…The PDP Governorship Candidate For ENUGU
Ahead of the March 2023 governorship election, Enugu State indigenes home and in the diaspora have described the governorship candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Peter Mbah as the man with the insight for the prosperity of Enugu State.
Kingsley Nnaji, Principal Coordinator, Peter Mbah Support Group United Kingdom and Ireland, said that they are drumming support for Mbah because he is the first Enugu man that has been able to integrate leadership with management. Nnaji, a Corporate, Property and Real Estate Lawyer and Investor in the UK spoke on what Enugu State needs now, the manifesto of Mbah which he described as the most credible and has the interest of the Diaspora Ndi Enugu.
Not just Nnaji, Edwin Agwu, a resident in the Urban part of Enugu said that as an Obidient and staunch supporter of Peter Obi it was not because of party but competency. He further stated that as the governorship election is around us, the Enugu people must now treat the governorship election differently or have ourselves to blame for the next eight years.
“I have maintained even well ahead of the primary elections and before the emergence of the Obi phenomenon that the next governor of Enugu State must be elected on the basis of competence and track record, not party. And that point is even more valid now. It will be the height of hypocrisy to canvass for Obi’s presidency based on competence, vision, and capacity and turn around to canvass for just any regular politician as the next governor of Enugu State in the name of a party.“Instructively, all the prominent governorship candidates in Enugu are PDP through and through irrespective of the party on which platform they are running,” he said.
According to him, the Labour Party candidate, Hon. Chijioke Edeoga, has held several public offices under the PDP for the past 24 years. “He was a member of the House of Representatives and special assistant to Goodluck Jonathan. He worked with Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi in the first four years of the administration as Commissioner of Local Government Matters.
“He was the Commissioner for Environment from 2019 until March 2022 when he joined the governorship race and he remained in the PDP until June when he joined and picked the Labour Party ticket after losing out in the PDP governorship primary election.
“But just like Nigeria, Enugu has come to that point where we don’t need leaders that will just dabble their way through for a whole eight years. We need a leader who espouses a vision, and which blueprint must have been well laid out for us to interrogate over the past few months. For instance, as I write, Edeoga is yet to present any manifesto, two weeks before the election. And even if he does so, there is no way the citizens can interrogate him,” Agwu stated.
Unlike others, Mbah has not only marshalled out his vision of a new Enugu State in his detailed manifesto since October 2022, he has additionally gone around Enugu State to market his blueprint for a new Enugu in town hall meetings in the 68 development areas or centres. He has made himself available during those engagements to be interrogated by community leaders, market women, youths, traditional institutions, women groups, and political leaders across the state on his manifesto. He has had exclusive engagements with Enugu youth, women’s organisations, churches, professional bodies, the Chamber of Commerce, etc. to answer questions on his manifesto.
Not long ago, he engaged Enugu people in a live phone-in programme across several radio stations and nobody who listened to him with an open mind will doubt that among the candidates, he is the one who has the capacity to rework Enugu State.
In this article, City People Journalist Benprince Ezeh (08068599879), lists reasons why Enugu People should throw their weight behind Peter Mbah’s gubernatorial bid.
MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP
When management meets leadership, there is a dynamic change in texture. Mbah is an experienced manager in the sense that he’s been able to build a business from the scratch and put it up to a global standard in which it competes with the biggest in the world, across Europe and the United States. He has now come to put an additional feather to his cap by getting into political leadership and as someone who has a company that manages a standing net worth of 4.4 billion dollars. No other candidate can match that feat.
TRANSPARENCY
All the businesses he has managed or owned, it has always been open for the public to see and had never embezzled funds even when he was in government. We should know that the person is not there to mess around when he sees state funds and allocations and what to do in terms of investment because he is a transparent investor that we can see.
ECONOMIC
& ENTREPRENEURIAL VISIBILITY
The country is passing through a major and multifaceted economic crisis. The model that depends on federal allocation and incremental development has run their full courses. We can no longer make any more progress relying on that old model.
So, between someone that has the capacity to innovate the system, and someone who has been a successful entrepreneur with a visible track record of accomplishments.
Peter Mbah has shown the capacity to grow something out of nothing. He grew a business (Pinnacle Oil and Gas Limited) from an N1 million capital base to one that now records well over N1.4 trillion in annual turnovers.
Pinnacle effectively joined the downstream business from a one-bedroom apartment and with just two staff at a point the subsector was already drenched and left little room for innovation, but he was able to displace the oil majors to become the number one by market shares and volumes in that industry today.
An entrepreneur, who has earned the trust of local and international investors and bankers such that they bankrolled Pinnacle’s $1 billion and Nigeria’s first offshore, subsea, and largest petroleum products terminal.
YOUTH EMPOWERMENT
At an interactive town hall meeting with the youth tagged: “A Day with Peter Mbah: Dissecting the Philosophy of Tomorrow is Here”, which was organised by Kwado Peter Mbah, a frontline support group in Enugu, at the International Conference Centre, Institute of Management and Technology (IMT), Enugu, the youths said the governorship candidate had connected with them through the youth empowerment and scholarship programmes of the Peter Mbah Foundation and his laudable manifesto geared towards the empowerment of the citizens, especially the young ones.
Mbah who was at the meet to share his views and manifesto with the youth said that his motivation was to create an enabling environment where the youths could fulfil their potential, discover their hidden talents, and compete creatively within the emerging global order. “You are the tomorrow that is here, literally speaking. How do we build that tomorrow? First, we have to adopt the can-do spirit, and second, create an enabling environment where we can thrive. Tomorrow is here, representing the compelling vision of the innate can-do spirit to better the lots of our people,” he stated.
