At the inception of the administration of Dr Okezie Ikpeazu’s administration on the 29th of May, 2015, the first 15 initial appointments that were made precisely on the 3rd of June included a Special Adviser on Public Private Partnerships and Investment promotions in the person of Mr. Austin Ufomba; an Ex Marketing Director Coca-Cola Nigeria and Ex- Marketing Director Guinness Nigeria as well as Ex-Vice President of FCMB.
With that single move of considering PPP a first appointment to make and attracting a person in the caliber of Austin Ufomba, it was clear that investments and indeed private capital will be a priority area and consideration in the new administration.

 

Prior to this era, Abia had never had a properly set-up legislation or structure for investment and Public Private Partnership, Austin Ufomba and Sir Chijioke Nwakodo of blessed memory and then Chief of Staff to the Governor was saddled with the responsibility of creating an investment institution and structure that will support the giant visions of creating huge and efficient economic and social infrastructures for the state that only private capital and partners can avail.

This write up is meant to dispel the mindless lies and grossly uninformed propagandas been sold by some deliberately uninformed members of the public and opposition to attenuate the success stories and passionate inputs of a team and passionate investment drive of the government that is giving Abia so much to cheer for and great promises of massive socio-economic progress of the State in the days ahead.

 

Back to the trajectory of Public Private Partnership Office and the emergence of properly coordinated investment activity in the state, Austin Ufomba and Sir Chijioke Nwakodo was poised to create this all important institution of government, Emma Ezeala was brought into the team to support Austin as SSA Investment Promotions, a friend of the COS hinted him of a young man in Lagos by name Chinedu Nwogu who he think might be useful to the administration goals going by his competence and passion for a New Abia (NEW ABIA was his slogan when he indicated interest to run for the number one position in the state), that was how Sir Nwakodo reached out to me and demanded for my CV, manifesto and other relevant document. Going through the documents he saw a linkage between my passion/vision for Abia and what Austin Ufomba was putting together and referred me to him for a proper interview, and I later joined the PPP team as SSA Investment Research and strategy, few months later an Abian based in the United States of America by name Lawrence Odoemelem was added to the team and what became the PPP & IP office was born.

 

Austin Ufomba already had a clear idea of what was needed and required and went ahead to set the agenda including the attraction of a minimum of 5Billion US Dollars, creating jobs and opportunities for Abians leveraging first on her organic industries and comparative and competitive advantages and then stretching into other areas but then the proper investment environment must be in place to achieve this.

 

In pursuit of the above, one of the most robust PPP laws in Nigeria was created and passed into law in a record time by the state house of Assembly by December, 2015 basically to embolden investors and investments by providing all the enabling legislation to protect investments in the state, institutionalize investment activities and create necessary structures and platform to modulate and regulate investment activities in the state; a missing foundation that had hitherto made investment activities haphazard, inefficient and unproductive.

 

The enactment of this law gave birth to well constituted board for the PPP ably chaired by one of Abia foremost technocrat and industrialist; Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa with Austin Ufoma re-designated as Executive Vice Chairman and CEO of the new institution and people like Dr. Paul Ananaba (SAN) as member among other distinguished private sector and public sector members.

The tone was set and the next was to showcase the attributes of Abia that makes her a proper destination for investment amidst the highly competitive investment terrains of Nigeria and Africa, the team went ahead to create one of the most engaging and robust investment manual that gave a clear narratives of the opportunities waiting to be tapped in Abia.

 

The actual work began with an investment trip to Turkey, establishment of investment ambassadors across the globe leveraging on but not exclusive to Diaspora Abians. Key destinations were mapped out and relationships courted to attract FDIs and private capital to the state; China, Brazil, USA, Europe, Dubai and so on.

 

What the average person might not understand is that real investors don’t come cheap, you have to pitch your story, buoy their confidence. It takes nights of sacrificial efforts, proposing, business planning, business case creation, conceptualization, trust building and marketing; it takes specialized skills and not an all comer affairs and most critically it takes time.

 

The investment process is a long harrowing but engaging process with loads of planning, negotiations, counter negotiations, designing and redesigning and like I said earlier it involves lots of concerted, passionate and skillful work.

 

Now to the projects and success stories emanating from long and harrowing hours of background work, board room meetings and negotiations, long flights across the globe for pitching, passionate marketing of mere ideas, concepts and opportunities that at most times is only visible to the pitcher or marketer who must translate to palpable and easily recognizable opportunities to enhance buy-in and attract the dollars of the would be investors.

And facts don’t lie and just recently, the Central Bank of Nigeria 2018 FDI reports rated Abia third in Foreign Direct investment in Nigeria with a $1.5billion inflow.

