On Wednesday, October 21, Governor Peter Mbah appeared at a town hall hosted by Afia TV Enugu, where he said the economic reforms introduced by President Bola Tinubu prevented Nigeria from sliding into economic collapse and have started laying the foundation for sustainable growth. In the wide-ranging interview, the Enugu State governor also spoke on his administration’s revolution in different sectors. Damian Duruiheoma was there. Excerpts:
Looking back at your campaign promises in 2023, do you think the vision you sold to the people is beginning to take shape?
Before our election in 2023, we had imagined what Enugu could become, and we challenged our people to stretch their imagination. And then said to them, look, this is what Enugu could really become under our watch at the time if we got your mandate.
We imagined an Enugu where our young people could build their futures here. An Enugu where businesses would flourish; an Enugu where our children would receive education that prepares them for the future; an Enugu where our people would have access to quality healthcare, live securely, and take pride in a place they call home. So I’m really excited to engage our people to see whether that ambition, in their view, is also beginning to take fiscal shape, or whether it’s still within their imagination. I’d like to hear it from them. And so that’s why I’m excited this afternoon. Look around you; we’re sitting here at an international conference centre.
Just imagine a few years back, Enugu without an international conference centre. This international conference centre has opened its doors to Nigeria and the world. We’re bringing limitless opportunities to our business owners, to our people, and in health, education, transportation, and all areas.
The Enugu International Hospital is about to be commissioned. There are roads connecting our communities. On transportation, there is Enugu Air. We are revamping our industries, building new ones; the list is endless.
What has the budget performance been like for education?
We’re starting with a sector. When we came in and looked at the data, we became very concerned. We also recognised that if we’re looking at the long term to eradicate poverty, build wealth, and make Enugu a place where our young people would build their future, we needed to aggressively intervene in that sector. So what we have done over the last three budget cycles has been to dedicate 33 per cent to that sector. I think the lowest we came was 32 per cent. But on average, it’s been 33 per cent across the three budget cycles we’ve had since we assumed office, dedicating 33 per cent of our total spending to education.
Again, we did that because we could see the connection. Today we hear quite a lot of talk about the smart green schools and, of course, all the beauty around it. But for us, it was never about the bricks and mortar. We recognised from the very onset that that sector needed aggressive intervention, something akin to an emergency declaration.
We couldn’t expect our children just going through the motion of learning without actually acquiring the relevant skills required for the New World Order. So, what we’ve done is transform the entire education system in the way we treat our young ones. For the first time in the history of the state, we provided access to early childhood learning in public schools. That never happened before. I don’t think it happens anywhere in this country, where, from age three, our children are able to assess learning.
And beyond learning, we’re also able to use the same platform to intervene in their health care, because when we bring the child to the index at age three, we also look at the health profile of that child.
By the way, you know, in our smart schools, we have a clinic. We also have that clinic manned by a registered nurse. So, that way, we’re able to assess the medical records of the kids. Some of them, because, you know, most of these schools are in rural areas, you may even have kids who do not have medical records. We started to regularise their medical records. Ensure that they have received their prophylaxis, the vaccinations that they ought to have taken before age three that they are up to date with that.
We also do aphasia for those who may not have received their vaccines, apply the dose, and then assess their stunting, whether or not they are stunting, look at their height, make sure they are growing at the right height. Their weight; make sure they are growing at the right weight.
These are all the things we do from age three. And then they go through the nursery, the pre-primary one, and then the pre-primary two, and the other major transformation in the education sector.
We have also now built a system where we now have basic one to basic nine. In our Smart Green School location, you’re able to start from your basic one all the way to basic nine, without interruption.
So you technically have 12 years of compulsory and free education. And when we say free, we mean free in the true sense of the word. That means there’s no registration fee. You don’t have to buy a uniform as a parent; we provide uniforms to the kids. You don’t buy any textbooks. You don’t buy any notebooks. They are all provided free. We’ve also done something very radical: we’ve transformed the pedagogy, the system of learning, the method of delivery; we’ve moved away from the rote system of learning to what we now refer to as an experiential system, where we teach the kids by practising.
