TheCable

Peter Mbah, governor of Enugu state, has challenged leaders of the south-east to maximise their economy of scale and pool resources to build critical regional infrastructure like railways and roads.

Mbah said this will help create a common market and boost socio-economic prosperity in the geopolitical zone.

The governor gave the charge at the ‘South East Economic and Security Summit’ which held in Owerri on Thursday.

“How do we ensure that we have a road network that moves across the various cities in Anambra, Abia, Imo, Enugu and Ebonyi?” he asked.

“How do we build a ring road that connects all the major cities in the south-east so that we can seamlessly encourage those who are producing and those who are providing services to distribute their products and services across the different cities of the south-east seamlessly?

“These are things we must be intentional about if we are going to deal with unemployment and insecurity in the south-east.

“Since we now have railways in the concurrent list, there is nothing stopping us.

“So, if we pick one or two projects from this summit that we can say as a people of the south-east, we want to make sure that we execute them, I believe we can achieve them and they are going to have a huge spillover effect on our economy and security.”

On how to fund the projects, Mbah said: “That brings me to this philosophy of ‘Aku Ruo Ulo’, which, in my view, is for us to encourage our kith and kin to bring back their wealth to the south-east”.

“Putting a benchmark of about 30 percent and 40 percent of our wealth will go a long way,” he said.

“We have people that are wealthy Igbos. So, if we begin to think about how we invest some of those funds in the south-east, it is a way of making sure that we have a huge capital inflow to be able to execute some of these critical projects.”

The south-east has been grappling with a spate of insecurity in recent times, with separatist groups and non-state actors accused of torching property, assassinating politicians, murdering security operatives and killing innocent civilians.

Mbah canvassed a multi-dimensional approach to tackling insecurity in the region, including a common security command and control centre, inter-agency cooperation, and non-kinetic approaches like economic transformation, employment generation and moral suasion.

The governor tasked organisers of the summit to employ the best of Igbo brains to curate and prepare the ideas from the summit in an implementable format.

He assured that south-east governors are ready to work together to ensure the full implementation of those ideas.