Governor Alex Otti of Abia State has said that his administration is working hard to create a model society that runs on the enterprise, energy and resilience of the people.
He said that his Government had in the last 15 months, made unprecedented investments in critical infrastructure to improve the business environment and attract fresh investments into the State.
Governor Otti, in a keynote speech delivered at the 2024 Innovate Africa Conference held last Friday at George Washington University, DC, United States of America, which was obtained by BusinessDay, restated his administration’s determination to make Abia an investment destination in the region that would create new opportunity zones for dreamers across the continent.
Speaking on the theme, “Tapping into the next frontier: Leadership and the imperatives of new development paradigm for Africa”, Governor Otti said that his administration is open to doing business with the African diaspora community, as they share the same passion for seeing Africa work.
He stated that Abia and its major city, Aba, mirror much of Africa, and whatever happens in the State is bound to reverberate across the continent”.
Governor Otti, said that Africa offers two strategic prospects for the future of her civilisation, firstly, the vast deposits of highly-priced mineral resources, buried in its soil, which is becoming increasingly critical in the continuing push to build a more sustainable future for the human race and more importantly, her expanding youth population, which offers an assurance of a steady market and labour supply to keep the wheels of global economic machinery in continuous motion.
Despite being a land of endless opportunities, Governor Otti regretted that Africa is also a deeply troubled place with age-old political, economic, and cultural setbacks, which impedes its developmental aspirations.
“Our challenges cannot be divorced from a combination of internal and external factors. Intractable problem of corruption, abuse of public trust, and administrative incompetence have contributed extensively to keeping Africa unproductive and poor.
“One can also add that the dynamics of modern geopolitics expressed, through the ravenous appetite for influence, resources, and ultimate control, by the big global players have made Africa’s problems more complex in the modern era.
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He continued, “Multiple internal and external actors with genuine interest in the continent’s development have made several attempts to fix Africa. Still, it would be difficult to argue that such initiatives have yielded significantly tangible outcomes.
“From west to central Africa to the east and southern parts of the continent, not much has changed in the last six decades, as we continue to witness crisis of poverty and unemployment, currency devaluation and inflationary pressures, insecurity and failure of critical institutions, to serve the genuine needs of the people effectively”.
He affirmed that the chain of failures had forced some of Africa’s best and brightest minds to, sometimes at great personal risks, take their destiny in their own hands, by just opting to go elsewhere.
“It is a shame to see thousands of Africans trekking what can literally be described, as the path of death to escape the harsh reality of our motherland. The sense of failure becomes more heart-wrenching when we think about the sacrifices many young people have to make before taking to the sands of the Sahara Desert or any of the other risk-laden channels to cross to other continents in pursuit of a better life”, he completed.