So beyond the digital skills that they all have to be exposed to at those very young ages, I’m talking about each smart school having its robotics and artificial intelligence hub, and all that. We have an innovation hub where these kids are taught how to build robots and all that. And then, of course, we also have practical skills and all that. The important thing now is that learning no longer travels in one direction, where the teacher stands in front and just talks to these kids what to memorise and repeat. The kids now see their classrooms as a creativity hub. They see themselves as potential problem solvers. They are exposed to compelling social problems, and they are taught how to address them. And so they can learn, but they also practice what they learn as they go on.
The smart schools we have in the state now, are they the smart schools of your dream?
Well, just imagine the scale of the projects we’re talking about. What we have done in the last three years– building 268 smart green schools, and the buildings are outstanding.
It’s perhaps something that probably could take 10 to 20 years to do. When you have fast track at that scale, you’re bound to have teething problems. We’re not oblivious to it, but we have resolved to deal with them.
We don’t procrastinate. We wanted to do these things at scale. That was the whole idea. Not to leave any child behind in the state. We could have decided to say, you know what? Let’s do three smart green schools, one per zone. That would, on its own, still be great. And recall how model schools were built those days; you probably had one in one state, or maybe even one per zone. But if we had just done three smart schools in the state, it would still be a mega; it would make headlines.
But we didn’t say we wanted to build 17 smart green schools. We could have also built one per local government. We said every child in this state must have access to quality learning. And we did 268 smart green schools.
You talked about fast-tracking the project. Does this absolve the contractors of guilt regarding the incidents recorded?
Oh no, certainly not. Those ones, where you have these defects, naturally go back to fix them. And for those we cannot, you know, those that have been recalcitrant, we blacklist. And there are consequences for that. And don’t forget that we got an advance payment guarantee from all these contractors. And we do have an option to call those up if it becomes necessary.
What do you have to say about Tinubu’s economic policies?
You’d notice that before the bold and courageous decision made by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, we were at the economic precipice in this country. We’re talking about over N27 trillion ways and means. What that means is that we’re in a hole. And the only way we were trying to get out of that hole was digging deeper. Imagine what would have happened: if we had continued on that trajectory, it would have been a total collapse. We would have had a failed nation. But for the courageous decision the President made to halt this.
He could have come in and said, ‘Okay, let’s keep printing money. Let’s keep digging deeper.’ What we’re witnessing or experiencing today would have been child’s play if those decisions were not made. And the way a nation functions effectively is for you to, first of all, address the macro pressures.
Our foreign reserve today is about 56, 58 billion dollars, the highest in almost two decades. Now, you look at our foreign exchange. It’s somehow stabilised because we allowed it to be driven by the forces of the market. So it floated. It wasn’t any longer controlled.
It would have been disastrous if we had continued in that tragedy. Today, the economy is stabilised because all the indicators at the macro level are looking very good. Now, the next thing you want to push would be growth.
Now, once you have that stability, what is going to drive growth? Private capital. And private capital will not show up if they think that the economy is not stable. So you have to stabilise the economy to attract that capital to come. And once they begin to come, you have shared prosperity. You have that cascading, trickling down. You have jobs being created.
You have a poverty level coming down because people are able to work. Their earning power is increasing. That’s what this president has done. And I think we must commend his courage to take that decision.
In fact, we never had anybody in the first term of the administration, even in their second term, having the courage to take those bold decisions. And we are on the right path. And I can tell you from the numbers we’re seeing and the growth we are witnessing now; we are seeing the lights at the end of the tunnel.
Talking about connecting to the centre, has the state made any gains security-wise from these connections in the centre?
Well, certainly. Don’t forget that even the idea of setting up the Distress Response Squad ( DRS) was approved by the centre. We can’t, if it was not approved by the centre. You have policemen and women who work under the DRS that, you know, obviously are essentially making sure that the command and control centre works effectively.
