Mbah and His Vision for New Enugu

Ahead of the May 29, 2023 takeoff of his administration, Enugu State Governor-elect Dr Peter Mbah, in a chat with newsmen speaks on the campaign strategy that won him the election as well as his plan for a better Enugu.

As May 29 inches closer, Governor-elect of Enugu State, Dr. Peter Mbah, is already gearing up and putting plans in place for his administration’s take off.

Mbah last week inaugurated a 64-man Transition Committee, and charged them to produce an implementable action plan in line with his manifesto for the transformation of the state.

Speaking at the ceremony, held at the Old Government Lodge, Enugu, last Thursday, Mbah said: “The people of Enugu State chose us, believing that we are going to take them through a consequential journey of growth, development, and greatness. We also chose you because we believe that with your expertise, we are able to reduce this journey to an empirical and verifiable roadmap.”

Also in a recent chat with journalists, the Governor-elect chronicled the campaign strategy he deployed which eventually led to his victory at the just concluded polls.

According to him: “We did something that was unique, something that was, frankly but good. Yeah. Because the previous government and in the past it wasn’t always done the way the campaign was done, essentially, it would be for the governorship candidate to have a walk to the various local governments for  campaign rallies.

Well, we took a different view. We felt that we wanted to make it grandeur. We wanted to reach out to the grassroots and beyond reaching out to the grassroots we also wanted to get to understand their pain points. So we went on a talk of the 68 development centers on a town hall meeting, where we engaged with the grassroots and all the relevant community based organizations and  other professional organizations and bodies.

“That afforded us opportunity to sell our message to the people, that message of hope, the message of exponential growth, the message of disrupting the status quo and the sub optimization so we also began to unpack what we mean when we say to them, tomorrow is here. We began to explain to them what that tomorrow holds for them.

“So we engaged them constructively, but beyond just engaging them constructively, it also afforded us the opportunity to listen to them, to hear them, have them talk to us about their pains, about their challenges their difficulties. So it wasn’t a report through a third party. It was me hearing it from them, the people who are actually going through  those pains. And another opportunity it afforded us was that we also documented the various potentials of each local government because as as you already know, from our manifesto, the potentials were quite enormous.

You know, we’re trying to unlock Enugu’s rural economy. We’re trying to make sure that we have an integrated rural development. So it was an opportunity for us to identify the potentials of the various local governments, particularly the development centers. And we took a bold view of what Enugu state can achieve in the next four to eight years, on our watch, on our leadership, and obviously that resonated with people of course, we had some doubters.

We had some naysayers. We also had some critics, which we welcomed, frankly, because we’re basically telling them something that is unprecedented, something that you couldn’t look at the past and see how it connects to what we’re saying.

Speaking on what his administration will do to propel growth in the Coal City state, Mbah said, “If you look at the growth pattern, in the last 24 years, that growth has largely been incremental, it’s largely been marginal.

So here we are saying that we’re going to grow the economy from the $4.4 billion level to $30 billion. I mean, within the next eight years, we also said to begin with we are going to achieve a 0% rate in our poverty headcount index. Okay. That’s also unprecedented. You’re saying that by 2031, there’ll be zero poverty and there will be an eradication, not reduction, but eradication of poverty, meaning that you’re no longer going to have people living on that extreme poverty or abject poverty or living below the poverty line. And we were also unique in our strategic objectives, because it was just one thing having this laudable vision, this massive vision of growing the economy, lifting people out of poverty, but another thing is to craft a strategy to be able to explain to them how you intend to do that if it’s going to be unprecedented.

“So that means you have to explain to them how you intend to do that. And that was where we started talking about disrupting the current revenue model, which obviously focuses on receipt of revenue from Abuja, going to Abuja at the end of each month to collect money from the Federation Account, coming back to Enugu to spend it and that money, not being able to optimally intervene across the critical sectors.

So we’ll have to explain to them how we intend to disrupt that status quo, how we intend to deploy a disruptive innovation, how we intend to deploy critical alternative financing so that we can begin to generate funds from different sources.

“And again, it’s across so we we also know that if we’re going to grow at the levels, we’ve proposed that the growth will not just come from the public sector that it has to also come from constructive investment from the private sector. So the private sector is going to play a critical role and that’s business, as I’ve always said to people on my team. Businesses are not Father Christmas, they want returns on their investment.

