Dennis Agbo
10 July 2009
(Page 2 of 2)
Engr Chris Okoye elaborates with examples: "If you recall, the first one million pounds sterling for the setting up of University of Nigeria , Nsukka was actually raised by the marketing board under Sir Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu, father of the present Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu and that was an institution under the Eastern Nigeria Development Corporation. It was that one million pounds that was given to Zik that prepared the platform for the take-off of University of Nigeria , Nsukka".
"In the area of agriculture, the vegetable oil industry that Malaysia is associated with was set up with the palm seeds that were taken from the Eastern region, courtesy of the same corporation and so you could imagine that if ENDC had continued with its palm multiplication project after the war, South East would have become the largest producer of vegetable oil in the world by now. But they couldn't continue because of the Civil War. On the industrial front, numerous establishments such as the glass factory at Port Harcourt , the Nkalagu Cement factory which was probably the first cement manufacturing factory in Africa, the steel factory in Enugu , amongst others were products of ENDC. As a matter of fact I am aware that the lime stone at Nkalagu cement factory is enough to guarantee production of cement for the next 300 years. The only problem is that they started with the wet process as against the dry process but if they had continued, they would have changed to a new line of dry production. So it seems to us that there is a clear indication that Okpara had an understanding of what such a platform could do and he did not really allow government to take an upper-hand. They rather said that it should be done by such an institution. Now the circumstances are different because there was then one central government for the Eastern region but now you have a number of governments".
He continues: "Even though the institution is going to be public-private community partnership, it is to be driven strictly by the private sector in the actualization of its pursuit of creating world class companies in the South East and policy formulation. When we talk about policy we are talking about governance, leadership, co-operation and collaboration. The institution will ensure that quality people are the right leaders, that what we are doing on the economic platform does not get derailed. So we have proposed a structure that will have the government being involved not necessarily in the day to day running of the organization because it will be run by a board. Even though there is going to be a board of trustees where the government is going to be involved in terms of appointing the chairman who appoints every other person like the Managing Director in accordance with best practices of course".
"SENEC is designed to handle common economic projects, in all the states. A typical example of a common economic project is power generation. Let's assume we want to setup Power Plants in the South East zone with coal as a source of power supply. Instead of all the states setting up different coal power plants, it will make more sense to have a company that will first of all resuscitate the coal industry (mining) and thereafter centralize a power plant that can supply power to all the states. That is an example of common economic project. In Agriculture, for instance, it is possible that rice could do better in Abakaliki, Cashew in Enugu , palm trees in Imo and so on. Perhaps it is important to recognize that the key reason why agriculture has failed in Nigeria is because it has been treated as a government- subsidized venture. So long as we continue to treat agriculture as a subsidized phenomenon, the situation will remain the same. Agriculture must be treated as a business.
Another issue is that of the chain concept. There is also a compelling need to treat every commodity as a product chain. Rice production should be treated as a chain, ie from the farm, to the mill and to the market. Even if you have the rice fields in Ebonyi, Anambra and Enugu , is it not possible to have a rice mill somewhere that will take rice from all the fields instead of having a kind of unsustainable rice mills all over the states which can't produce beyond 5,000 tons per unit? But to be able to run a rice mill and be successful, you need to put up a mill of about 50,000 tons. So we need a mill to be situated in such a way that the farms can feed into at a centralized mill. We think that for agriculture to do well here, we need to approach it from that concept of common projects and you can apply it to rice, cashew, vegetable oil, cassava etc. We are looking at what we can successfully husband and showcase not only to feed our people but to be extended to other parts of Nigeria and for export".
"There are obviously many facets to the application of the common-economic-project principle in our socio-economic milieu. I know we can also apply it to sports like football academy for instance. We can centralize the production of footballers since we now know that you could export footballers to all parts of the world. You can imagine a centralized football academy here that will not only produce footballers for our clubs but for clubs in the whole world".
"As it stands right now, the first layer of the structure that will run SENEC is on the horizon. The organized private sector, represented by chapters of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) and Chambers of Commerce in the South East zone have already passed resolutions on SENEC, with community development organizations not left out. Governments of the five south east states are already in the process of signing the SENEC Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). It is the shared understanding of the Coordinating Group of SENEC that the signing of the MoU by the Public, Private and Community representatives will facilitate the registration of SENEC at the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC)".
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