And then if you look at the regional strength, that is also something that we have benefited a lot from, because, frankly, we are all having some kind of intelligence sharing.
You may not see the physical building of the central command and control centre, but there is a lot more collaboration now within the zone than we had before. And, you know, we get the support from our security agencies. We’re working very well with the army, the police, the DSS, the Air Force, and all the security agencies in the state, including the NSCDC. You know, we have a very fantastic relationship with them.
There’s a whole lot of benefits. We have, as Ndi Enugu, essentially, from connecting to the centre, Enugu has always been the regional hub. We even gained the status of a township before amalgamation. So that’s how important Enugu has been. But I would also tell you something: we were almost losing that preeminence as a regional hub, because we were increasingly being displaced. We were not connected to where, you know, where things happen. There are a lot of things that should be happening here. And as you can see today, almost all the conferences, the functions are coming back to where they belong, where it should happen.
NAFEST is happening here sometime in November. We have the National Sports Festival. We have the National Council on Agriculture. We have several national activities going on here. So that’s opening possibilities to our businesses and our people. Well, because of that, it would not be happening now.
Since the start of electioneering campaigns, you have made over 800 appointments. It is said that these were out of fear for the elections. What’s your plan for sustaining them?
I think what I understand you to be saying is that at a time when a lot of people think that the administration is coming to an end, we’re doubling down, we’re being proactive, we’re saying no, there’s still work to be done. I think you should give us credit for bringing in more hands to make sure that we accelerate the pace of work. And that’s what we’re doing. So, it’s not being nervous.
It’s actually saying that there’s still a lot to do and we have to do it. And that’s essentially what we’re doing. It’s not a problem.
N150 million fees imposed on political parties on campaign posters in Enugu…
The fees that people pay for signage; it’s not even an executive order. It is the law of a legal state. And I think some people have actually gone to court to challenge that law; the court has actually given judgments that it is legal because, again, as I said, it is established by law. It is the law. It’s of general application.
Go back to the law. Go and review it. I challenge you to look at that law. You will never see in that law where it exempts APC. So it means it’s of general application. So everybody is covered. So you have to pay the fees. And of course, failure to do so is a violation of the law.
You are the general coordinator of APC’s presidential campaign council in the Southeast. Now we understand the controversy that erupted when the Rainbow Coalition led by the leader of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Minister of FCT, Chief Nyesom Wike, came to light. What’s your position on that?
Well, frankly, I think politics is all about alignment and realignment, right. If, as APC, we’re today treated as a beautiful bride and we have quite a lot of interest, people willing to align with us, it will be inappropriate for us to push them out. We are happy to bring any party that is willing to join forces with us and get Mr President re-elected in APC and also support us to re-elect all our APC candidates. And that’s really what it is, to pull forces as much as we can.
What is your take on the debate for a possible return of fuel subsidy as a means of ending the hardship among citizens?
I think it’s a misconception. There is no confusion. What I think we should do when we have opportunities or platforms like this is to dismantle the misconception. First of all, as you alluded to in your question, my background is in business and, of course, specifically in the oil and gas sector.
I have written several pieces on why the subsidy is not sustainable and why it should be removed. And I knew when I did the project that I did in Lekki, again, that project could only thrive in a non-subsidy environment.
Don’t forget that the subsidy had been long gone on diesel, which is even what the mass transit vehicles use. The subsidy that we were dealing with was a subsidy on PMS. That’s premium motor spirit. If you think about it, it is those guys with the SUV, with the big vehicles, that actually benefited more from that subsidy. So, if you wanted to talk about subsidy or apply subsidy, I don’t think the subsidy we practised before the president removed that subsidy was even the right one for the country. Because even the people we were looking at benefiting from that subsidy were only insignificantly benefiting from it. It was largely beneficial to our wealthy ones.
But, of course, you can have targeted subsidy and then begin to decide how you target a particular segment of the society, the very downtrodden. I think you can almost notice that the government is doing that.