So you’re going to have to engage with them. You’re going to have to explain to them how you intend to derisk their investment, how you intend to provide the key enablers.

The key indicators for, you know, the ease of doing business I mean, your infrastructure, your security, you know, and also your policies on taxation, your fiscal environment, even the ease of obtaining construction permits, the ease of obtaining your title documents and enforcing contracts.

There are a lot of core indicators under the ease of doing business that you must necessarily address, okay? Even the ease of setting of business and all that.

So we’re clear about the different approaches we’re going to deploy to achieve all that.

Based on what we have proposed, we’re able to then go granular because the key productive sectors are the social services sectors.

“Our mission is to make Enugu the most attractive state for investment and that means a whole lot. It is not just saying it, it is also going out there to seek out investors, good therefore, to invite them for investment, for marketing, but you have to have selling points when  you need to be able to say you’ve provided this, you’ve provided that and you can now come and see that yes, it is indeed that preferred location, that preferred destination for investment.

“And, you know, what the tomorrow we talk about being here looks like is basically telling our young people how we tend to get them to enhance their skills and get them to compete with their peers across the globe.

So our interest in ICT infrastructure is going to really address that, we hope to be able to put in the pipeline, a minimum of 40,000 young people every year, that we’re going to get productively and skillfully equipped with ICT skills. Okay, that means we’re going to have a number of innovation incubation centers, we’re going to have it as a cluster across the different senatorial zones.

We’re going to also work with the outsourcing agents across the world to be able to matchmake this young people so immediately they are done with their skill enhancement programs.

We’re also providing them a job that they can sit in Enugu and provide those services.

And that’s the good thing about digital economy that you don’t have to migrate to the US or be in Europe in order for you to earn foreign exchange.

Working with the relevant outsourcing agents once they have the right skills. We’re able to match them with these prospective employers where they can provide services and they are paid while sitting in a room and we’re looking at critical mass you’re talking about 40,000 people is no tea party.

You need to have robust infrastructure to be able to churn out that number of young, skillful young people every year in the area of practical skills. Our vision also is to churn out 10,000 young people in vocational and technical skills.

“Nowadays, young people our hope in that interval will become a net exporter of practical skills. So you’re looking for your diploma, you’re looking for an electrician, you no longer have to go to Benin Republic, or go to Cotonou or Ghana, you start looking towards integration because we’ve built a critical mass of young people with those practical skills. And that’s what that tomorrow we’ve helped them to unpack it.

So when we say tomorrow is here, it means being able to get them skillfully equipped with all the digital skills and the practical skills. We’re not leaving behind that.

So we’re talking about artificial intelligence, robotics, augmented reality. Virtual reality, all those skills you need to play in the digital space. And we also believe as a state, we’re going to be a net beneficiary of that, because what that means is that there’ll be huge economic activity just imagine 40,000 young people if all they earn $2,000 per month, you’re talking about a revenue of close to a billion dollars coming to people sitting in a room. And then what you have then you have robust market, you have young people with strong purchasing power. What that by implication means is you can attract industries, you can attract manufacturing companies that can come and manufacture in initial knowledge that they have their primary markets in any way because they have people with the purchasing power to patronize them.

“So this whole thing is going to be a systemic thing. They are going to all connect, but you have to be there in the forefront as government to provide those enablers.

And that’s where we are, we believe that these messages resonated, quite frankly with the people of Enugu state.

We had no doubts that we were of course their preferred choice, as the governor of Enugu state. Of course, we’re not unmindful of people that we defeated even at the primaries, who are today still contending that they, you know, could have been the winners of the election.

“Or could you possibly win an election when you could not even win the primaries when we all contested? Where you had also gone out to say to the world that you’re supporting this candidate because you believe he is the best and you have also written to that effect or told your supporters to queue behind this guy because he’s indeed the best.

You also have gone where we were invited by our elders, and sign the document where you vow to concede if indeed this guy emerged as the winner. So I mean, of course, it is what it is. We know what election means in this country and different ways people manage defeat. Okay, we’re not known, quite frankly, as people who handle defeat, you know, well, so but that’s what it is.