The vice-president’s visit to Uyo

Vice President Kashim Shettima visited Akwa Ibom on Monday to launch the second phase of the federal government’s National Human Capital Development programme (HCD), but the visit underscored a few subtexts that require further examination. In the first place, many people, including President Tinubu’s ardent supporters, do not know that the federal government has such a programme, and a lot more would not imagine why Akwa Ibom was chosen for its launch. The expression ‘Human Capital Development’ has been loosely used by many politicians during campaigns, but I’m not quite sure if its significance is well understood.

In the private sector, HCD refers simply to a range of functions that pertain to staff recruitment, training, promotion and career planning and development; but as a government programme, it has far broader scope and connotation, indicating the process of developing skills, knowledge and competencies that enhance an individual’s productivity and earning potential. It therefore involves investments in education, training, and health that improve a person’s ability to contribute to the economy and society.

The National HCD programme, which Shettima unveiled in Uyo, is a federal government programme domiciled in the office of the Vice President to promote education, health, nutrition, labour, climate change adaptation, clean energy and gender inclusivity. Over the years, Akwa Ibom State has made significant strides in these areas – Gov. Eno has even incorporated them into his ARISE Agenda – to warrant the VP’s public acknowledgement and endorsement.

The government has been implementing free and compulsory primary and secondary education for over 20 years now. The programme was later expanded to include payment of WAEC and NECO fees for all students registered in its public schools. Every year, the government spends between N600 million and N800 million every year to pay for these exam fees for graduating secondary students. Very few states in the federation have sustained such a policy in the last 26 years. The Eno administration has gone further by remodelling some of the 1,110 primary schools in the state into well-equipped world-class learning centres. I hope that very soon all primary schools in the state will be of this standard.

How about health? The state has some of the best health facilities in the country. Primary health centres in every LGA are being overhauled and reequipped by the current administration, following in the footsteps of the last administration, which invested heavily in upgrading general hospitals across the state. The outcome of these investments in primary and secondary healthcare was announced by the VP himself. “With an under-five mortality rate of 80, compared to the national average of 110, and with only 3.5% of primary school-age children out of school – far below the national average of 25.6% – your state is not merely compliant with our national vision. You are ahead of the national curve. And I assure you the federal government stands ready to partner hand-in-hand with you,” the VP said at the launch of the HCD in Uyo.

What this means is that out of every 1,000 under-five children in Akwa Ibom State, 80 die before they reach five years of age. This is a far better performance than the national average of 110. But we should do far better. No child in Akwa Ibom should die. When Obong Victor Attah was governor, his wife, Allisson Atta,h recognised childhood malnutrition as a big problem in the state. To address this, she implemented a scheme that taught our rural women how to augment infant feeding with protein. In charge of that programme was the late Prof (Mrs) Etuk, a biochemist and daughter of late Dr. Clement Isong.

I interviewed the late Prof (Mrs) Etuk several years ago, and was moved by the ingenuity of Allison Attah in eradicating incidents of childhood malnutrition in the state. Another First Lady later came up with another brilliant idea that further enhanced HCD in the state. Mrs Unoma Ekaette Akpabio introduced a programme that supports women with multiple births. Any Akwa Ibom woman who gave birth to twins, triplets, or more received visits and financial support from the government. I hope this programme is still alive in the ministry of women affairs. My wife was so impressed by this programme that she thought all the other states should emulate Akwa Ibom.

Enter Gov. Umo Eno. Right from inception, this ordained pastor has made it clear that his administration would be heavily tilted towards human capital development, and at the core is uplifting the less privileged and the poor. He has established the Ibom Leadership and Entrepreneurship Development Centre (Ibom-LED) to train and offer financial support to young businessmen and women in different fields. He’s also supporting thousands of artisans and farmers across the state with cash and equipment worth about N5 billion in a massive empowerment programme. This is meant to stimulate the rural economy, create jobs, and augment standards of living.

But unfortunately, some elite members of society are displeased with this because they think that it’s a waste of resources. What’s wrong with the government providing assistance to farmers, micro and small businesses operating at the LGAs? These are the people who produce the food we eat and create jobs for themselves and others. Yet, the government is only spending N5 billion of the N950 billion budgeted for the state this year – that’s just 0.5% of the total budget. As I said to some friends, it is better for the government to invest N5 billion in farmers and small businesses across the state than spend that much to purchase high-end SUVs and houses as gifts to some ‘’political stakeholders’’ in Abuja.

Vice President Shettima has commended the governor ‘’for not only adopting the HCD framework but also localising its operation and placing people in the centre of public policies”. The VP said Akwa Ibom is the first state “in the nation to localise the HCD vision in its truest form…by adopting the strategies in local government areas”. I congratulate the state on this achievement.