The government is aggressive on cash transfer. There is also the wards’ development programme, where the government is targeting 1,000 persons per ward across the entire country to be able to provide seed capital for them to become productive. And that’s targeted. The funds we’re saving from the removal of that subsidy are channelled to the segment the government really wants to help.
Anybody essentially talking about bringing back subsidy, for me, I would regard it as a pathetic misconception.
Having watched you work for nearly four years. You need to tell us why Enugu should vote for you and renew your tenure?
Let us imagine the Enugu we knew four years ago. Let’s just imagine an Enugu without Hotel Presidential. Let’s imagine an Enugu without an International Conference Center. Let’s imagine an Enugu without Enugu Air. You don’t want to imagine an Enugu without an International Hospital, an Enugu without CNG buses, the Niger Gas. It’s endless.
Let’s stretch the imagination a little further. Imagine an Enugu in four years that will be generating 660 megawatts of electricity anywhere you can live in the entire state, and we are able to provide 24\7 electricity. You cannot come into your house and have the lights off. Businesses can flourish. You can run your business for a whole week without worrying about the cost of diesel.
Just imagine an Enugu where we generate electricity and the people of Enugu are buying that at N120 because they own the coal that is powering the electricity. Imagine an Enugu where you just have to ride not just on our CNG buses, but you have the monorail that can take you from point A to point B. Imagine an Enugu where you can fly from here to the UK, USA, China and Dubai.
We have asked you to do some imagination over what we were doing a few years ago before we came in. But even more profound is the work that we have ahead of us. You just imagine an Enugu where our children are receiving education that prepares them for the world because they have the evolving 21st-century skills. They’ve been imbued with those skills. Imagine again an Enugu where all the roads are paved, where you don’t have any part of the city with an unpaved road. And so the decisions we make in the days, weeks and months ahead are quite decisive. It’s going to be very decisive. So we do have a duty. If these imaginations capture our fancy to do some work, that work is to uphold this Enugu of our dreams.
This Enugu that we have imagined for generations is now taking fiscal shape before our very eyes, coming into our view, we do have a duty to fight for it. We do have a duty to continue to make sure that that bar does not come down, that that standard we have set, that Enugu trajectory, that Enugu story is sustained.
So I would invite Ndi Enugu to continue to keep faith with us on this journey; this journey of greatness; this journey of growth; and this journey of development.
You spoke about revitalising agriculture as it concerns palm oil, infrastructure, and public utilities for sustainable growth in Enugu. What are you doing about this?
For agriculture, when we assumed office, we upgraded the Ministry of Agriculture. First, it was originally known as the Ministry of Agriculture. Then we moved it to the Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-industrialisation. We did that not just because we wanted a fancy nomenclature. We did that because we realised the contribution of agriculture to our GDP. And don’t forget that the target was to grow the GDP sevenfold in eight years. We decided to activate all the state’s assets in that area. The first thing we did was to have a joint venture with a company called Pragmatic Farm to activate our United Farm Products Limited, which used to be UPPL but is now Enugu United Farm Products Limited (EUPPL).
We had a joint venture that would see an injection of about a hundred billion naira into the investment in that farm, and today, that plantation is very active. It’s a total of 6,700 hectares of land.
Then, of course, a number of those trees were not producing because of their age. But today, we have over 2,000 hectares that have been cultivated and are producing. And some of the old trees have also been activated, resold, you know, reduced to produce.
Today also, we have reactivated what used to be AVOP, the Anambra Vegetable Oil Products. It is now EVOP, Enugu Vegetable Oil Products. So today, we actually produce palm oil.
Beyond the production of palm oil, we’re even taking it a step further, where we will soon receive the refinery because we also want the equipment for the refinery, because we also want to be refining the palm oil to vegetable oil and the rest of the other ancillary products that would come from that.
We have what used to be known as the Songhai in Henneke, in Ezeagu. That was also dormant. Nothing was being done about the 10,000 hectares of farmland. Today, it’s fully active. We have a private investor that we’re working with, a company called Tribu. It’s now known as Tribu Songhai Farm. Okay, so it’s fully active.
