures being taken to ensure continuity beyond the tenure of the present administration.
Responding to questions on the future of the projects, Mbah explained the administration’s broader economic vision and the rationale behind the investments being made across different sectors.
He said the objective was to create an economy capable of generating sustainable wealth and opportunities rather than relying predominantly on traditional sources of government revenue.
The governor also fielded questions on the long-term sustainability of the projects and the capacity of the state to maintain the pace of development.
The interaction provided the editors with an opportunity to further examine the policies and programmes underpinning the administration’s development agenda, particularly its emphasis on infrastructure, education, healthcare, tourism, agriculture and urban development.
Mbah’s engagement with the editors came against the backdrop of growing attention to the pace of infrastructure development in Enugu and the administration’s stated ambition to reposition the state as a major economic and investment destination in the South-East.
Excerpts:
Let me once again restate how grateful we are as government and people of Enugu to have the honour of hosting you for the second year in a row. We truly understand the value, and we do not take it for granted. I’m also grateful that two days ago I invited you to explore Enugu, to go out and see for yourselves what we’ve done in Enugu. Thank you that you were able to take up that invite.
I’m interested to know what you saw. What surprised you? What disappointed you? What doesn’t add up? And the questions that you may have raised. You know, I just wanted to get feedback. But again, for us, what you saw, the security, the transports, the investments, tourism, and all that, they are all interconnected. They are mutually reinforcing. They’re all designed to achieve a common objective.
When we took office, we laid out a blueprint. One was to grow the economy of the state exponentially, but also to eradicate poverty and to create a state where people can live, work, invest and build futures. What I said to them when I was campaigning was that I was tired of seeing young people leave Enugu after their education to go elsewhere to look for work.
The idea was for us to create something here that will keep people here so they can create wealth here, find employment, live here, have a satisfying life here without necessarily going out. We don’t want our boys only to come back to Enugu when they want to attend funerals or weddings. Those projects in themselves are not the end point.
They’re actually the means for us to achieve that, and if you notice, if we talk about them, you see how they are designed to achieve, for example, the investment in the tourism is to help us attract 3 million people into Enugu. So, we’re currently doing six massive tourism sites. I understand you saw one.
New Enugu International Hospital
You went to the pine forest where we’re doing the zip line. We’re also doing the cable car at Okpatu, 5.6 kilometer cable car. We’re also recasting the Nsude pyramid. It has a history of over 2,000 years. We have the ledger, iron smelting site. That, again, with a history of over 4,000 years.
So, we’re preserving these things, trying to make sure that they become an icon that will bring people here. There are a whole lot of things. Even in the transport sector, we got ourselves into aviation because we want to create connectivity to the state, and we want people to have access to this place with ease.
It’s all designed towards growing the economy exponentially, but also eradicating poverty. That would tell the story about our intervention in the social sector, intervention in education, in healthcare. It’s almost, as I always say, insane.
Doing over 7,000 classrooms within two and a half years. But when you hear 7,000 classrooms, it’s not even about the classroom. That doesn’t tell you the story about the 464,000 furniture items that we also had to procure to go with the 7,000 classrooms.
The solar system, the data and all that. They are not for political acclaim. Our hope is that whoever comes after would have to build on what they see because these things are, for example, our intervention in education is not about the structure. If you go to any of the smart green schools, you see that the future tells a difference. It underscores the fact that our children are entering into a different world.
Not the one we lived 40 years ago where we went to school with chalk and blackboard. We recognise that in designing the smart school to capture the evolving 21st century skills.
This is what these kids must be exposed to. So, once these kids begin to learn what we now call experiential learning, you cannot take them back to the rot system of learning where you teach them to memorise and write. We’re hoping that once we’ve raised the bar, that whoever comes thereafter would just build on it because the citizens would demand for that because they would have been used to that. In any case, we’re now doing the heavy lift.
The capital expenditure we’re carrying now. We’re hoping that whoever comes subsequently will be focusing more on the operating cost. Which we know is sustainable in terms of what we have done.
In terms of growing the revenue of the state. You may already know that in terms of revenue generation, we are the fastest in the country in terms of the speed of growth. We ended last year with N406 billion from N25 billion we started in 2023.
We are only behind Lagos and Rivers in terms of IGR. We tell people that a lot of that doesn’t come from tax because there is this narrative that has been framed – that we’re overtaxing our people. It’s just a three part of it. Less than 13 per cent of our IGR comes from taxation.
Over 87 per cent we get from the businesses we’re building. We’ve activated all our moribund companies, and they are all running.
The United Palm Products. The Sunrise Flower Mill. The Niger Gas. The Presidential Hotel. The International Conference Centre. The terminals. These are major revenue generators. And they have created employment. We are making money from them. And that was our commitment to pluck the leakages and activate, revive all the Moribund industry. And that’s where the revenue is coming from, not from taxation.
The approach, as you said, security is difficult for you to insulate yourself from your neighbours. But what we’ve also done in terms of making sure that our borders are well-policed is that we also have a line of sight of those coming into our states from the different gateways. Whether you’re coming through the formal or informal gateway, we can see you, we know you and we know when you’re leaving.
The visiting Editors
But there’s also this conversation around peer review, which is something that is going on now. And we’ve had a number of my colleagues who have come to, of course, see what we’re doing here. And the whole idea is for us to, at some point, also have an integrated system.
Where we can have a common command and control centre for the entire South-East. Not just for intelligence, but also for operations because what tends to happen is if you have tension in a certain location, once you neutralise that, you see those people migrating to other areas.
We’re mindful and it’s a work in progress. It’s something that we do hope to achieve. In terms of the South-East integrated development, we’re lucky that federal government, the president, approved and signed into law the South-East Development Commission.
And that’s somehow now driving these South-East common projects. For example, the SEDC is working on the pressure gas pipe to all the major cities in the South-East. They’ve taken ownership of that. It was something we were working in isolation. But since the coming into force and the operationalisation of the South-East Development Commission, that project is back to life.
In fact, the integrated South-East railway line is also back. They are currently trying to find funds for that project. I think that we must commend the president for signing the SEDC into law and operationalising and also funding the SEDC because they are now taking up these projects of common interest in the South-East.
Again, on our part in Enugu, we’re also doing our bit in making sure that the airport, which we believe should be a major gateway for the entire South-East, the international wing, as you may already know, has been concessioned. And we are trying to make sure that the investor gets it operationalised. We are working on that.
In terms of our partnership with federal government, we are actually partnering with federal government in several ways, particularly with the road infrastructure. The road you drove through today, I think when you are going through the Enugu-Abakaliki Road, the flyover on that road is being done by federal government. But the dualisation is being done by the states.
So the state is doing the 22-kilometre stretch, we’re dualising it, and then federal government is stepping in. And then you can see that they have also done the Enugu-Onitsha Expressway. That was almost a road that was impossible to get done, but we now can drive easily to Onitsha with ease and quite a whole number of interventions.
So we have quite a good synergy with the federal government, and we also use this opportunity to commend the President for his interest in the South-East, and quite a lot of intervention has taken place since he assumed office. The Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway now, the whole one carriage of that entire stretch is completely done.
