Tech-driven security boosting investor confidence in Enugu – Gov Mbah

Governor Peter Mbah says Enugu State’s push to grow its economy from $4.4bn to $30bn is anchored on strategic investments in security, education, healthcare, tourism, aviation and infrastructure. In this interview with ADELANI ADEPEGBA, he explains how his administration is positioning the state as a leading destination for business and investment

How do you plan to achieve your vision of growing Enugu’s GDP from  $4.4 billion to $30 billion in eight years?

When we were campaigning for office, we set out a blueprint for Enugu, what Enugu could become under our watch. And that blueprint was based on three factors. One was to grow the economy exponentially, growing from $4.4 billion to $30 billion in eight years. The second was to eradicate poverty. We inherited a poverty headcount of 8 per cent and had committed to bringing it to zero in 8 years. The third was to make Enugu State the number one destination for tourism, living, business and investment. So, if you take the first item there, exponential growth, in growing the economy from $4.4 billion to $30 billion, if you do the calculus, that’s about a 27 per cent compound annual growth rate. The important thing was that the growth would be government-enabled but private-sector-driven. And what that means is that we needed to put the fundamentals in place for this private sector to move towards disruption.

Give us the specifics of the projects and how they underpin the ambitious $30bn GDP vision?

These are not isolated projects; they are all connected, mutually reinforcing. So, what we did was to identify what those key drivers are, what those things are that will attract the private sector here? First, we had to try the biggest elephant in the room – the security challenges. We came, and we had the sit-at-home. People were told the days of the week they had to sit at home, and the days of the week they had to go to work. That wasn’t acceptable to us. So, we had to put in place security measures, working with security agencies, investing hugely in technology, bringing that so-called sit-at-home thing to an end and making sure that we provide a safe environment for this private sector to flow. The other things are services, making sure again that things like healthcare, if you are bringing an investor here, he would be worried about two things: one is security, the next is ‘if I am sick, where do I go to?’ And if you look at our investors, our objective has been to capture some of the markets of medical tourism; we are talking about the market size of about $2bn annually. If you can do something very attractive and you can capture just 10 per cent of that market, talking about $200m, that’s huge.

To what extent is your state involved in the ongoing transformation and concession of the Akanu Ibiam International Airport, a federal airport?

Again, it’s part of connecting the dots and growing the economy. Our target is to bring in 3 million visitors to Enugu; if you look at our manifesto, it speaks to bringing in three million visitors. Just again doing the calculation, three million visitors means you have to upgrade at least 100 aircraft landing at Enugu airport every day to get close to that number. And we are talking about an airport that, at the time we came in, maybe four or five aircraft were landing here, so it was just not possible, and we just didn’t have the facility to take them and all that, so we felt that we needed to have our skin in the game. So, what we are doing is to first create the pull factors. I am not sure if time allowed you to visit the tourism sites. We are doing four massive tourism sites, and we are doing the longest zipline in Africa. It’s a 300m zip line; it takes you from a pine forest all the way to a cave, and it brings you back. And we are also doing a cable car; a cable car of 5.6km takes you from the highest point in the state, 580m above sea level, and takes you from there to a monastery for those who are interested in religious tourism. It takes you to the highest point of the cross, another 70m, where you have the chapel, and you can commune there. So, these things are being carefully curated to act as pull factors, to bring people here. And if you have to do that, you also have to start thinking about access. How will people be able to access the state? And again, we felt we just kept getting too big in this game, so we had to set up our own airline, and then, of course, we now operate regular flights, so you have close to 20 flights coming in so you can go on a daily basis now. But that’s really not our target; our target is to move that number to 100, but you have to also pull the passengers. And then we are also looking at bringing in the diaspora, attracting those foreign travellers, and even the investors, who also want to be able to have direct flights to their state or the location of their investment. We got involved with an investor who is interested because, you know, for the Federal Government to move concessions to a state, that’s the goal. I think the entire southeast, I must say, is grateful that this has happened, because this very soon will become a functional international airport from the southeast, so the people of the southeast can travel from here. And our target is December this year to be able to get a direct flight from Enugu to the USA, the United Kingdom and Guangzhou, China, to come here. We want to make sure we achieve the target of bringing in three million people to Enugu and Africa.

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How has your security technology project enhanced the investment climate in the state?

We believe that if we don’t get this security thing right, it will almost be impossible to attract the level of investment we expect to happen here. What we have essentially done is to invest hugely in technology to at least have a line of sight of what is happening in the states, monitor the gateways, and have a clear line of sight of persons coming into the state, and people leaving the state. Our objective again is to nip crime in the bud because this sector is one area; if in a spectrum of 10, you have done nine well, if there’s an error in one, that one gets magnified and diminish everything you have done. So, you always have to be extremely vigilant, so you want to invest in those digital equipment tools that can help you to be that vigilant, to nip crime in the bud, but also when there’s a breach, then you also can act swiftly, which is why we have gone on to set up a distress response squad with AI-enabled cameras. We have both the static and the mobile cameras. If you look at the Distress Response Squad vehicles, they all have AI-embedded cameras. That means as the policemen are driving or static, they know what is happening within a two-kilometre radius. They have monitors on the vehicles. DRS men have their body cam, so from the command and control centre, we are also viewing what they are doing, and we can monitor their performance. Those who are on the night shift; they also have cameras, so we can monitor them remotely.

How are you bridging the teacher-digital literacy gap, and secondly, how do you intend to sustain the high capital investments in the education sector if internal revenue slows down or federal allocation fluctuates?

Starting from the plan of sustainability, in the last three budget cycles, we have allocated 33 per cent of our school projects to education. That’s not sustainable because that means we are carrying the heavy lifting, the CAPEX, but that is not what we are considering going into the future.  We imagine that the recurrence or the operating costs won’t be as high, because in the last two and a half years, we have been able to do more than 7,000 classrooms, we have built as of today 267 smart schools, we have that standing, and equipping them with the features of a typical smart school. It means you have to have a robotics centre, Artificial Intelligence, ICT, 3D printer. But most importantly, you also touched on something which is very key and has always been identified as the major risk factor: How do we ensure that we have the right teachers? So, we built what we refer to as a centre for experiential learning and innovation. By the way, what we have done is integrate the current art, science, or profession of teaching. We have moved away from the raw system of learning to an experiential learning system. That is, teaching by practice, so we get the kids to constitute themselves as a team, and we begin to get them involved in what they are learning. So, beyond seeing them on an e-learning platform, we are also doing practical stuff and learning. We have locations, for example, where the kids have to create a refrigeration system that enables them to drink the water they produce. We try to get the kids to learn by practising, so they see themselves as problem solvers rather than just coming to memorise or repeat what the teacher has said.

How have President Tinubu’s policies impacted what you do in Enugu?

I think it would have been impossible, to say the least, for us to have done things at the scale we did without some of the bold and courageous policies of Mr President. First of all, what the policies of Mr President did for some nations is largely to free up resources, and so I think Mr President has been very intentional in terms of how this $1tn economy is to be achieved. He believes strongly that this is not going to come from the top, but it’s going to come from the periphery, and in order to achieve that, you have to strengthen the periphery, both in terms of responsibility and also in terms of acting, providing the finance. I think if you just cast your mind back, even having a conversation with my predecessor, he would tell you what he went through. Sometimes, he struggled to pay salaries, or maybe after the payment of salaries, nothing was left for him. So, what we are seeing in Enugu today is only possible because we now have more funds coming from the federation and the centre to the sub-nationals and for us, it’s to make good use of that opportunity.