Interview: If We don’t Get Security Right, it’s Impossible to Attract Investment to South-east, says Peter Mbah

Peter Mbah, governor of Enugu, recently had an interactive session with members of the presidential media team touring the federal government’s projects in the south-east region. He highlighted how the Enugu government under his watch is prioritising human and capital projects with the support of President Bola Tinubu. TheCable’s YEKEEN AKINWALE was there.

What are the visions guiding your administration?

Mbah: When we were campaigning for office, we set out a blueprint for what Enugu could become under our watch. That blueprint was predicated on three factors. One was to grow the economy exponentially, growing it from $4.4 billion to $30 billion in eight years.

The second was to eradicate poverty. We inherited a poverty headcount of 58 percent and we had committed to bringing that number to zero in eight years. The third was to make Enugu state the number one destination for tourism, living, business and investment.

So, if you take the first item there, exponential growth, I mean, growing the economy from $4.4 billion to $30 billion, if you did the calculus, that’s about a 27 percent compound annual growth rate. If you look at the pattern of growth over the years, it doesn’t quite reflect what we are projecting. So, you could see why we had some sceptics; we had some naysayers.

If you looked at the history, you wouldn’t be able to make sense of what we were talking about. But we realised that we needed to do things differently. We pointed out that this is going to be an era of quantum leaps and disruptive innovations. It means we are going to disrupt the status quo. Then the important thing is that growth isn’t just going to be government-enabled but private-sector-driven.

What that means is that we needed to put the fundamentals in place for this private capital to flow in this direction.

The fundamentals, and I’m coming back to your question, but these are not isolated projects. They are all connecting these dots and mutually reinforcing. So, what we did was to look at what those key drivers are and what those things are that would attract the private sector here. First, we identified the biggest elephant in the room as the security challenges.

When we came in, we had the sit-at-home thing. People were told the days of the week they have to sit at home and the days of the week they have to go to work.

That wasn’t acceptable to us. So, we had to put in place security measures, working with the security agencies, investing hugely in technology, bringing that so-called sit-at-home thing to an end, and making sure that we provide a safe environment for this private capital to flow.

The other things are services, things like healthcare; if you’re bringing in an investor here, he would be worried. Two things, basically: one is security, and the next thing is, if I’m sick, where do I go? If you look at our manifesto, our objective has been to capture some of the markets of medical tourism; we’re talking about the market size of about $2 billion annually.

Our plan was okay; if you can do something very attractive and you’re able to capture just 10 percent of that market, so we’re talking about $200 million, that’s huge.

So, we said, “You know what? Let’s build a world-class hospital, bring in top-notch professionals and ensure that the place is run very well.

That’s essentially what we have done. So, what you see in international hospitals here is that you can carry out your STET and PET scans. There are a few locations where you can do that; that’s like an advanced oncology centre where you can do all your diagnostics and therapeutics, and you can do treatment as well. So, yes, this is just talking about the medical sector.

Enugu state now has an airline and is also involved in the concessioning of the Akanu Ibiam International Airport. To what extent is your state involved, because we know Akanu Ibiam International is a federal airport?

Mbah: Thank you again; it’s part of connecting dots and growing the economy exponentially. Our target is to bring in three million visitors to Enugu. Three million visitors mean you have to operate at least 100 aircraft landing at Enugu Airport every day to get close to that number.

We’re talking about an airport that took, at the time we came in, maybe four or five aircraft landing here. So, it was just not possible, and we just didn’t have the facility to take more. So, we felt that we needed to have our skin in the game.

We want to first create the pool factors. We’re doing four immersive tourism sites. We’re doing the longest zipline in Africa; it’s a 300-metre zipline. It takes you from the pine forest all the way to the cave, and it brings you back. We’re also doing a cable car of 5.6 kilometres. It takes you from the highest point in the state, 580 metres above sea level; it’s a massive cross of hope. It takes you from there to a monastery. For those who are interested in religious tourism, it takes you to the highest point of the cross, another 70 metres, where you have a chapel, and you can commune there.

So, these things have been carefully curated to act as pull factors to bring people there. If you have to do that, you also have to start thinking about assets. How will people be able to access the state? Again, we felt we should get into the game.

We had to set up our own airline; we now operate regular flights, so you have close to 20 flights coming to you on a daily basis, but that’s really not our target.

Our target is to move that number to 100, but you also have to pull the passengers. Then we’re also looking at bringing in the diaspora and attracting those foreign partners and even the investors; they also want to be able to have direct flights to their state or location of investment.

So, we got involved with an interested investor, because, as you know, the federal government wants a concession from the state; that’s the rule. So, we worked with an investor to ensure a successful concession of the Akanu Ibiam Airport and to also make sure that it becomes operational.

We always, any time we have the opportunity, give credit to Mr. President because it took his standing behind this deal for this success to be recorded.

This is the first airport in history that has been successfully concessioned, and very soon it will be operationalised. Thank you, Mr. President, for the support, and I think the entire south-east, I must say, is grateful that this has happened, because very soon, we’re going to have a functional international airport in the south-east.

The people of the south-east can travel from here, and our target is December this year to be able to get a direct flight from Enugu to the US and from Enugu to the UK and China.

That’s the objective, just making sure we achieve our target of bringing three million people to Enugu.

Security is a core ingredient of development. Without security, development won’t happen. How do you intend to sustain the investment in security in Enugu, given what is on the ground at the moment?

Mbah: We believe that if we don’t get this security right, it will almost be impossible to attract the level of investment we expect to happen here. What we have essentially done is to invest hugely in technology to at least have a clear line of sight of what is happening in the state and to also monitor the gateways.

