Uduaghan’s transformation agenda rests on capital,

[Mirror]

Delta State Commissioner for Information, Barrister Chike Ogeah, is passionate about the development of the state. He speaks on the various efforts to transform the state and its economy.

The government's three-point agenda

Well, if you ask me, I think we have come a very long way because, like we always tell people, the three-point agenda is an agenda that flows into each other more or less. You have peace and security; you have infrastructural development and you have human capital development. You begin to wonder where does one stop and the other one begin. Peace and security is the singular most spectacular achievement we have garnered since we started this democracy. Indeed, during the first term of Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan in 2007, Delta State was almost ungovernable. We had that Warri crisis where families were going against families; brothers were going against brothers, almost similar to Rwanda-type of situation. But he was able to come in and calm the people down. You see, when there is crisis, there can be no development, human or infrastructure. In fact, we keep saying it that it's from what he did at that time that the Federal Government borrowed the leave to work out its amnesty programme. And once that was achieved, we had the issue of litigation when he was unfortunately removed from office. Of course, like a true democrat, he stepped aside. But after all that, we came back, even more refocused. He told us that it is now a time for development. Even though we had a lot of people trying to distract us, we focused squarely on what now has become a two-point agenda. It was human capital development and infrastructure development.

That keyed into the general paradigm of what we are doing in Delta now which is what we call Delta Beyond Oil. What is Delta Beyond Oil? We are saying if tomorrow comes and either there are alternative sources of energy which if much cheaper than oil or the oil wells run dry, what will we say we have done with all these revenues that have accrued over the years? That was how it became very meaningful that we started developing those areas in which we have comparative advantage, using this money we have made in these other areas. There are five such critical areas which are culture and tourism, agriculture, small and medium enterprises, sports and entertainment. I will put culture and tourism and entertainment together. So, the fifth one obviously will be ICT.

We found out that modern economies don't need natural endowments anymore to make progress. If you find out, none of all the emerging economies either the Asian tigers, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, China, Singapore, uses any natural resource. Basically, what people have been using to drive modern economies today is small and medium enterprises, growing them to become bigger businesses, and of, course, ICT. That is the truth. You know what Agriculture can do. So, we started focusing on those areas and that is what we have been doing. We have achieved a lot of success in those areas.

Small and medium scale enterprises

In the case of the small and medium scale enterprises, we won the Central Bank Governor trophy for about three years running. Why we achieved this spectacular success is because what the government did was that we got the private sector through their micro finance banks and we give loans through those banks as an incentive to the very vulnerable of society. We have actually a ministry called Ministry of Poverty Alleviation. What that ministry has done is that it has empowered widows, like I said, very vulnerable people in society, the physically challenged people who are using their creation and doing all sorts of things from making of spices to making of beads and juice. Don't forget we have great aquaculture. Forty per cent of Delta is riverine. So, we have all kinds of fish, stream farming and all that. We have turned this into big fish ponds and into mechanized fishing. And all that has been very successful. The most important thing about this programme is the success rate of repayment. That is one area, I think, that deserves all the accolades that we have had.

ICT

We are also focusing on the area of Information, Communication Technology. We want to use it to drive our economy in Delta. In Asaba, as I told you, we have this ICT Park. It is going to combine the both technological aspect of making a computer like a computer village as well as the training of people in it. There is going to be a massive institute there. That again, like I told you, is ongoing.

Sports

In the modern day, we know what sports can do. Apart from the fact that sports bring people from very low background and limited means and turn them into millionaires overnight, it brings accolades and glory to your land. In the last sports festival we came first and the gap was so much from the state coming second. Now again, how was this done? It is not a matter of talking and saying you did this, you did that. A lot of work went into it. A lot of policies went into it.

The simple magic we used to achieve this was that the governor took a bill to the State House of Assembly and said "look, I don't want a sports commissioner because a sport commissioner is a political appointee subject to the vagaries of cabinet changes and shuffles" and all that. He went to the place with a bill and set up a sports commission with members and a chairman. And they have a certain term of five years. What that has done is that it has enabled them to have long, medium and short plans to achieve grassroots development of sports. That is what is really lacking in Nigeria today.

While doing this, there is always the infrastructure side of it which is the building of stadia – Sapele stadium, Warri stadium and the Asaba Indoor stadium. No matter the incentives you give to budding talents or sportsmen, if you don't give them the appropriate infrastructure to train, you are wasting your time. We have also invested heavily in that.

