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The Road Ahead
Being
a speech by His Excellency, Alhaji Abdullahi Adamu, Executive Governor of
Nasarawa State, on the occasion of the opening of the Nasarawa State Economic
Summit 2000, Lafia, November 27, 2000
 On behalf of the
government and people of our beloved state, we warmly welcome all of you to the
Nasarawa State Economic Summit 2000. We are particularly delighted to have with
us representatives of the Small Business Administration from the United States
of America and our resource persons from various parts of the country. We deeply
appreciate your support for this year’s summit, the second in the series since
our administration took office eighteen months ago. I commend the state
committee on the economic summit, the state ministry of commerce, industries and
co-operatives for working so hard towards the success of the summit. They
deserve a round of applause for being able to assemble this glittering gathering
of the crème de la crème in academia, commerce, industry and the business
world in general for this summit.
Our
theme for the summit is Towards Effective Utilization of Raw Materials in
Nasarawa State. Its choice underlines one fundamental fact about our state. We
have industrial raw materials. Part of our problem is the poor response to their
exploitation and utilization. Obviously, our abundant mineral and agricultural
resources will make no difference to the lives of our people unless we can tap
them and put them into effective use. In the next two days, our resource persons
drawn from the business and the academia will examine the various strategies
under the theme for this summit. We are confident that at the end of the summit,
a new vista of pragmatic strategies will open before us in the state.
It is important to reiterate the broad objective of the summit by first
of all saying what it is not. It is not a talk shop. The Economic Summit is not
a forum for spinning development theories. It is a forum for putting them to the
test. But we do not intend that our state will be used as a guinea pig for
testing developmental theories. I am sure you do appreciate that.
We
have assembled some of the best brains in economics and business to help us
chart a new course for the rapid and participatory development of our young
state. This is the ambition of our administration. And it is the expectation of
our people. Few states in the federation are as richly blessed as we are in
Nasarawa State. Our mineral resources, if fully exploited and utilized to feed
local and foreign industries, can make all the difference in the economic and
social circumstances of our people. Our immense agricultural resources are
equally immense. Our state is the leading producer of yams, beans, cassava, rice
and sorghum.
These
should give you a fairly good picture of a state caught up in the irony of
under-development, namely, so much to reap and yet so little is reaped. This, of
course, is the unacceptable fact of our nation’s under-development. Our state
merely mirrors it. Like our state, Nigeria is very richly blessed. Yet, despite
its rich blessings of crude oil, solid mineral resources and agricultural
produce, our country continues to be referred to in derisive terms as a
potentially rich nation. We have so much and yet our people get so little.
Poverty in the midst of so much of everything that has made other nations great,
is both intolerable and unacceptable to us in this state. We call for an urgent
national attention to this destructive irony of our existence. We must replace
the unacceptable face of under-development with an acceptable one. This is
precisely what we are doing in our state. The steps may be small and even
ungainly, but we are moving ahead, fully conscious of the enormity of our
responsibilities and of our place in the socio-political history of our nation
and our beloved state.
Our promise to our people is that we will not leave this state as we
found it. This is not an empty promise. In one and half years, we have shown
beyond any iota of doubt that we will faithfully keep our promise. We are taking
Nasarawa State to greater heights. Our mineral resources are special divine
gifts to our people. We deny them these special gifts if we fail to take
whatever actions are necessary to exploit them. We will free our people from the
shackles of under-development. We shall lift them from the morass of privation
and a life that is merely an existence. Our farmers must enjoy the fruits of
their labour. We look forward to a future Nasarawa State when its farmers will
no longer be poor peasants who put in so much and yet reap so little from their
labour. We refuse to let our people be in the 21st century and yet
live in the 19th century. We want a glorious future for our people.
Our goal is ambitious but we will not be deterred from pursuing it with vigour
and determination until it is attained.
