My Pathway to a New Enugu State

GUEST COLUMINST BY IKE EKWEREMADU

Enugu State gave me huge opportunities to serve as pioneer Council Chairman of Aninri Local Government Area, Chief of Staff to the Governor, Secretary to the State Government, five-term Senator, three-term Deputy President of the Senate, Deputy Speaker and Speaker of ECOWAS Parliament. I have served on a number of important committees and in several global positions.

In the course of this journey, I have met world leaders, business leaders, and made friends in both the private and public sectors of the national and global economies. I have had the opportunity to understand how states and nations are transformed. A good example is a city like Dubai, the UAE, which was a desert, but has now become the world most digitalised city and a global investment hub. I have an insight into the economic transformation taking place in Rwanda and Ghana.

As a Senator, I worked hard to put forward necessary bills and motions on constitutional amendments, security, education, economy, health and electoral reform, that have impacted and are still impacting positively on the well-being of our people. I have initiated and completed many life-changing projects in our communities, beyond my constituency, in the very important areas of water, road, educational infrastructure, health, power, and many more.
I always wish I could do more. I have the will, but the means are limited. I am limited to what I could mobilise as a legislator in developmental projects and programmes. At this point, therefore, I believe it is time to focus on Enugu State and Enugu people without whom I would not be who and what I am today. The governorship of Enugu State will offer me a good platform to serve our dear state more and better.

If elected Governor, I will utilise all the experience, friendship, partnership, and global contact acquired over the years to transform Enugu State to a model state. I will implement this vision through these agenda.
First on our agenda is good governance. We will restore our people’s faith in the government through open door government, delivering on our manifesto and promises to the people. We will transform our civil service, judiciary, and parliament, making them technology-driven. We will improve the welfare, efficiency, and respectability of our public service; fight corruption in a creative and effective manner; enthrone justice, equity and liberty to all citizens and residents of Enugu State; ensure that government services will be available 24/7 through a well-designed e-government; and ensure that our revenue collection is fair, reliable and devoid of leaks and waste. Our revenues will be spent in the best interest of the people. We will consult periodically with our stakeholders – religious leaders, political leaders, and the business community, etc. We will end practices that require citizens to induce anyone before receiving government services, employment, benefits or opportunities. We pledge not to interfere with local government funds.

We look forward to running a government that sees all citizens as equals before the Law. We will restore the hope of the people in the judiciary as the last hope of the common man and create an atmosphere of respectability for judicial officers. Furthermore, we will reposition the Enugu State Judiciary in terms of human capital, infrastructure, and welfare. Pensions and other benefits of judicial officers in Enugu State will be prioritised. We will initiate post-service housing for not only Enugu State judicial officers, but also federal judicial officers of Enugu State origin. We will provide an estate specifically for them; and this will essentially keep them away from political influence and encourage networking among their colleagues. We will emphasise training and retraining to sustain quality performance.

We appreciate the hardship that our people have had to live with over the years due to perennial problem of water scarcity in Enugu. But we are poised to restore pipe borne water to ensure that this becomes a thing of the past. We will build dams and rehabilitate existing water sources, pipelines.

We consider every good road as an economic corridor and a pathway to new opportunities. Consequently, I devoted ample part of my years in the Senate to attracting new roads and rehabilitating existing ones across the three senatorial zones of the Enugu State and beyond. We will transform every road leading in and out of Enugu State into a well-lit super highways and build a ringroad that will connect all the 17 LGAs. We will embark on massive construction of rural roads and reconstruction of urban roads. The Enugu State Ministry of Works and its Departments and Agencies will be repositioned and empowered with the resources to ensure their effectiveness. We understand the challenge posed by resource scarcity, but we have the social capital to attract local and foreign funding as well as the integrity to keep our words.

There are already many educational institutions in Enugu State. Our focus will be on improving the quality of infrastructure and human capital to deliver on a modern education. Our target at the primary and secondary school levels will be to merge schools and make them more sustainable, retrain teachers and rebuild schools to standards that we can be proud of. We will train and retrain our teachers and improve their welfare to attract the best brains to the Enugu State educational system.

Our Higher institutions will be repositioned to produce better and more employable graduates that meet the 21st Century needs of our society. We will welcome private sector investment in our higher institutions to improve and maintain satisfactory standard, produce quality graduates, and maintain a well-trained and well-paid lecturers. The Institute of Management and Technology (IMT), Enugu will be upgraded to a degree-awarding institution that will deliver an Ivy League university education.
Our scholarship system will be reformed to become a merit-based scholarship system, ensuring that no child is denied access to quality education on financial grounds.

