Ugwuanyi Primes Enugu For Global Investment

 

Ugwuanyi’s whirlwind investment drive to Europe yields dividends

By SHEDDY OZOENE

The recent downturn in Nigeria’s economic fortunes has fired up Enugu State Governor, Honourable Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi to seek foreign investments to return Enugu state to the path of growth. His drive in this direction has taken him to the United Kingdom and Ireland with positive results from businessmen who have indicated interest to invest in the state.

To bring the benefits home, the state administration will next month host an economic summit in Enugu, the state capital. The first of such by the administration, the summit is expected to spur local entrepreneurs as well as attract global investment partners and many others who have shown willingness to cooperate with the state.

Top on the list is a former President of Ireland, Berie Ahern, who has committed to assist the state government grow its economy by shopping for investors and donor agencies to shore up the state’s revenue base. Others have held talks with officials of the state government with similar commitments, according to a statement by the governor’s Press Secretary, Uwakwe Abugu.

At the investment summit addressed by Gov. Ugwuanyi last month in Dublin, Ireland, he had disclosed that scores of investors were keen to do business in the state. He used the occasion to lay bare the state’s vast opportunities for investment in agriculture, education, mineral resources, commerce and industry.

Abugu said that the state government also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Dublin City University, Ireland aimed at promoting relationship with the state owned university and open up opportunities to attract funding agencies locally and internationally. “The President of the institution, Brian MacCraith and other officials of the university are already billed to attend the state’s economic summit in Enugu by March,” Abugu said.

Also in Dublin Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi was honoured for his outstanding leadership both as governor of the state in the past months and his role as chairman of Nigeria’s House of Representatives committee on Marine Transport for eight years.

Other recipients of the international leadership award held at Radison Blu Hotel include a female Irish professor and women rights activist, Fionnuala Waldron, former Charge d’Affaires of Nigerian Embassy in Ireland and a former Nigerian ambassador, Benedict Onochie Amobi, among others. The gathering was also addressed by a former Irish minister of Trade and Development, Mr. Joe Castelo while Nigerian Embassy’s Charge d’Affaires in Ireland, Mr. Olusola Iginla attended both the investment summit for Enugu and the awards night and on both occasions commended the exemplary drive of the Enugu governor
during the three-day working visit.

During the stay in Ireland, the governor and his entourage visited the Dublin Bus, Ireland’s successful transport company with a view to replicating its success story in the Enugu State Transport Company. The team also visited the headquarters of Guinness in Dublin. The brewing giant which had acquired  a 21 hectare expanse of land in Nsude, Udi LGA for development of a brewery site, has not developed it more than 20 years after. The state government facilitated the acquisition of land free of charge from the community, and it is still lying fallow.

Other members of the team are the commissioners for Education, Prof. Uche Eze, that of commerce and industry, Sam Ogbu Nwobodo and their Agriculture counterpart, Engr. Mike Ene who took samples of pineapples from Enugu’s Sna Carlos farms to Dublin for the summit. Also on the trip was the governor’s special adviser on Diaspora Matters, Mrs. Olangwa Ezekwu and deputy speaker of the state House of Assembly, Donatus Uzogbado, majority leader of the House, Ikechukwu Ezeugwu, among others. 

The imperative of a renewed drive for investment is brought about by the downward slide in Nigeria’s foreign earnings resulting from an increasingly sliding price of oil in the global market. According to Prof. Monsgr. Obiora Ike, Chairman of the state Economic Advisory Committee, who was also on the governor’s 11-man delegation, Enugu state is blessed with viable areas for investment and governor Ugwuanyi is determined to ensure that opportunities for investments are exploited for the benefit of people of the state.

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