For a first time visitor,
describing Enugu, the capital of Enugu State, as
a huge construction site will not be out of
place. From one end of the town, popularly
called the Coal City, to another, the Enugu
State Government has embarked on massive
construction works in the various sectors of the
economy. There is the International Conference
Centre at Independence Layout, a
state-of-the-art centre with a 5,000 seater main
bowl, 1,500 small bowl, another 600 seater
assembly hall, a 200-room five star hotel and an
office complex for the state Ministry of
Information, Culture and Tourism. Also on
Independence Layout, work is underway on an
ultra-modern complex to house the headquarters
of the state judiciary at the area known as the
Three Arms Zone. It will be made up of 17 modern
courtrooms, the Chief Judge’s chamber and court,
all fully automated and computerised.
On
the other side of town is the Enugu State
University of Science and Technology’s permanent
site where the state Governor, Dr. Chimaroke
Nnamani, has promised to build a university that
no other can compete with in terms of
facilities. There will be eight faculty
buildings, hotel facilities for 16,000 students,
staff quarters, multipurpose students centre, an
auditorium, a cafeteria, good road network and
water system among others. The Teaching
Hospital/College of Medicine of the university
at Parklane, GRA, Enugu is also nearing
completion.
In the area of housing,
several housing estates are under construction.
There are the Obukpa Housing Estate, the Medium
Class Housing Estate and the Loma Linda Housing
Estate comprising nine block apartment buildings
of 324 units of 3 bedroom flats, with perimeter
fencing, a shopping complex and playing ground.
The projects, running into billions of
naira, according to Nnamani, will be completed
by next year. Nnamani told President Olusegun
Obasanjo when the President visited Enugu to lay
the foundation of some of the projects and
commission some others, that his target was to
finish work on all the projects next year.
Will this be possible? Nnamani told
newsmen who visited the sites of some of the
projects, which are about 200, “I’m sure when
you looked at the projects, it was difficult to
imagine that they could be completed within the
next six months to one year. I’m talking about
the university, the teaching hospital, the
tunnel, conference centre, judiciary
headquarters, the housing estates and the many
roads and bridges.” He said that he had no doubt
in his mind that the projects would be
completed.
But in a season where the
complaint of most state chief executives is
paucity of funds, where does Nnamani hope to get
the money for the project? He said that will not
be a problem. According to him, his
administration has set its priority and was bent
on completing the projects. He added, “Our
allocation on the average is about N1billion
every month. It could go anywhere from about
N800million to N1.2billion. But in Enugu State,
we always say, to God be the glory. We say, to
God be the glory because we cannot explain how
we are, where we are or how we are doing what we
are doing. We cannot necessarily rationalise it.
We believe that the inalienable right of any
person is the right to dream and we dream and
dream big dreams. We set challenges for
ourselves and we go out to conquer those
challenges. So, we live virtually on a
day-to-day basis, struggling to survive. The
most important thing is the determination and
then a fine team of colleagues and assistants.
But much of the explaining will be left to God
and the glory to God too.”
However, some
are beginning to question the reason for the
decision of Nnamani to wait until the second leg
of his administration before embarking on such
massive projects. Indeed, some have said that
the governor spent most part of his first term
consolidating his hold on power. His battle with
the former Governor of the state, Chief Jim
Nwobodo, readily comes to mind.
But
Nnamani disagreed, saying that those who belong
to this school of thought do not know what he
achieved during his first term. He said that he
did a lot also during the first four years but
was using the massive construction now as the
icing on the cake. He added, “Yes, as you know,
for most people, when you get into second term,
people are on their way out. It actually shows
the level of commitment that we are doing most
of these projects in the second term. In the
first term, we did over 300 kilometres of
asphalt roads. They include roads such as
Opi-Nsukka Road; Obollo-Afor-Ogurute Road;
Ozalla-Agbani-Nara Road. We did a lot of roads.
We did the Law School in the first term, which
is a first-class tertiary university facility,
and handed it over to the Federal Government. We
did Air Force School in the first term. We did
over 24 cottage hospitals in the first term. We
electrified over 150 communities. We did quite a
lot during the first term. Water projects, so
many.”
