Enugu guber: Mbah’s growth template as bulwark amid tumbling oil revenue

BY NANA OGBODO

For members of a political campaign organisation, nothing can be as gratifying as experiencing firsthand, a reinforcing of public confidence in your candidate on a daily basis. The soaring support for the governorship candidate of our great party, Peter Ndubuisi Mbah, is an indication of the electorate’s grasp of the exigencies of the times that we live in. We can indeed situate this growing public affirmation, including the unprecedented endorsements from the opposition camp, in his succinct statement in the introductory texts of his manifesto that “the demands of our time require a good head”.

There was a particularly compelling incident last year, with regard to Nigeria’s national wealth that helps shed light on the pretty dire times alluded to in Dr Mbah’s statement of purpose. It is the disturbing fact that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) failed to remit any revenue to the Federal Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) for eight straight months! So the words, “the demands of our time require a good head,” are not mere campaign blandishments. Its message speaks eloquently to the somewhat sedate socio-economic history of Enugu state in a way that shows that the fairly predictable incremental growth, to which the public has grown accustomed, is not any more sustainable and must therefore be leapfrogged. And it does require some disruptive thinking! That is actually what Mbah’s candidacy represents. As he had himself declared: “I have not come to do something better; I have come to do something different”.

There is actually a strong sense of reassurance in the knowledge that the PDP governorship candidate clearly acknowledges from the outset that this is a season that calls for new thinking. The current challenge posed by the dwindling revenue inevitably calls to mind this famously ironic saying by a former oil minister of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Zaki Yamani’; “the Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil”. This is the dilemma that confronts Nigeria, nay Enugu state. The era of excess crude when states were guaranteed a constant stream of revenue from the national purse has truly come to an end. Even more so, the clamour for resource control is, to a large extent, being implemented albeit by subterfuge. Thus all these exponential incidences of so-called oil theft are, by implication, a simple euphemism for its actualisation. For clarity, the monthly subventions from FAAC to states are still being disbursed, but they are only barely sufficient to the extent that a state’s priorities and projections remain on a modest trajectory, short of any radical vision that can result in rapid economic development.

There is however a positive subtext that could be gleaned from the near-zero oil revenue, and its deleterious effects on the earnings of most Nigerian states. It is the fact that agriculture, which we had inexplicably abandoned in the last five decades, has become the top contributor to the national economy. As data from the National Bureau of Statistics for 2022 shows, the sector contributed 25.2% to the economy, displacing oil and gas from its familiar top perch to a distant fifth with a 6.35% contribution. This has indeed been the trend in the last few years, clearly validating a major plank on which Mbah’s vision for Enugu’s economic revival rests: robust investment in agriculture. With agriculture reputed as the sector that employs the highest number of Nigerians, Mbah understands that the economic prospects in the sector are huge, especially given that Enugu state is blessed with vast tracts of arable farmland and that the history of the monumental exploits of the M.I Okparas of the first republic rested almost solely on proceeds of agriculture. Thus, the state is turning full circle. After all, as George Orwell would say, “who controls the present, controls the past, who controls the past controls the future”.

The goal of his envisioned agricultural rebirth can be summed up thus: “To feed Enugu state and turn the state into a food basket for Nigeria and a hub for the export of cash crops; to eliminate food insecurity in the state by 2031 through massive investments in technology for agricultural productivity in the state, technology-enabled agricultural extension services, implementation of specialised agro-allied industrial zones in all senatorial districts of the state”. In specific details, the programme’s implementation will focus on agro-allied industrialisation in rural communities. As Mbah himself noted in his statement of purpose, “this will create jobs for rural youths and women, turn rural areas into productivity zones, pull millions out of extreme poverty, and significantly reduce hunger-induced insecurity in rural communities”.

Indeed, there is sufficient historical validation for the prime attention that agriculture will receive in a Mbah government. For instance, in the First Republic, agriculture was the mainstay of the Eastern Region’s economy. Records indicate that trade in palm produce generated an income of £54 million for the government of the Eastern Region in 1954 alone! It was the export of this commodity alongside other cash crops like rubber and cashew nuts that funded most of that era’s capital expenditure; from the inter-city roads network to the cement factory at Nkalagu (now in Ebonyi state), the cattle ranch at Obudu (Cross River State), the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Hotel Presidential (Enugu and Port Harcourt), and several other industrial projects some of which still exists. The scale of the growth experienced in the Eastern Region could further be gleaned from a report in the Harvard Review which described the Eastern Region as the fastest-growing economy in the world between 1954 and 1964.

Today, global demand for oil palm continues to rise given that the product is a key ingredient in a diverse range of everyday products. From detergent, lipstick, shampoo, and a range of consumer retail products, to personal care and cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, animal feed, biofuel and energy, or “approximately 50% of products on supermarket shelves” as the United Kingdom-based GreenPalm reckons, the presence of oil palm in our lives is so ubiquitous.

Ironically, Nigeria – with the southeast states as a major cultivation hub – has lost its foremost position as an oil palm producer to countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia, despite reputedly supplying the latter with her first palm seedlings in the 1950s. With the unprecedented headwinds suffered lately by national and sub-national economies on account of persistent shortfall in oil revenues, working towards an agricultural rebirth as Mbah has pledged to do through initiatives such as the special agro-industrial zones and technology-enabled extension services, represents a sensible fallback on potentially-rewarding and reliable low-hanging fruits.

Mbah’s commitment “to develop a critical mass of skilled people in ICT within four years and create ICT clusters in partnership with the private sector,” also draws inspiration from the boom and sustained preeminence that the sector has enjoyed in recent years, particularly as oil began to lose its pride of place in Nigeria’s economic life. In the last five years, the sector has either made the second or third major contribution to the economy. Last year, for instance, information and communications contributed 16.5% to the economy, according to the NBS report referenced earlier.

This is the reason why Mbah’s bold vision to grow Enugu’s GDP to $30 billion in eight years and achieve a zero percent rate in the poverty headcount index resonates among the electorate, as has become increasingly apparent as our campaign trail moves across the state. The resounding welcome at each campaign stop conveys the unmistakable message that Mbah is undoubtedly the man for such times. The hope is clearly not misplaced, for Mbah has earned his stripes, both as a public servant where he had a remarkable career, rising to become a chief of staff and a member of the Enugu state executive council and in the private sector where he grew a seed company (Pinnacle Oil and Gas) into a major force in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry already dominated by globally-renowned brands.

It is unusual to find individuals whose private sector resume is as glittering as their public sector’s. But Peter Mbah’s career trajectory easily bucks that trend. Both worlds have thus imbued him with the requisite statecraft and business acumen necessary for building a modern state that ticks every relevant box of human development metrics. Mbah’s success story in the private sector is proof that the courage to dream is as important as the tenacity to hold on to those dreams even when the hurdles seem herculean!

So the optimism he reflects when he speaks about Enugu’s future is by no means utopian; it is rooted in experience – the knowledge that grand dreams can come true if nurtured by sufficient will and the right expertise. For a state that has remained firmly in the hands of God, it may not be an accident that a Peter has, this season, come to judgment. The time is indeed Peter Mbah!

Ogbodo, a spokesman of the Enugu state PDP campaign council, lives in Enugu