In Asaba, as I told you, we have this ICT Park. It is going to combine the both technological aspect of making a computer like a computer village as well as the training of people in it. There is going to be a massive institute there. That again, like I told you, is ongoing.

Agriculture

You come to the area of agriculture. In fact, if you ask me, agriculture is where the replacement for oil is for Nigeria. That is where this country can make so much money. We have done wonderfully in the area of agriculture with all sorts of crops and all sorts of produce that we have. We are leaving oil to one side. We have lots of maize, we have lots of cassava. We have Obasanjo Farm which is a Public-Private Partnership, PPP, with Delta State Government. I think that is the biggest poultry in Nigeria. Most of the eggs here, Midwest and South-East are all gotten from there. We had a terrible experience with the last floods. A lot of farmlands were washed off. Farmers suffered a lot of trauma but government came in. I am sure you heard about the management and post flood management. We have tried as much as possible to put the farmers back to where they were. Of course, NIMET still says that floods are still coming again and we've being taking all kinds of pre-emptive measures.

Culture and Tourism

We actually brought an icon of Nollywood to come and develop culture and tourism here and he has been doing that. You know Delta is the home of all your models, comedians and all the talents. We have seen the development of Nollywood over time. Nollywood is next to Hollywood in terms of entertainment right now in the World. It has now become a multibillion naira industry. Asaba is the capital of Nollywood. All the films are shut here in Asaba, most of them using the River Niger and the good scenery and all that. And we have an aggressive plan which I know Richard Mofe-Damijo has developed. We are nurturing new talents in singing, in acting, comedy and all that. The icing on the cake of what we are trying to do in tourism is what we call Udu Lecture Park. It is Nigeria's own version of Disney World. And again, we are using a Public-Private Partnership to drive it. There is a company from England that is now driving it. We are going to have first class mall, five-star hotel, children game, Lecture Park etc. That would complement an Animal Resort we have in Ogwashi-Uku. We just tarred the road from here as well.

Health

Why I have focused on those five critical areas above is that those are the main thrusts in tandem with our Delta Beyond Oil doctrine. But then, there are other critical areas in which this government has made fantastic investment and fantastic success. One of these other critical areas is health. The governor is a medical doctor as you all know. We have initiated lots of fantastic health care programmes like Free Under-Five-Medicare, Free Maternal Health Care Programme, Free Rural Health Scheme and the Delta Mobile Hospital Initiative. Every pregnant woman in the state is being given free antenatal services up till when she has her baby. From zero to five, health care is free for the child.

All our old infrastructures like the old St. Patrick Hospital in Eku have been transformed. Go and find out from those people in their 50s and 60s, St. Patrick Hospital was the doyen of health care in the then Western Region. But over the years, they become so run down. Government took it and turned it around. It is now a first class facility which maybe only compared to the teaching hospital we have in Oghara.

As we keep improving on our infrastructure, getting all these scanning machines for your brains, hearts and all that, we are getting human capital to also complement it. We have all these surgeons coming in. they are all Nigerians but they are in Diaspora. We are bringing them all back. We are also building child and mother hospitals in Warri and Asaba. We are revamping all the medical centres.

Education

We are doing the same thing in the education sector. We have built 50 model schools of world standard all over the state. Because we have three senatorial districts in Delta, everything we do is trying to put these projects all around the state. We are remodelling another 500 schools that have already become dilapidated. Works are on different levels all over the state as well. Talking about post-primary schools, we are also upgrading the old colleges.

Roads

You come to roads. It has been wonderful. We must finish all the intra and intercity roads before this government leaves in 2015. All hands are being on the plough to make sure we achieve this.

Transportation

In the area of transportation, we have done so much. We bought these Marcopolo buses for ease of intercity transportation. We have the smaller buses and lots of taxis for intra transportation. And for the first time in the history of Delta, we have bought big boats for riverine areas.

It was a little bit difficult initially to phase out okada. You know okada came from nowhere. We all grew up in Nigeria. When I was a young man, I never saw okada apart from the motorcycles people rode. For over the years, you need to know the number of premature death, premature journey to our orthopaedic hospitals. Young men and women were maimed because of these accidents of okada and we said we could not go on like that.

