Charles Udo, commissioner for information and strategy, Akwa Ibom State, in this exclusive interview with INIOBONG IWOK, who was in Uyo, said the Udom Emmanuel administration was poised to delivering dividends of democracy to the people. He also spoke on a wide range of issues affecting governance in the state. Excerpts:
Governor Udom has just resumed 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 was 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.
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 been 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 flower 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 community would either go to farm or petty trading, but now the opportunity for petty trading have 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.
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 been 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.
What efforts is the administration making to ensure even location of projects across the state?
What do you mean by location of projects? If you talk about industry, industries are investor-driven, they choose where they want to site their industry, where they want to go, and there are factors that determine it. We would not compel investors to go to where they do not want to go; after all, anywhere you go you would still employ indigenes of the state.
Government can spread the location of schools, healthcare institutions, roads, among others, but when it comes to location of industries there is nothing we can do; because if you build an industry with government funds it will die a natural death. There was Ibom Metal Company before, but it is no more, because they were tied to government.
If you look at a state like Ogun, there was a time the state was synonymous with tourist and owning hotels, but today the hotels are dead, because they were run by the state government.
What we are saying is that we are business people and are here to run the economy of the state for overall benefit.
If you look at the completion agenda, we have plans for rural and riverine areas development. Take the coastal areas like Eastern-Obolo and the rest for example, our fishermen in Ini were being exploited, they spend most of their days in the water fishing and the middle men would wait for them in their air-conditioned car till they get desperate and sell at giveaway prices.
This is because he knows you do not want to risk the fishes spoiling because it could be the fishermen’s meal ticket for the day. What the government’s focus in the next four years will be is to provide fish processing plants with cold rooms and oven.
What informed the decision to build the international worship centre?
Every state has a phase. Akwa Ibom is the only state in the world named after God and the government decided to build this. Nigeria as a country has a worship centre; every government has a priority; if we are 99 percent a Christian state, I do not see anything wrong in the state having a worship centre.
But unlike the previous administration, it seems this administration does not enjoy good publicity?
You do not sell Fanta and beer with the same method. Every government has a strategy. If we do not enjoy good publicity, how come this government won a second term in office despite all the federal might? How come the people stood by the government? That is an indication that despite all the publicity and communication we have grown consciously in the mind of the people. We have built that consciously over time and you do not do that overnight. You do not do that by being docile; you do that by being strategic. The previous government strategy was making noise; we have a different way of doing things. This government is not a government of applause; it is about giving dividend of democracy. No government in Nigeria in first term is able to achieve what we did in four years, which is why you could see Akwa Ibom people rise up and support this government.
How do you react to report of secret recruitment by the state government?
It is not true. This government publishes annual state of account; I am not sure any state government in the country does that. If you want to talk you should look at the antecedent of this government, we are highly professional in what we do. So, this government does not engage in this practice, that is why we have 16 industries, foreign investors coming in to set up industries and live with our people. We are here diversifying the economy. What is the benefit of secret recruitment?
The level of insecurity is escalating across the country; what measures is the state government taking to beef up security across the state?
I have been talking about the completion agenda and one of the agenda is security; we are not talking about herdsmen because they are not our problem, rather we are talking about protecting Africa’s largest Syringe company which is a Turkey citizens’ own company; they brought their people to invest here. We are talking about security for the fertilizer milling company investors which is the largest flour mill in Europe. We are not bothered about herdsmen, they are not coming here. We are putting structures for the future generation in the state.
Is Ibom Air owned and operated by the state government only, or is the private sector involved?
Ibom Air is run by the state government; Ethiopia Airline is run by the government. Firstly, we have redefined the landscape; the youngest airline flying in Nigeria before Ibom Airline was 21 years old, but all Ibom aircraft are six years old. Look at Ethiopia Airline, even Rwanda that just came out of genocide has a thriving airline, then Ibom Air would survive through the years.
The fact that Kenya and even Uganda have thriving airlines, this would survive. The governor was a banker; I was a banker, so, I understand business. We know that this business is viable, if you look at every major airline in the world today, it has some level of government involvement, it means that this business is profitable if done right. What we have done is to set up Ibom Air and give it to consultants to manage it and there are key performance indicators and we know that this is how it is going to be run.