So, we were able to identify the former gateways; we have about nine gateways, and we were able to have a clear line of sight of those coming to the state and those leaving the state.

Then, our objective again is to nip crime in the bud because this sector is one area in a spectrum of 10; if you have done nine well, if there is an error in one, that one gets magnified and diminished even if it’s done within the nine, so you always have to be extremely vigilant.

So, you want to invest in those digital equipment tools that can help you to be vigilant so as to nip crime in the bud. But also, when there’s a breach, then you also have the capability to act swiftly, which is why we have gone to set up the distress response squad (DRS) with AI-enabled cameras.

We have both the static and the mobile cameras. If you look at our DRS vehicles, they all have AI-embedded cameras; that means, as the policemen are driving or they are static, they know what is happening within a two-to-three-metre radius.

They have monitors in the vehicle. Our DRS men have bodycams, so from the command-and-control centre, we’re also viewing what they are doing. We’re able to monitor their performance.

Those who are on the night shifts also wear helmets that have cameras, so we’re able to monitor them remotely. Then of course, we’re also working very closely. I must commend the security agencies in Enugu state: the army, the police, the DSS and the civil defence. We have a very collaborative relationship, because you may have all these fantastic tools, but if you don’t have the personnel, if you don’t have the motivated workforce to use them, you’re also running into problems.

We visited the smart schools; we saw real work being done. I would like to find out how you are bridging the teacher literacy gap. Secondly, how do you intend to sustain these investments if internal revenue slows down or federal allocation fluctuates?

Mbah: Starting from the sustainability bit, I think what we’ve done in the last three budget cycles is we’ve dedicated 33 percent of our total budget to education.

That’s not sustainable, because that means we’re carrying the heavy loads and the carpets, and we’re not going to continue going into the future. We imagine that the recurrent or the operating costs won’t be high, because in the last two and a half years, we’ve been able to do more than 7,000 classrooms; we’ve built, as of today, 267 smart green schools. We have that standing, equipping them with all the features of a typical smart school.

It means you need to have a robotics centre, an AI or ICT hub, and a 3D printer, but most importantly, you also touch on something that, for us, is the number one risk factor.

So, how do we ensure that we get the right teachers? That has always been identified as the major risk factor.

What we did was build what we referred to as a centre for experiential learning and innovations. What we’ve done is to also interrogate the current pedagogy, so we’ve also modified that. We’ve moved away from the rote system of learning to an experiential learning system.

That is, teaching by practice, so we get the kids to constitute themselves as a team, and we begin to get them to get involved in what they are learning. So, beyond teaching them on an e-learning platform, we also do practical stuff.

We have locations, for example, where the kids have to create a filtration system that enables them to clean the water they produce. We try to get the kids to learn by practising so they see themselves as problem solvers rather than just coming to memorise and repeat what the teacher has said.

So, we’re now taking the teachers through that pipeline, where the teachers are all taught.

For you to be able to teach at a smart school, first of all, we conducted a CBT exercise. Through that CBT exercise, we were able to pick teachers that would be trainable, those that we could train and then get them to teach.

That’s not something you relax on; it’s a continuous thing. So, we’re going to continue to train them to also increase the number of teachers with skills to teach AI, skills to teach robotics, mechatronics and all the evolving 21st-century skills that these kids learn. We’re also picking them from age three.

In Enugu state, we have 12 years of free and mandatory education, free from age three. There’s early childhood learning that is free, from age three. You have the nursery, pre-primary 1, and pre-primary 2; then you start from basic 1 to basic 9.

We stopped the common entrance thing, so it’s from Basic 6 to Basic 7. It’s one environment, so just pass it; that basic 9 is mandatory and free from early childhood learning.

So, yes, we believe that once we are able to move away from these carpets, this heavy lift, the operating costs will be manageable, and if we don’t do this, how can we possibly eradicate poverty in the long run?

The idea is that if we sustain our investment in education, we’ll be able to save a lot of money that we’ll spend on security tomorrow. If we don’t get these kids skillfully equipped, they will take to criminality tomorrow, so we might as well spend that money on training them.

How have Mr. President’s policies and reforms impacted what you’re doing in Enugu?

Mbah: I think it would have been impossible, to say the least, for us to have done things at this scale without some of the bold and courageous policies of Mr. President.

First of all, what the policies of Mr. President did for subnationals was largely to free up resources, and so I think the president has been very intentional in terms of how this $1 trillion economy is to be achieved.

He believes strongly that this is not going to come from up, but it’s going to come from the periphery. In order to achieve that, you have to strengthen the periphery in terms of responsibility and also in terms of acting by providing them with the finances.

I think if you just cast your mind back, even having a conversation with my predecessor, he would tell you what he went through; sometimes, he struggled when he came back from FAAC to pay salaries, or immediately after the payment of salaries, nothing was left.

So, what we’re seeing today at a scale is only possible because we now have more funds coming from the federation and, of course, a lot of support from the centre to the subnational. For us, it’s to make good use of that opportunity.

That’s essentially all we’re doing. Whether you want to look at it from the removal of the subsidies, the unification of the exchange, or the foreign exchange, if you look at the reform in the tax sector, there are quite a whole lot of great initiatives.

Now, if you look at the NELFUND, this is something for us that we’re excited about, because typically, the list of scholarships you get, the applications you get every year, is almost unimaginable. But today, we encourage them to assess NELFUND, and again, it’s the freeze of funds for us to do other things. That impact is invaluable.

Source: TheCable