Apart from that, this is the 21st century for God sake! How does it look like? We woke up; we said no. Even the Keke we have provided as the alternative is still just we are going somewhere. But at least, that is better. You have the body protective for the people there. It is not just like you are on the motorcycle. And of course, there was a lot of resistance. You know people resist change. But by the time we did a lot of advocacy and they realised that we are totally irrevocably committed to it, they accepted the change. We started with the big towns, Asaba, Warri, Sapele and others.

That is what we are doing because, you see, okada is not in tandem with our policy of urbanisation. We want to try and beautify our towns. Go round Asaba at night, see the big screens; see people watching football. We are trying to ride good roads. We have lightened the whole town now. I remember when we started it in Delta, people started saying it was wasteful because there was no source of energy. Everybody was just talking about solar energy, but solar energy was not working here; the technology was not working here.

The only way you get street light working is to drive it with diesel. Yes, it's expensive but what is the opportunity cost? Crimes at night and all that. So, it was getting out of hand. Now with this thing, we even have a night economy and the town is safe. In doing all that, we didn't think okada would be doing what would be complementary. You can see the kind of bus shelters and bus stops we are providing for these modern buses we have brought in. We thought that we needed to get okada out of the way and save our people from that one-way journey to hell.

Mega projects

We have what we call mega projects. Those are the projects that will change entirely the economy of not just the state but the region. The chief one is the Asaba International Airport. The whole town has changed. In fact, in the whole corridor from here to Agbor, you can't find land to buy anymore. There have been warehouses, hotels just because we sited an airport somewhere. And yet we have not even started; that airport is work in progress as the most airports in the World. All are usually permanent construction sites. So, we haven't started the cargo section. It is one of the cargo airports that have been chosen by the Federal Government.

It is also going to be an international airport. We always keep saying it because there have been hues and cries about the airport. But that airport is maybe the cheapest airport in Nigeria at N27 billion. I have had a long experience, long stint of my career in the aviation industry. I went to airports all over the world. I assure you that there are very few airports like that airport. Maybe it is 75 or 80 per cent complete. That airport will serve the whole of the South-East and the Midwest region. Nothing like that airport has been the great synergy for the South-South integration we are talking about. By the time we start intercity flights, you can imagine how it would turn us to a little global family in the South-South and South-East.

We are just developing the Onne Free Trade Zone and the Warri port. What we discovered is that 60 or 70 per cent of all the businesses you see in Lagos is coming from Onitsha and Nnewi. A lot of them lose their lives trying to get there to get their containers. That is the reason we are doing this Ughelli-Asaba road dualization. The only thing left again is what the Federal Government should do which is the dredging of the port there so that big ships can come and berth there.

I must say that at the heart of what we are doing in Delta State is job creation. Everything we are doing is to be able stem the unemployment because it is from this unemployment that you get all these social malaises. There will be kidnapping, armed robbery, oil theft, bunkering when you have the youth roaming around. It is not just about getting the latest gadgets to confront all these things but driving it economically by creating jobs for these people. The Warri Industrial Park is the next big thing but that is also a private-public partnership. We are having interests from all over Africa for the park. It is a massive project. It is well on course as well. I always say that there are some of these mega projects that their development will continue after the tenure of this government. That is why it is important that we must understand that governance is a continuum. Provided you are doing the right thing, let the people take ownership of these projects. Let them see the projects as their own. I am sure if any government comes tomorrow and says it wants to alter or change any of these projects, it is the people that they will need to deal with.

Power

We also have our Independent Power Project (IPP) because one of the problems we have in Delta State is that two or three of the major power stations in the country are in Delta State like in Sapele and all that. What happens is that this power finds its way to the national grid and goes out of Delta State. Even people in the environment where the power stations are located are in darkness. And that informed why we decided to build our IPP. Everything is here now. The final aspect of it is about to be done. Without power, all these good plans we have that I have told you about will come to naught. We realised we can't rely on this federal arrangement. So, already we have a power sharing agreement where the power we produce will come to Delta State. Of course, we might have surplus we can give to the rest of Nigeria but our part would have been taken care off.

Revamping of industries

We have a lot of ailing industries like Asaba textile and others. We are looking at them one by one and we are finding the different issues that are with them. So, the whole idea is to get back an industrialise Delta.

National Mirror