Nigeria is building AI infrastructure; it may never own

January 8, 2026

Enugu wins Infrastructure, IGR Awards at BusinessDay States Competitiveness Awards 2025 …Mbah says ‘Enugu has a lot of success stories to tell in 3 years’ Regis Anukwuoji Enugu State has shone brilliantly at the BusinessDay States Competitiveness and Investment Readiness Awards (SCIRA) 2025, carting home the Infrastructure Development Competitiveness Award and Outstanding Performance in Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) Award. Governor Peter Mbah, represented by the Commissioner for Works and Infrastructure, Benjamin Osita Okoh, and the Executive Chairman, Enugu State Internal Revenue Service (ESIRS), Emmanuel Nnamani, received the awards on behalf of the state government in Abuja, Thursday night. Presenting the awards, Frank Aigbogun, publisher/CEO of BusinessDay Media Limited, said Governor Mbah had impacted public infrastructure in a way that goes beyond just playing politics. “In the last six months, I have had the opportunity of travelling to Enugu three times. The first time I visited in January, my taxi driver was eager to take me around. That caught my imagination. I began to ask questions and I began to look around. “One thing I found especially quite interesting was that Governor Mbah did not set aside everything that he met, which could have been a waste of public resources. He looked at what is good and he rebuilt them; the ones that were not completed, he completed them. “Two things that struck me because I had to ask a question, where does he get the money? I saw good roads, and I don’t mean good roads in the major highways, I mean good roads even in the communities that are far away from the prime areas of the state capital, Enugu. “I thought that that is a very good example of a private sector person, who knows what to do with resources, because if you use resources well, you get more from little and that is what the governor has done. And for that, Governor Mbah is receiving this award. He has impacted public infrastructure in a way that goes beyond just playing politics,” he stated. Speaking, Okoh thanked BusinessDay for recognising the Mbah Administration’s efforts at rewriting the narrative of the state, stressing that Enugu had a lot of success stories to tell in just three years. He, however, described the awards as a motivation to do more, noting, “as the governor always says, you ain’t seen nothing yet.” Okoh went on to reel out some of the achievements of the administration, saying that “Enugu State has witnessed an unprecedented infrastructural revolution, the type we have never seen since the advent of this present democracy in 1999.” “Projects that were inherited even from governments that left office in 2007- for instance, the International Conference Centre, Mbah has completed it. Hotel Presidential, the flagship hotel of the old Eastern Region, and the Nigergas Company, which has remained moribund for over 30 years, have been revived. “Being the commissioner for Works and Infrastructure in the state, I can stand here confidently to say that no government since 1999 achieved what Governor Mbah has achieved in three years. “I can say that in terms of road construction, in just three years, we have done far more than double what any other government did in eight years. No government in Enugu since 1999 did up to 600Km of roads in eight years. “Under Governor Mbah, we have 267 smart schools across the state and 260 Primary Healthcare Centres to our credit. “We are developing the New Enugu City, a world-class smart city. The present Enugu City is about 14,000 hectares, while the New City is approximately 10,000 hectares. To put this in perspective, the New Enugu City is almost the same size as Paris, Milan or Barcelona, making it one of the largest planned urban developments in Africa. “The New Enugu City is also larger than Manchester or the entire Phase One of the Federal Capital City, Abuja, which comprises the districts of Asokoro, Maitama, Maitama Extension, Wuse I (Zone 1 – 7), Wuse II, Garki I (Area 1 – 11), Garki II, the Central Business District, Three Arms Zone, Guzape I, and Guzape II. “This is the first time a state in Nigeria would be undertaking an integrated infrastructure development, which is what we have in the FCT where all the facilities in the modern city are underground, and telecommunications lines- the fibre optics, the electrical cables, water pipes, everything is underground. It is not just a vision; the projects are already ongoing.” According to the commissioner, “There is no particular sector that Governor Peter Ndubuisi Mbah has not touched, be it tourism, security, agriculture, education or even transport sector where the administration floated Enugu Air, built five ultramodern transport terminals and launched over 150 CNG buses.” It is also recalled that the Mbah Administration has disrupted the state’s IGR space, where he used reforms and technology to grow the state’s IGR exponentially from N26.8bn in 2022 to N37.4bn in 2023, N180.5bn in 2024, and N406.7bn in 2025, with tax revenue accounting for just N51.5bn or 12.6 percent of the 2025 IGR proceeds. Meanwhile, BusinessDay is Nigeria’s leading business newspaper and the SCIA recognises and celebrates states that have demonstrated exceptional performance in governance, economic development, infrastructure delivery, investment promotion, and the creation of an enabling environment for businesses and citizens to thrive. …………………………………………. Caption: L-R: Frank Aigbogun, publisher/CEO, BusinessDay Media Limited; Benjamin Osita Okoh, commissioner for Works and Infrastructure, and Emmanuel Ekene Nnamani, executive chairman, Enugu State Internal Revenue Service (ESIRS), at the event.

Nigeria's data centre capacity is set to surge from roughly 70 MW today to over 400 MW by 2030. Global players are piling in. The 2Africa subsea cable now forms a 45,000 km ring around Africa with a design capacity of up to 180 terabits per second. Google's Equiano delivers another 144 Tbps through Lagos. We have world-class pipes. We are building world-class data halls. We are powering them with diesel. And that single fact will determine whether Nigeria becomes an AI economy or merely an AI tenant. Here is what nobody is discussing: eve

Nigeria is building AI infrastructure; it may never own

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