While espousing his sector-by-sector programmes for the state, which he called integrated development programmes, Mbah maintained that the youth were at the core of his governance philosophy, adding that he would surmount the plethora of challenges facing them by providing the facilities for their training, education, skill, human capital development and empowerment, and turning the youth into productive assets.
He also explained that with the policies and programmes that would be set up by his administration, Enugu youths could easily fit into the world of robotic science, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, mechatronics, e-commerce and Fintech that would give them an edge over others.
STATE GDP GROWTH
In one of his manifestos, Mbah said that he will grow Enugu’s GDP in 8 years. In his words: “Disruptive Innovation can ensure we grow Enugu’s GDP to US$30bn in eight (8) years, I am the only candidate that has the proven track record to make this happen,” he said.
IMPROVEMENT IN TECHNOLOGY
“Technology sector in Enugu right now is not worth up to a million dollars but this is a man who has given us a transparent manifesto which I would and clearly say loudly is achievable within eight years and this will move us from a less than a million-dollar investment in ICT to close to a billion-dollar investment.
With this, Enugu people will be able to communicate with any person in the world from all digital platforms. Technology which our children will enjoy and begin to do so at a younger age will offer them ample experience that they won’t need to travel abroad to acquire such,” said Kingsley Nnaji, Principal Coordinator, Peter Mbah Support Group in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
RELIGION
Enugu State is a Christian state and they believe and mostly heed what their clerics advise. Enugu State chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, the largest Christian organization, which is made up of numerous denominations recently endorsed Peter Mbah, saying he is the right man to lead the state.
According to CAN, Mbah possesses the qualities needed for economic rebirth, industrialisation, job creation, peace, security and a thriving environment for investments in the state, saying that Mbah’s qualifications and preparedness for the task ahead convinced them of his capacity to deliver good governance and transform the state for the good of the people.
CAN, while appealing to voters to queue behind the ruling party’s candidate, said its decision to support Mbah was anchored on his proven capacity, competence, character, and outstanding track records both in the private sector and public sector.
Declaring that people should look out for a candidate with the capacity and competence to provide new infrastructure and basic amenities such as running water, good roads, a robust healthcare system, and quality education, the Christian body said the programmes presented by Mbah had shown he would do beyond that since he had been able to do that for the people with his personal resources.
Rev. Obiora Okeke, Secretary of the body, who spoke at the session said Mbah’s entrepreneurial exploits in the private sector, stressing that he (Mbah) would do very well with the support of the people.
He called on Christians and people across the state to vote for candidates with competence, capacity and character, and outstanding records of development and avoid voting for someone because of clannish sentiments or party affiliation.
PEACE & SECURITY
Mbah in his manifesto said that security would be paramount in his government if elected and that the people of Enugu will sleep and wake up with their doors open. He said: “This will be achieved through three-pronged intervention: An integrated programme to accelerate youth employment for all Enugu citizens; (b) Integrated rural development programmes; and (c) Community policing and inclusion of all citizens in the governance of the State.
“This integrated approach is informed by the empirical evidence that youth unemployment and poverty engender insecurity in communities, everywhere development history has shown that the best way to peace and security in societies is to address the root causes of fragility and insecurity in communities, creating opportunities for productive employment for youths and women, lifting people out of extreme poverty and building prosperous societies. Peace, progress, and sustainable prosperity are inextricably linked. Without sustainable peace, there can be no sustainable development,” he said.
CONTINUITY
Enugu State has always been a state where new governments coming in are bound to continue where the previous ones stopped because it has always been the same party. Mbah at a rally retreated that government is a continuum, “we will take ownership of all projects and programmes initiated and currently being executed by the government. The projects still under construction at handover will be completed for the benefit of Ndi Enugu,” he said.
JOBS FROM AGRICULTURE
Peter Mbah has assured the people of the state of his willingness to create over 1.2 million jobs with the abundant agricultural potential the state is naturally endowed with. Mbah made the pledge during an interactive section with members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), Enugu State Chapter, in Enugu recently.
He said his plan was to transform the agricultural sector from subsistence farming to mechanised farming where the agro-allied industry would lead to the creation of different businesses. “If voted, my team’s objective in the agricultural sector would be to establish special agro-allied processing zones across the three senatorial districts in Enugu.
“We are also going to deploy technology, not just migrating from manual to mechanised agriculture, but also migrating from pipeline to platform means in intervening in the agricultural sector,” he said. According to him, technology is taking over space and his team would have to do a quantum leap and be in front and make sure that the farmers are ICT literate to be able to use the technology to enhance and scale up their production.
“We know that if we can add an additional hectare of farmland to the level of farming we are doing now; we would have created four employments. It is one hectare, and four people. Our plan is to have 100,000 hectares of farmland in each senatorial zone. That would amount to 400,000 jobs in each zone and 1.2 million jobs generated from agriculture alone across the state.
“We intend to do that by designating these areas as special economic zones so that the friction that the commercial farmers would ordinarily have with the communities would be avoided by such designation. We will work with the State House of Assembly to harmonise the land tenure system so that we can plot them depending on the size of what investors want to do,” he said.
Mbah who reiterated his stance on moving agriculture from the manual and pipeline method of cultivation to platform and technology-based agro-allied industries where there would be a value chain in production.
That would create processing, packaging, storage facilities and infrastructure that would facilitate the transportation of farm produce to the market.
