By Odo Ogenyi,Uyo
Akwa Ibom State government has said that the recently commissioned St Gabriel Coconut Refinery like other industries built by Gov Udom Emmanuel would be run under private enterprise system.
Information and Strategy commissioner, Comrade Ini Ememobong who made this known after a tour of the inductries said the state government adopted this model so that the companies could in turn bring dividends to government.
Ememobong who admitted that government is not a good bussiness manager noted that Ibom Air as well as the Ibom Icon hotels were being run on the privatization model and have been profitable to the state.
The commissioner said the strategy has injected life into the economy of the state saying that such would be replicated in the newly commissioned coconut refinery.
Dispelling fear on if the Coconut Refinery would be well managed, Ememobong said, “there is no fear of how to properly manage those businesses as the governor has shown great example with the way Ibom Airlines is being run. Though owned by the government, it is run like a private enterprise.
“Same thing is applicable to Ibom Icon Hotel. The management and the board are dominated by private business people and every six months they come to the executive council meeting to give an update on their activities. The state is getting dividend from them.”
Speaking further, he said the governor in attempt to create jobs for the teeming youths engaged humans to perform some tasks, machines can do in some of the industries noting that the refinery crushes about One Million Nuts daily.
“With mechanization introduced to industrialization, his Excellency consciously designed a human interface into it, some things machines can handle, his Excellency employed the youths to be doing them so as to engage them.”
“The principle of private sector is what we use in running all our endeavors, level of equity in Ibom Air is purely government, fully owned by government but run privately, we don’t have government interference unless where very neccessary.” He explained.
On education, the commissioner noted that the governor in an attempt not to have distorted development in education declared an emergency where he convened education summit that set up a think tank which came up with a ten year road map.
He further noted that the state government made the road map non partisan such that members of the opposition party and other stakeholders in the education sectors were among the think tank that drew the ten year road map.
According to Ememobong, “In 2019 the government of the day convened an education summit and set up think tank whose duty was to draw up a ten year road map for education because the problem in Nigeria is policy inconsistency, every policy takes coloration and complexion of the person who makes it. We don’t want to have distorted development in education.
“For us here we decided to have a ten year education road map. To make sure it is non partisan, we made sure that members of the opposition were there; Education stakeholders were there also. We later realized there were issues in education.
The Commissioner who added that the governor has been consistent in the payment of WAEC fees which runs in tune of over N800 Million said the Akwa Ibom State University has full accreditation with a fully digitized studio for the communications department.
“All our schools of nursing and health technology before lost their accreditation but now have regained their accreditation, and are prepared to produce their graduate.” He said
On the perennial flood in some parts of Uyo, the commissioner said the previous efforts by the past administrations did not yield expected result as the water collected was not properly emptied
“Governor Udom Emmanuel saw the need to eliminate the challenges of flooding in some parts of Uyo. An assessment of the situation showed that the previous efforts in that regard did not achieve the desired results because the collected water was not properly emptied. Most parts of Uyo are very low ground and that is why flooding occurs in some places when it rains.” He said.
