Ogun State governor, Ibikunle Amosun yesterday said the tough economic times in the country called for harder measures to generate funds, like considering the option of generating wealth from waste.
The governor also disclosed that Ogun State achieved has a 97.8% increase in its internally generated revenue this year.
Fielding questions from journalists at the State House, Abuja after a closed door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, Amosun admitted that the country’s economic is really tough.
“We can use our waste to generate wealth and in doing that we employ our people. Like I said we are the most industrialized state, we want green industrialisation. The area of emmiting dangerous hazardous smoke is over. They are new ways of doing things, new engineering solutions that are in place and that is what we are trying to do. We are even generating electricity with our waste that is what I call using waste to generate power and waste to wealth.
“Yes I know things are tough and I am saying these with all sense of responsibility, all the states in Nigeria are affected. We are part of the larger context called Nigeria and because of that challenge, people must think out of the box .
“I am happy to report that in Nigeria today,maybe not in the quantum of what we generate but we are number one. If you check the indices that have been released, we doubled our revenue with about 97.8%, the next state to us I think was 41% ,we are working hard and we are doing well but they is still lot more to be done” he said.
One of the ways the state government was planning to move the state forward, he noted was the recent investors’ forum which focused on agriculture, environment and transportation, adding that his administration decided to focus on the three areas because of the need to diversify.
“It’s the fourth in our series of investors forum and this year we believe we had to zero in on three key areas that is agriculture, Environment and transportation and the reason is not far fetched. Everybody believes that there is no alternative except for diversification and even before this crisis we realise that,the only we to go is to diversify into agriculture, it will employ our people,it will create wealth for them.
“Those nation’s that have got it right if you see them,you will discover that they have their cottage industries, they are the enablers, that’s why we believe those once we zero in on these three grey areas of course we will get it right.
Continuing, “I am happy that we got several investors, particularly those that are not even from Nigeria and so many people that are in Nigeria, that operate here and that’s why we showcased everybody. I know within the next maybe two years you will see.Ogun state is the industrial hub of Nigeria, they is no state that have the kind of resources we have,in terms of numbers and value.We are not limiting it at that, we want to take it forward.
” Not agriculture alone, we want to take full advantage of the full value chain that agriculture offers and what do I mean by that,that whatever we grow we must process, and whatever we have processed we must package and whatever we package we must market, we must transport it to the final consumer, you know everybody is working that is what we are trying to do.
“In the area of transportation we need to see how many people we can get on the roads, we need to introduce rails, waterways, if you go to these other nations, you will see that all their agriculture produce they are being moved either by the rail or water system and in other areas they use air”.He stated.
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