From Sylvia Udegbunam Enugu

Enugu State Governor, Dr. Peter Mbah has ruled out political correctness in the war against insecurity in the state, just as he reiterated his commitment to revamp social infrastructure, banish poverty and grow the state’s economy exponentially.

Mbah stated this in his keynote address at the 2024 Standing Committee Meeting of the Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion, held in the state capital on Thursday.

“One of the oft-repeated goals of my government is the vision to grow Enugu State’s economy to one of Nigeria’s top three, and also to achieve a zero percent rate in the poverty headcount index. These are not mere posturing.

“Achieving those targets necessarily entails the fixing of critical building blocks. One of these building blocks is security.

“There is thus in Enugu State, no twiddling of thumbs or sitting on our hands in matters relating to security. In fact, there is no room for political correctness in dealing with any threat to security. We demonstrated this when we ended the illegal ‘sit-at-home’ order that a fringe gang of criminals had tried to impose in Enugu State.

“In securing Enugu State, the strategy has not been limited to the familiar deployment of security personnel to the streets and acquisition of vehicles. Cutting edge technology plays a vital role in the mix. This is no flippant claim.

“Enugu State is on the verge of launching a real-time platform where round-the-clock surveillance of major streets in the capital is done, incorporating human and artificial intelligence,” he said.

He noted that since every nation’s socio-economic fate is often closely tied to the standard of its tuition or the attention its government devotes to improving the quality of education and access to it, his administration devoted the lion’s share of the state’s 2024 budget to education, and was ramping up the establishment of 260 Smart Green Schools to prepare the children of the state for the future.

“At 33 percent of the state’s total budget for the year, our N158 billion allocation to the education sector is the highest in Nigeria – both in percentage and per capita terms. This implies that for every 100 Naira we are spending, 33 Naira goes to the education budget,” he stated.

He also restated his administration’s disruptive innovations, which he said, were currently changing the narrative and repositioning healthcare, water supply, transport infrastructure, agriculture, reviving moribund state-owned assets, boosting the MSMEs, up skilling the youth, and making Enugu State investors’ haven and preferred choice.

“In the last three months, we have secured over N300bn in investments. The growing list of investors underlines our commitment to fostering an environment conducive for business. This ease-of-doing-business climate led to revitalisation of the moribund Enugu United Palm Products Ltd, courtesy of a N100bn partnership between the Enugu State government and Pragmatic Palms Ltd.

“We have also recently secured a deal with ODK Tractors, a Danish company, for the assembly of tractors locally. The target is to assemble 300 tractors before the end of this year, and 1,000 before the end of 2025.

“Indeed, this commitment is at the heart of our recently secured N40 billion deal towards the revamp of the long moribund Sunrise Flour Mills, where the machines fell silent since 1985 – two years after its commission,” he stated.

He restated his administration’s commitment to de-risking investments, noting that the recent approval of the sum of N183bn for the construction of 141 urban roads and 20 rural roads in addition to the 71 roads earlier constructed and 10 rural roads awarded in 2023 were all geared towards improving the quality of life and ease of doing business in the state.

The governor, therefore, craved the Church’s and citizens’ continued support in the task to reinvent Enugu State.

“The path might seem tortuous sometimes; but the hint of the enormous gains the journey promises outweighs the fleeting discomfort,” he concluded.