The Sunrise Flour Mill is also another example. The Sunrise Flour Mill is being reactivated with the cultivation of 10,000 hectares of land for cassava. And it’s being upgraded not only to mill wheat, but also to mill cassava.
The list is endless. You know the intervention in the farm estates we’re doing today. We have six pilot farm estates that are ongoing as we speak. The idea is to have at least 260 of those farm estates, each one having a minimum of 200 hectares of land where we have a total fence. We have a warehouse. We then push all the machinery so that we can migrate our smallholder farmers to a mechanised farming system.
I really don’t want to spend the whole day talking about agriculture. We could go on and on about the interventions. We do have over 167,000 hectares of land. These are lands that were donated freely by communities who said, ‘Look, come, we’ll give you this space. Rather than having this place as a forest, come and take care, farm and create wealth.’ And so we have those land mars, and we welcome investors who want to come and invest in our agro-sector. They are coming, and we’re engaging them. We have quite several examples of those investors. Some in Isi Uzo, some in Adani, where you have a partnership with Ellah Lakes Plc.
There is a whole lot we’ve done with the tractor company. Now, we do have the tractor assembly plant here. We have over 60,000 farmers in our database, cultivating over 80,000 hectares. And we do have the coordinates of these farms. Just a few months ago, we distributed over 60,000 bags of fertiliser.
Most states will charge a percentage of that; maybe give me this farm. We gave them all out free of charge. We also provided other farming tools, high-yielding seedlings, and of course, tractors and all that, to scale up our production in that space.
We’re not just thinking about producing. We’re also thinking about processing. So we’re currently building what is known as agro-transformation centres across the three zones. In addition to the special agro-processing zone, which obviously is going to be the main production centre.
We’re building the biggest ranch today in the country that would hold over 20,000 heads of cattle, here in Enugu; it’s called the Integrated Livestock Hub, being built around Obahu and Umualo. We’re one of the three states where the Integrated Poultry Hub is being built. I think the other two states would be Kaduna and Oyo.
On the issue of water, would you say that we have reliable water in Enugu State?
If you didn’t ask this question, I’m sure someone in the public would raise it. I told you in 180 days water would flow in every household. And we were committed to that. We didn’t make that commitment because we wanted to earn some public acclaim or we did it for posterity. We knew where water ranked in the order of priority of our people. We knew how not having access to water keeps a child out of school. Or when they are supposed to be doing their homework, they are roaming around the street looking for water and all that. So we knew.
I recall during my campaign how I would walk on some street that I would see kids in the queue just trying to get water from a tanker. I saw all that. So I knew it was something we needed to crack. And I didn’t want to spare any effort or time again in resolving it. I knew that I had made a commitment during my campaign that I would solve this problem in 180 days. And I had analysed the production segments, the upstream; I realised that the state at the time was producing 2 million litres daily.
Enugu needed 80 million litres to at least ensure that water flows in all the homes in Enugu. So what did we do? Even before swearing in, we front-loaded the procurement because some of the items we needed to procure were long-lead items. They were not off-the-shelf. So a lot of them would be customised. So we had to order them. Some of them had a lead time of about 4 months, particularly the big pumps. So we front-loaded the procurement, and so we were able to save at least 2 months. 2 months into our administration, the pumps arrived, and we started working on increasing our production.
We also reactivated the 9th Mile scheme, which had been dormant over the years. So by the 180th day of our administration, we were already able to produce 120 million liters.
As those supplies increased, as we built the capability to produce at that scale, as the water got into the pipes, they began to burst. We started having burst pipes. So the pipes were brittle. They had outlived their design life. And we also had to deal with some of the pipes that were asbestos. And some of the pipes had actually been built on. So the right-of-way of those pipes had been compromised by buildings.
You could see that what was already a complicated situation became even more complex. We had to start dealing with all that. We had a choice. Should we start pulling down those buildings that were on the right-of-way? Or should we start reconnecting, doing a new network? Or, and we felt, you know, well, these are our citizens; we shouldn’t pull down their buildings. The truth today is we have a buffer of over 50% to serve the entire city of Enugu.