He said that his government had
taken a holistic look at the problem in the
state and was developing both the cities and the
rural areas of the state based on the contract
signed with the people when he was voted in. He
said, “Let me discuss the holistic reform
process so you can understand what is going on.
When we started, we talked about dividends of
democracy, which is essentially giving people
something in return for their votes. In which
case, their votes are an investment, like shares
and what do they get in return? Roads, water,
electricity; compared to the advanced
democracies, where you talk about justice,
equality, fairplay; where they demonstrate over
religion, school prayer, uniforms. That is
democracy here too but democracy means more than
that. So, we concentrated on the dividends of
democracy; buildings roads, water, electricity.
During our second term, it suddenly dawned on us
that it is all about poverty. The agitation,
restlessness, the entire confusion in the land
is all about poverty because if you say the
poverty rate is 67 per cent or 87 per cent,
whatever affects this segment of the population
is serious business. So, even before the Federal
Government came out with the National Economic
Empowerment and Development Strategy, we went
through our poverty reductions strategies and
fashioned out how to tackle poverty. So,
whatever we are doing is consistent with poverty
reduction.
“So, what are we doing for
rural areas? We have our Ministry of Human
Development and Poverty Reduction. So, when they
say they are doing a school meals plus
programme, which we’ve been doing in Enugu since
January 2004; which is we provide one meal a
day. But, it’s called school meals plus because
it is more than a meal because for that index
charge, we receive annual health check-up to
check the dentition, sight, hearing, things like
Attention Deficit Disorder, vitamin
supplementation, malaria prophylaxis; for the
mum, if she is pregnant, she is still within the
ante-natal care system. For the children, are
they in school? We also have what we call Early
Childhood Learning Centres. Enugu State has the
most advanced early childhood learning centres.
These are pre-care, kindergartens but within the
elementary schools.”
Nnamani explained
that his government was bent on opening up Enugu
State to investors and would do all within its
power to achieve this, adding, “A lot is going
on in Enugu. If you look around, you will see a
lot of containers and roadside shops. We’ve left
them on purpose because there is a dilemma as to
leaving them or removing them for aesthetic
reasons. We’ve chosen to leave them there since
we believe that government has not fully
fulfilled its social contract with the people.
And where they are trying to make a living on
their own, we decided to leave them alone. When
we came here, we had about five banks. Now we
have over 45 banks in Enugu. Then we have an
expansion of the building industry. I’m sure you
saw all the building projects going on. You see,
there is much to economic pressure and also
movement from Kano, Kaduna and other areas with
the disturbances that happened a few years ago.
The fact that the largest single investment in
this country since this current democratic
dispensation is in Enugu State, the Nigerian
Breweries - the largest brewery outside Europe -
confirms indeed that Enugu is indeed an
investor’s haven and investments are pouring
in.”
Nnamani said that despite the
massive injection of capital into the projects,
other sectors of the economy are not suffering.
He said, “One can say that it is indeed possible
that some of the sectors have suffered. But if
you look at it in realistic terms, what has been
going on in our country is a reverse pyramid in
terms of expenditure pattern. Enugu is one of
the states that is in the forefront of reforms.
We have our Due Process, Debt Management and we
have what we call Budget Evaluation and
Monitoring Unit, where our priorities are set
right. A committee was set up by our development
partners, DFID and also NGOs to reflect a true
pyramid so that whatever expenditure we have,
the bulk of the fund, if it is health, will get
down to the people in form of drugs, capacity
building or equipment. So, when we are building
a university, it’s money to education. When we
are building a teaching hospital, it’s money to
health. So that in a year, you won’t need to
build a teaching hospital; you won’t need to
build a university. It has not affected our
commitment to our workers. If it had, I’m sure
you would be hearing about it. Our workers are
certainly not complaining.”
But is
Nnamani not doing all of these to ensure that he
gets the seat of the vice-president to which a
lot of people have linked him? It is one
question to which you are not likely to get a
yes or no answer from Nnamani. He explained,
“Those who know me know that I’m not one to
position for anything. What I want, I go for
it.” He said that his successor will “likely
come from within us. So, the opposition will
continue in hibernation for a very, very long
time.”
