Mbah attributes achievements to Tinubu’s support, private sector involvements

By Romanus Ugwu

The governor of Enugu state, Dr Peter Mbah, has attributed the landmark achievements he has recorded to the massive support from President Bola Tinubu, technological investment in security and the private sector involvement.

Governor spoke during an interactive session in Enugu on Tuesday with the Renewed Hope Media team on inspection of federal projects in the South East.

While itemising his achievements he hinged on the support from President Tinubu, he disclosed that his first achievement was to set a target of growing the economy of the state from $4.4 billion to $30 billion.

He disclosed that before the support from President Tinubu to the sub-nationals started coming, it was extremely difficult for his predecessor to pay the salaries of workers.

Governor Mbah said that beyond every other achievement, he concentrated on security as the big elephant in the house, explaining: “Our first target was to grow the economy from $4.4 billion to $30 billion. Our second mission is to eradicate poverty. We inherited a poverty index of 58 per cent. But we are committed to bringing the number to zero in eight years.”

“We set out to make Enugu state number one destination for tourism, living, business, and investment. If you take the first item there, exponential growth, we have grown the economy to a confirmed 27 per cent annual growth rate. If you look at the trend and pattern of growth over the years, it does not quite reflect what we are projecting and that is why we have sceptics and naysayers who won’t give us chances because they won’t understand.

“We realised that we needed to do things differently and we pointed out that this is going to be an era of quantum leap, and disruptive innovation to the status quo. The important thing is that it is going to be government enabled but private sector driven. What that means is that we need to put the fundamentals in place for the private investors to operate.

“We concentrated on those key drivers that will attract the private investors and the elephant in the room is security. We were confronted with the menace of sit-at-home that people chose when to go to work and it is not acceptable by us.

“We have to put in place security measures working with the security agencies, investing hugely in technologies and ensuring that the sit-at-home comes to an end and ensuring a safe environment for the investments to thrive,” he said.

While explaining further how the support of President Tinubu has helped him, he said: “I can boldly say that some of the achievements we have recorded would not have been possible without those support from President Tinubu to the sub nationals through his courageous and bold policies. The President has been so intentional about how the $1 trillion economy could be achieved.”

“He understood that the actualisation is not coming from top to peripheral and the best way to strengthen that peripheral not only in terms of responsibilities but support. In retrospect, when I had a conversation with my predecessor, he told me that they struggle to pay salaries to the workers after FAAC.

“What we are seeing today with the scale we are seeing today, is possible because of the history of support to the sub nationals,” he said.