What we’re now dealing with is making sure that the water gets to the last mile. And we’re doing that also aggressively. We’ve zoned the city. We have about 14 zones. And we have work going on across the 14 zones, connecting to the last mile.
And we’ve even procured thrust-boring equipment so that we can do horizontal drilling. In most cases, we won’t have to cut the road open. So we do thrust-boring. We will solve the water problem. And I understand how important that is. And we’re on it. I get briefings on the progress we’re making in the water sector or sub-sector every day.
What are your thoughts on the road infrastructure challenges in Enugu State…
Imagine how I feel each time I notice that the weather is changing, and that it will soon start raining. You could see how disturbed I am. It’s just unfortunate that we have only a limited amount of dry season in a year when we can actually address road construction, and if you don’t take advantage of that dry season window, you’ve lost it. So, you’re going to have to wait for the next dry season. There are no other ways we can innovate and also do road construction during the wet weather season. So, unfortunately, what we’re dealing with now is a situation where we have barely five months in a year to deal with the road construction.
And, for example, we had thought that the dry season would set in early this year. So, that’s why when I saw the rain yesterday, I was disturbed because I had already told the contractors we had two days of dry weather. So, I had announced to everybody that the rain was over and that we should all move back to the site. So, those roads have been fully cashed back. They’ve been fully funded.
A whole lot of them are actually not even meeting the mileage payments that we have made to them. It’s just unfortunate that they cannot move if the rain is still on because there are certain things you cannot do during the wet season because it will just compromise the quality of the roads.
We are even told that your administration is overtaxing traders. What do you have to say about this claim?
Thank you for bringing that issue of tax up because it is one of the falsehoods that has been so peddled that it’s even beginning to take on a semblance of truth. Meanwhile, it does not exist, and I think those who think we may be taxing more are essentially looking at the sort of growth we have recorded in our IGR, and they somehow, because they couldn’t have imagined such growth happening within the period it happened, they felt perhaps the only justification is that we have burdened the people of Enugu to realise that. But that’s far from it. I’ve tried to explain this in several fora.
We cannot legislate on taxation. It is not within the state’s legislative purview. The issue of taxation is under the exclusive legislative list. So, the National Assembly will legislate on the rate of your personal income tax, your company income tax, your VAT, your withholding tax, and all the other stuff you do.
I think perhaps what some would view as taxation, and maybe you could, in a generic term, also assume that it’s payment they make for services, you know, provision of removal of your waste, business premises, maybe water, C of O fees that you pay, and then maybe fees like management fees, if you are living in an estate, and then your land use charge, and all that.
So, if you look at the fees we charge for those services, what we did was to enact a state law that consolidated all these fees, because the problem before was that those doing business felt that there was multiple taxation. People were asked to pay taxes for this, tax for that, fees for this, rates for that, and charges for that, and we said, no, let’s consolidate all that. Let’s bring them into just one payment. And how much did we say we should charge? N36,000 annually for those businesses. And it includes your business premises; a whole lot of rates are built into that. So, going to those people to ask for payments for any sort of thing is prohibited; once you pay that, that’s N36,000. And the way we looked at it was, if you do the calculation, this is barely N100 per day. It’s N3,000 monthly. And when this was raging, this issue of taxation, I just wanted to be on the path of caution. I set up a committee, I think, headed by the SSG or so. Then I asked that they do a comparison of what we charge for these services against other states around us. I also said, get us the rates in Lagos and Abuja. So, and then I got that report from the committee three weeks later; it was clear to us that in the entire Southeast, we charge by far the lowest rates in terms of those serviced areas. And then, what did I do with respect to land use charges? When we looked at the land use charge figure, before the committee’s inauguration, the fees for land use charge were around N150,000, in some cases N200,000 and all that. We crashed it.