We are also aware that public and private sectors of today require relevant ICT and digital technology knowledge for efficiency. We will create a well-resourced Knowledge City where we will prepare our future leaders, train and retrain civil servants and policymakers. Our Knowledge City will also double as research ground for administrative, management, economic and scientific policies and programmes.
We will run an inclusive youth and gender-friendly government that will mainstream and empower our young men and women economically and politically.
We believe that we need to encourage the youth and women in governance. Our Executive, Legislative, and Judicial arms of government will, as a matter of deliberate policy, be sufficiently populated with young men and women with knowledge and focus. Their future is now.

Security and public safety will be a top priority of our government. We shall create a state-funded and controlled security system that will compliment the federal security agencies. Security and Public Safety coordination Centre will be created to manage all issues of security and public safety in Enugu State. They will also serve as interface with the Federal security agencies. Our community security outfits will be strengthened, retrained and refocused to address emerging challenges. As the gateway state between the South East and the Northern Nigeria, we will implement an innovative boarder security plan. Every individual and businesses in Enugu State will be properly documented in Enugu State Identification Database, ESID, to enable us to fight crime, and protect lives and properties with technology. Our plan is to make Enugu the safest state in Nigeria, one that will be attractive to investors and visitors.

Our dream healthcare system is a holistic, interconnected, world-class system. The Primary, Secondary and Tertiary health system will be seamlessly connected and equipped for optimum delivery of quality and affordable healthcare services. Every local government and every community will have an efficient healthcare facility. We will partner with the private sector to create world-class, yet affordable, medical and diagnostic centres. Our Healthcare City will attract the best and top-line medical experts from around the world. The government and her partners will invest in the healthcare infrastructure such as buildings, equipment, roads, water, ICT infrastructure, ambulances and basic management staff and invite the private sector healthcare professionals to lease spaces and run their practices in line with approved guidelines. We hope to see medical tourism inflow into Enugu State.

We will have a deliberate policy to constructively engage the Federal Government and its agencies for opportunities for our people. We will create a Unit in the Governor’s Office for this purpose. We will seek out opportunities within and outside Nigeria and push our people into them as our ambassadors. We will engage other state governments in the country to accommodate Enugu State indigenes in their various states in their government and in the economy of their respective states. We will, through this policy, increase the number of Enugu State people as Chief Executive Officers of Federal Government parastatals and enthrone more of our people in the headship of various security agencies, etc.

The unemployment rate in Nigeria is most depressing and is largely accountable for the insecurity and restiveness in the region. Therefore, if elected, job creation will be at the heart of our government ensure that we reduce unemployment by 70 per cent in four years. We shall achieve this through Tourism, Sports, Agricultural revolution, ICT, and Industrialisation.

We shall harness and expand the tourism potentials of Enugu State. The hospitality industry will be enhanced to cater to the expected influx of tourists. We will set up a Film City to harness the potentials of our people in the film, music, and related talents enterprises. We will institute festivals and trade fairs that will bring the world to Enugu as well as construct state-of-the-art convention centres and sports stadia in different parts of the state that will make Enugu a preferred destination for group and international events. We will invest in sports and sports development to enhance sports careers of our people.

We will reform the entire agricultural sector in line with global best practices. Areas of our comparative advantage in agriculture will receive the attention, incentives, and investment they deserve. We shall create Agric-Cities dedicated to modern, integrated agricultural practices, side-by-side with value chains, industrial cities and hubs that will utilise the produce from the Agric-Cities.

The government strategy will be to create an enabling environment and pursue policies that will attract both local and foreign investors to establish manufacturing plants in Enugu State. We will seek beneficial public private partnerships in areas that will result in significant job creation and ripple positive economic effects in the interest of our people.

We will embark on massive industrialisation, setting up at least two industries per LGA within four years of our administration. At least two industries in each of the 17 local government in four years. We will activate a policy of One Local government One Product according to comparative advantages. We will create economic hubs such as ICT City, Film/Media City, Auto City, Knowledge City, and Health City, Sports City, and Agricultural Cities. Our ICT hub will run modern Call Centres, develop various applications, and generally incubate our state as a centre of excellence in science and technology.

Our Film/Media City will be a centre of film and music production. Our Knowledge City will be a training and research centre for contemporary governance.Our Auto City will produce quality vehicles. Our people will be encouraged to use such vehicles as private, commercial, and official vehicles. Our Health City will be a one-stop shop for a comprehensive healthcare. Our Sports City will cater for sports activities and enhance the growth of sports as a career in our state. Our Agric Cities will be dedicated to modern and integrated agricultural practices with recreational and health facilities to make them attractive to our farmers, especially the young ones.

We understand the place of power in the socio-economic transformation of Enugu State. Therefore, we will work to ensure statewide electricity coverage. We will extend electricity supply to every possible home and restore vandalised lines. We will embark on large-scale renewable energy and provide mini grids for our remote communities and secure our electricity lines and infrastructure going forward
We will embark on urban renewal and affordable housing for all. We will upgrade our rural communities to reverse the rural–urban migration that congest the cities.

•Ekweremadu is a former Deputy President of the Senate