Let me say one or two things about the exploitation of our solid
minerals. Under our constitution, solid minerals are on the exclusive
legislative list. This means, of course, that it is the business of the federal
government. Unfortunately, the federal government has not shown enough interest
in the development of our solid minerals. The federal ministry of solid minerals
does not have a comprehensive inventory of the country’s solid minerals. A
comprehensive inventory would show the level of deposit of each solid mineral
where it occurs. We have since found that companies that were given prospecting
licences for years now have done nothing with them, obviously for lack of
information. The field is left more or less entirely in the hands of the
so-called illegal miners who are experts in their own right on solid mineral
deposits. We are working with them to obtain the necessary information in this
vital sector of our economy.
We have now moved in to assist the federal government by commissioning
some reputable consultants to carry out a comprehensive inventory of selected
solid minerals in the state. We expect them to submit the final report to us by
the first quarter of next year. From their report, we will work out bankable
proposals on the selected solid minerals for the consideration of prospective
investors.
We have taken small but sure steps in the last eighteen months towards
changing the present and future of our state and the people. Since our first
economic summit last year, we have opened the state to the outside world by
putting it on the World Wide Web. Since it came on stream about a year ago, our
site has facilitated the dissemination of information about the state to
prospective foreign investors. Hundreds of curious investors visit the site
every month seeking information on our mineral and agricultural resources. Our
web site is complemented by the Nasarawa State Minerals Development Company,
which provides all the necessary information on our mineral resources to
prospective investors and canvasses for joint venture projects. Many prospective
foreign investors have visited the state to see things for themselves. We also
sent trade missions to the United States, Canada, Europe and the Far East to
showcase the industrial and commercial potentials of our state.
These
visits are already yielding the anticipated fruits. A fertilizer blending plant
with foreign participation is now under construction in the state. This plant is
more or less a divine answer to the prayers of our teeming farming population.
We promise Nigerians that when the plant goes into production, our state will
take care of all their food needs. We will not only be the breadbasket but also
the yam basket, the rice basket, the beans basket and the cassava basket of the
nation.
We
are in the process of concluding an agreement with a Chinese firm for the
establishment of a sugar cane plantation, a sugar refinery and a small-scale
cement company in the state. One of our major projects with foreign
participation is the beef lot and beef processing plant. Work has commenced on
this project already. It is sited in Karu local government. Our primary market
target is the Federal Capital Territory; Kaduna and Lagos states. A lapidary
plant for cutting and polishing gemstones is being set up in Akwanga. We have
purchased and taken delivery of the machines and equipment for the industry.
We
recently completed the state International Modern Market at Karu near Abuja. We
have since given the keys to the lessors ahead of the official commission of the
market because we do not want them to lose faith in us. They can now start
sub-leasing arrangements so that by the time the market is commissioned, it will
be fully operational. We expect the international model market to be a major
boost to inter and intra state commerce and social interaction in the country.
We are discussing with the federal ministry of commerce so that the Karu
International Modern Market will be granted economic free zone status. This, we
believe, will be a further incentive to foreign commercial enterprises.
The
theme of this summit has been carefully chosen because it reflects, if you like,
our anxiety. To put the theme another way, how do we effectively utilize our raw
materials? It is a big question and one, which
touches the very basis of development. We have no doubt that the experts
have the answer to this and similar questions. As a layman, let me say that our
summit theme must not in any way give the impression that our problem with our
mineral and agricultural resources is lack of their effective utilization as raw
materials. Economic exploitation of these resources is still part of the core
problem facing us. We know, for sure, that our farmers are producing far below
their capacity. Thus with the right agricultural implements and inputs, they
should do much more than they are doing at the moment. How to help them boost
their yield is a major concern of this administration. That is why in the last
eighteen months, we have spared no efforts in providing the necessary assistance
such as loans and inputs such as fertilizer at subsidized prices to our farmers.