But because we have expanded the net, we now have more people. When we came in, we had barely 9,000 units that got their demand notice to pay their land use charge. But when we did the survey, we found out that we had over 800,000 billable household units that demand notices could be sent to. I said, well, since we have expanded the tax net, we can also crash the price so that there will be voluntary compliance. That was the whole idea. And so, the price went from a hundred and something thousand to N25,000.
We also had these complaints about people going to the market, I’m sure maybe from the local governments and all that, to collect money. I made an announcement that nobody should collect N100 or N200 from our market women. I ended that also.
How do you react to complaints about capital gains tax by property owners?
Capital gains only happen when you have sold your land or your house, and there is a margin between when you bought it and when you sold it. And the government sets in to charge a percentage from that margin. And that’s not even a gain; that rate is not legislated by the state government. The capital gains tax is also an exclusive legislative list. It’s the land use charge. As I said, we’ve done everything to bring down that price. So nobody should charge you for capital gains tax if you haven’t done a land transaction; it only sets in when you have done transactions in land.
You said that in July there would be a groundbreaking for a 660 megawatt coal-fired power plant with a 24-month construction timeline. And we’re still waiting for that promise to be fulfilled. What’s happening?
That brings me back to what I said about the wet season. We have been ready since July. I was already talking to our partners. The plant is ready. We need to do our own base, which is civil work. We are trying to build the road to the location; this plant is going to be sited at Amansiodo, very close to the fuel and feed source. It’s going to be fed by coal. And Amansiodo holds our largest reserve of coal. We’re ready. And we’re still committed to doing this. Once we do the groundbreaking, the plant is being brought in from China.
Everything is still on track. The reason we haven’t done the groundbreaking, as we promised in July, is again because of the wet season.
What impact have you made in the health sector?
Frankly, we’ve invested hugely in the health care sector. But, you know, the investment for us is not so much about the bricks and mortar. We are interested in the indicators, the health indicators. And we’re monitoring and measuring that very closely. So, for example, we knew where things were on maternal mortality, the rates, when we came into office. And we know where things are today.
We increased access to our pregnant women having access to skilled health care. Before we came in, about 40% of our women lacked access to a professional during delivery. Today, there are barely 4% who lack access. So, we have midwives; we have the family health care providing those services.
We don’t want any of our pregnant women, because they want to bring life to earth, to die in the process. So, our target in that area is to achieve a zero rate. We had approved the recruitment of 2,250 healthcare personnel in our primary healthcare space.
We had a deficit of health personnel. So, the first thing we did was to look at the personnel deficits we have across our PHCs, and we decided to bridge the gap. So, out of those 2,250, we’ve recruited 1,350. So, they’re in the fourth phase now. We do 450 per phase. So, we’re doing the next 450 now. So, the idea is to have an additional 2,250 healthcare personnel. That would address the pressure we have. It would also address the under-5 mortality rates.
What we’re doing with the Smart Green School would also help because of the fact that we get to regularise the health record, the medical records of our young ones that are coming in for their early child learning.
But for the PHCs, they are all equipped to provide vaccinations. So, we have those items there for mothers to take their young ones, their infants, their under-5s to our primary healthcare centres to get vaccinated. Because once we’re able to provide those vaccinations, it prevents quite a lot of deaths. Our objective is to make sure that we don’t let these kids die if we can prevent them.
When you talk about retaining healthcare personnel, we’ve achieved the consolidated medical salary structure, what they refer to as CONMESS. We’ve achieved 100% of that today. On the Consolidated Health Salary Structure, we’re at 80%. We’re just 20% short. When we came into the office, it was at 40%.
Our objective is to achieve 100% so that we make sure that this is where we actually become a major hub for healthcare practitioners to come to.
What is your take on the alleged marginalisation of Enugu North (Nsukka) Senatorial Zone?
I think that if there is one thing that we take so much pride in, it is inclusivity. I don’t think in the history of Enugu State there has been any model of development that recognises development per ward. This is the first time in the history of this state where development across critical sectors, and I mean sectors that determine the future of this state, is actually being carried out in the ward. And if you look at the zone with the highest number of wards, it’s Enugu North. So how can they be sidelined?
[THE NATION]
