Enugu 2023: Choosing a Leader in Time of National Security, Economic Crisis
Arinze Darlington Nnamani
In recent times, insecurity has dominated the discourse, as terrorism, banditry, and kidnapping heightened in the North-East, North-West, and North-Central, separatist agitations and abductions for ransome and crude oil theft ravaging the South-East and South-South, while cultism, armed robbery and sundry crimes are competing in the South-West. And the situation has substantially deteriorated since 2017 with the South East, which used to be a peace haven growing more restive and dangerous each passing day.
Unfortunately, despite a whooping N12 trillion spent by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration on defence and security sector in the past seven years, security has only grown worse. Unemployment, absolute poverty, illiteracy, and neglect of the youths continue to create ready pools of manpower for criminal enterprises with vast implications for the country.
According to BusinessDay, the rising inflation in the country amounts to 11% of Nigeria’s GDP, which is about 119 billion. Similarly, projects worth N12 Trillion were abandoned in Nigeria due to insecurity and other challenges according to data from TownTalks. The impact of insecurity is reflected in the performance of macro economic indicators, investment inflow as well as economic performance. In the same vein, the global peace index for 2022 compiled by the Institute For Economy and Peace ranked Nigeria 146th out of 163 countries with a score of 2.712. Insecurity also contributed to Nigeria’s inflation performance, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
It is therefore a huge relief for the people of Enugu State that an accomplished entrepreneur and public administrator, has thrown his hat in the 2023 governorship election in the state. Such leaders as Dr. Peter Ndubuisi Mbah, who is an embodiments of competent and visionary leadership, are made especially for times like this. His personality, character, and values with his evocative and overwhelming vision for Enugu State have continued to shine in his ongoing town hall meetings across the 68 development centres of Enugu. He is fast reviving hopes among the people of Enugu that the state will emerge stronger from the daunting socio-economic challenges in the country today and South East today
Section 14 (2) (b) of the 1999 Constitution is clear that the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary responsibility of any government. In line with this, Mbah has promised to work assiduously to put in place a preventive and deterrent security system over the usual fixation on punishment. This, he said, would require a multi-pronged approach such as a massive deployment of technology, massive job creation, skill acquisition and vocational training, among others.
He is also an advocate of community policing and community participation in the provision of security and maintenance of peace needed for the envisioned rapid growth and development. The aim is to expand collaborations with the security, more robust and actionable intelligence gathering, etc. for a more secure Enugu State.
Mbah’s plans to consolidate on the Security Trust Fund already established by the current administration to ensure improved funding of security in the state. This will ensure that the provision of operational vehicles, communication equipment, as well as the training and retraining of security personnel of both the federal security agencies and the community-based security organs. It will also ensure the roll out of a system actively monitored CCTV cameras across the state, collaboration with relevant authorities to acquire drones for aerial surveillance and the enhancement of the detective ability of the Enugu State police command by investment in modernisation of key facilities like fingerprint analysis systems and databases, forensic laboratories, ballistic laboratories and DNA laboratories.
Meanwhile, it is heart-warming that Dr. Mbah, a highly exposed and well-read captain of industry understands the place of quality and massive infrastructure to the economic transformation of the country in general and Enugu State in particular. This will also in turn boast security. Consequently, he has laid out an ambitious blueprint for this infrastructural transformation, which includes the construction of over 10,000km of roads in Enugu State in eight years if elected.
The naysayers, who think he is promising too much should note of the high stakes in the international politics that Nigeria will have to contend with and manage if she is going to feasibly resolve her infrastructural challenges were made more obvious during the 48th summit of the Group of Seven (G7), which held in Krun, Germany in June 2022. Although the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict and its attendant global economic challenges was top of its agenda, the world leaders also announced a $600 billion partnership for global infrastructure and investment for Middle and low-income countries, as an alternative to the belt and road initiative of the People’s Republic of China.
If the western leaders could unveil a global infrastructure development package in response to China while the main focus is on Russia and its invasion of Ukraine underscores the importance of infrastructure to global politics and economic competitiveness of countries. There is, therefore, a need for Nigeria to review the state of the country’s infrastructure, which stock stands at 35% of GDP and is therefore below the 70% of GDP found in larger economies. This low infrastructural stock makes Nigeria economically uncompetitive.
It should be noted that the private sector played a key role in arguably the most successful multilateral social economic recovery programme. The Brookings Institution, a private think tank, helped in rebuilding Europe after the second World War with the European Recovery Programme of 1948 otherwise known as the Marshall Plan.
So, those who argue that the PDP gubernatorial candidate is making too many unachievable promises to the people of Enugu given the drastic fall in allocations from Abuja do not seem to have taken note of how Mbah’s mind works. A careful look at his well-detailed manifesto, which note only lists his plans, but also how to achieve them, will clearly show that he has downplayed, hardly mentioned, let alone relied on the Federation Account. He is focused on private sector backed transformation. He is focused on migrating Enugu State from a public sector driven economy to a private sector driven economy.
All said, the primary responsibility of leadership is decision making. Leaders are elected to take their people from one level to a higher one. Equally, great leaders surmount daunting challenges to accomplish great tasks. Great leaders are visionaries. They are not just looking at the challenges; they are focused on where they want to take the people to and how they are going to get them there.
What stands Mbah out from the rest of the pretenders and contenders is that we can at least look at his accomplishments in the private sector where he built Pinnacle Oil and Gas Ltd. from a N1 million capital base that commenced active operations in 2008 from a one-room studio apartment in Lagos State to the number company in the Nigerian downstream petroleum industry. That company not only controls 23% of the market today ahead of Conoil, Mobil, and other majors, Pinnacle Oil and Gas’s capital base is in billions of dollars.
That is the power of vision, competence, and right decision making. This is why when Dr. Peter Ndubuisi Mbah says that he will grow the state’s economy exponentially from $4.4billion to $30 billion; when he says that he will build over 10,000km of roads; when he says that he will make Enugu the most secure state in the country; when he says he will eliminate poverty and engender agric and agro-allied revolution, we believe him because he is not only well prepared, but also comes with practical antecedents of doing great things – unlike others that are coming to Enugu people with promissory notes.
Nnamani writes from Enugu.
