In a bid to address infrastructure deficit and some challenges negatively affecting Nigeria’s development, the Special Intervention Office of Nigeria (SION) has set its sights at raising $1 billion as its contribution towards ensuring that the country’s tailbacks are mitigated. The fund is expected to be raised through public-private partnership (PPP), BusinessDay has learnt.
SION is an institution comprising professionals from different walks of life, who hope to use special policy interventions for coherent macroeconomic development in employment, trade, industrial, environmental, infrastructural governance, partnerships and social policies in order to bring about or generate inclusive growth.
The project pillars of the intervention institution include a three pronged strategy of economic policy creation and innovation; sensitisation and capacity building; and special projects management and operations.
Derek Omoleh, director-general, SION, said the intervention office intended to embark on this noble project because it believe there was something missing in the country’s development process.
According to Omoleh, the basic goals of SION include combating the challenge of dearth of values-based leadership in Nigeria, identifying the potential of each sector and unlocking it and accommodating the various interest of all stakeholders “rich and poor” in the development process. He said SION also has as its plan to inculcate the leadership example of doing the right thing for the right reasons, engender exemplary leadership, support the dynamic process of efficient management of national resources andimplementing strategies to convert rural areas to urban cities.
He said SION has EIT Transformation Model, which supports economic plans such as Nigeria Industrial Revolution Plan (NIRP), National Enterprise Development Programme (NEDEP), Central Bank of Nigeria, Macro Economic Agenda and Subsidy Re-investment & Empowerment Program (SURE – P), among others.
Earlier in his address, Jerry Gana, chairman, SION, said one solution the intervention office has designed to address the twin problem of endemic corruption and dearth of value-based leadership is to identify the gaps one by one, expose them and provide strategic models and modular intervention schemes to solve the problems.
According to Gana, the holistic model integrates, recognises and celebrates a culture of value-based leadership in institutions, leaders, systems and institutions, adding that Nigerians want to see progress and development by bring up men and women who have the leadership capacity that will provide a sense of direction towards achieving national goals.
“Nigerians want to see a stop of the preponderance of rent-seeking traders, looters and impostors who populate the recesses of power at all levels of our polity, who parade themselves as leaders of a free nation,” Gana said, in a presentation read by Tee Mac Iseli, director at SION.
He stressed that SION is set to review a long list of drawbacks and focus on implementation or value recovery systems, adding that with the full implementation of the value system Nigerians will have greater enthusiasm and patriotism in the task of nation-building.
ODINAKA ANUDU