We
are committed to doing much more for them. Indeed, we have set a Produce
Development and Marketing Company similar to the old marketing boards to assist
in the promotion of agricultural development in the state. It will assist the
farmers in marketing and getting a fair price for their produce. If there is a
glut of farm produce, it will buy the excesses from the farmers. This is to
ensure that the farmers do not lose money and feel discouraged. Government is
involved in this as a facilitator with no profit motive. We will encourage the
private sector to get fully involved in this process and free the government of
this additional responsibility.
Yet,
we must recognize the obvious limitations of government. Government is not and
must no longer be seen as a Father Christmas. It does not have the means to do
everything. Even if it had the means, it would be inadvisable for it to do so.
Government should be a catalyst. It must provide the necessary infrastructures
such as light, roads and water and allow private individuals to invest in
productive ventures. Our rural and urban development programmes take care of
these infrastructures. Under our rural road development scheme, we have
constructed a network of rural feeder roads across the state. Under our rural
electrification scheme, we have also linked some local government headquarters
to the national grid and also provided independent power supply to a good number
of others. Nasarawa State Integrated Rural Development Agency is providing
potable water through the sinking of boreholes in the rural areas.
Our
purposes here are two fold. Firstly, these basic amenities make the lives of our
people less brutish. Secondly, they advise a dispersal of industries. In other
words, there will be no need for industries to be concentrated in urban areas to
the detriment of the rural areas as this exacerbates rural-urban drift.
Let me, therefore, once more appeal to our local entrepreneurs to
urgently consider taking advantage of the conducive investment climate in the
state and become partners in our progress. If they leave the field entirely to
foreign investors, they would be failing to contribute to the rapid and
meaningful development of our state and the upliftment of our people from
poverty, disease and squalor. The key to the transformation of our state lies in
its industrial development. Or, in keeping with the theme of this summit, the
key is in effective utilization of our mineral and agricultural resources as raw
materials for small, medium and large-scale industrial enterprises.
Opening
up the state to investors brings another pressure on the state and that is in
the area of housing and hotels. There is an acute shortage of accommodation in
the so-called satellite towns bordering Abuja to which thousands of people are
being driven because of the high property rents in the city itself. We welcome
estate developers who will assist in taking this pressure off the government. We
have a comprehensive package of incentives for such investors. We also welcome
investors in small and medium scale hotels in these areas. It is our sincere
hope that our local entrepreneurs will take up this challenge so that our
development effort is not hampered by lack of housing or hotel accommodation for
foreign or indigenous investors from other parts of the country.
When experts talk of raw materials, they refer to basic
resources which feed industries and from which new industrial products are made.
Perhaps, we would do well to widen the application of that term to include
untrained manpower which itself is a raw material from which a trained and
expert work force can be hammered out. Lack of the appropriate manpower is the
bane of development. Whatever mineral and agricultural resources may be
available to this state, their meaningful exploitation would still elude us if
we lack the necessary manpower. Trained manpower is the first condition in
industrial and economic development. Our people must be prepared by being
trained to take on the responsibilities demanded of them now and in the near
future.
We admit that our young state cannot boast of a reservoir of skilled and
top level manpower. The state government is fully conscious of the fact that the
dearth of this level of manpower could be a drag on its development programme.
To remedy this, we have made education our number one priority. When we came in
about one and half years ago, education in the state was more or less in coma.
Most of the schools were an eye sore. We moved in quickly and today the picture
is vastly different. We established special science schools to develop science
education. The 21st century is the century of science. Our people
must be part of this new century with its vast promises in medicine and
technology. A committee set up to advise us on a state university has made a
favourable recommendation. A bill for the establishment of the state university
is now before the state legislature. We expect the university to take off in the
next academic session.
The fruits of these manpower development efforts will take some time to
mature. But the seeds have either been or are being planted. And that is the
only guarantee for a better future for our people. For indeed, our duty is to
lay the foundation on which future generations can continue to build a
prosperous state.
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, we have laid before you our
ambition and the expectations of our people. We urge you to please provide us
with the road map to our destination.
Thank you.
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