 

 

The leather industry is one organic industry of Abia with tens of thousands of artisans producing locally made shoes, bags, belts etc that dot the Nigeria and West African markets ut which industry has remained both peasantry and primitive in the preceding decades and hence the attention of the PPP office of the government.

The PPP team led by and self-funded by Austin Ufomba travelled to Brazil for proper interfacing with the burgeoning leather industry in Novo Serena, Mines Geris in Brazil, in-principle collaborations were established and in June 2017, the Governor led a team to consummate the deals and partnerships that has taken over a year to build and fine tune.

 

And on January, 28th 2019, after getting third party local investors (Platform Capital) to support that investment efforts, the ground breaking took place with NEXIM President and other key collaborators in place.

Today the construction of the Africa’s biggest shoe factory is in progress with an initial production capacity of about 24million pairs of shoes per annum and employment capacity of about 1,000 direct jobs and 2,500 indirect jobs. Actual production is billed to commence last quarter of 2019 or 1st quarter of 2020

 

ENYIMBA ECONOMIC CITY
This giant city is the most audacious and most ambitious project in Nigeria today, which stems from that vision of creating massive economic infrastructures for the state and supporting any investor with the right mix of capacity and competences.

 

As expected of such projects, it’s taken long hours of planning, conceptualizations, pitching and marketing, agreements drafting and the attendant agreement and disagreements, chasing of approvals and licenses, designing and so on.

For the not-to-conversant with such projects, they want the caterpillar to roll in like yesterday or else it’s a political gimmick and I see some uninformed political propaganda trying to gain some political capital from the so called delay in physical construction on site, unknown to them Lekki Free Trade Zone was initially conceptualized by Bola Tinubu and has passed through Fashola, Ambode and now Sanwolu, so the EEC project traction is arguably the fastest for a project of such magnitude; acquiring a Free Trade Zone License and status alone can take 3-4 years but Abia and her partners achieved this is less than 2 years.

 

A brief description of the process; our lead partner Crown Realties Ltd (Mr. Darl Uzuh as CEO) and the government of Abia State agrees in-principle to carry out this very ambitious project; the PPP Office will have to identify a suitable location for the project as well as see through an initial working document to commit both parties to some obligations as well as establish some timelines and project schedule to ensure proper and timely pacing of the project. These initial documentations are several pages and volumes of documents to be reviewed by the legal teams of both sides and to be agreed after long hours, days, weeks and times months of adjustments and fine-tuning.

Location identified and mapped out by a team of project consultant working with the ministry of Lands, the most critical aspects of this project kicks; stakeholders have to be engaged village by village, kindred by kindred, Local Government by Local Governments, the governor has to intervene severally via physical interfacing of critical stakeholders, everyone must buy-in, fraying nerves must be calmed and information watered down for the lowest person to understand and agreements must be reached; these takes over one year for a land size in excess of 9,800 hectares.
Then physical perimeter survey, then eventual enumeration surveys and compensation issues sorted; these alone can take over two years.

 

Then the design, Feasibilities, Environmental Impact Assessments, investment promotion, chasing of licenses and approvals, business and financial modelling and I can go on but let me not bore us further with process.
Bottom-line as at today, the Free Trade Zone license has been acquired, preliminary designs completed, perimeter surveys completed, enumeration surveys and compensation process on going, FG buy-in by way of 20% equity achieved, some key anchor tenants like RUYI activated, Feasibilities and Environmental Impact issues, those who understand project implementations especially of this magnitude will understand that achieving these in less than 3 years is unbelievably fast and aggressive.

The most cheering news about this project is the quantum of jobs and opportunities it will create for Abians and Nigerians well in excess of 600,000 in its full activation.

 

Abia Heritage City

Abia Heritage City is model environmentally sustainable smart city development to be located on an 800+ hectares of land at Owerrinta in Isiala Ngwa North with little portion crossing over to Isiala Ngwa South.

 

The City will have best in class facilities and infrastructures similar to what can be found in modern cities of Europe and America including retail hubs, social/civic amenities like world class University and model schools, hospital, a world class golf course & estate as well as low, medium and high density residential neighborhoods. The best that will exist in the entire South East and I dare say Nigeria as a whole.

This multibillion Naira project will create 1,000+ direct and indirect jobs during and after the construction, bring urban development to the area and transform the landscape, attract further investment inflow and other ancillary businesses as well as generate huge revenue for the state.

 

Like the Enyimba Economic City, Heritage City has an Economic Zone status and has passed through many rigorous but successful phases of development with the design almost completed and ground breaking and physical construction commencing in the 4th quarter of 2019.

The Abia Agro-Industrial City

This is going to be most organized and organized Agro-industrial cluster Easter of the Nigeria, located in an initial over 2,000 hectares of land at Ukwa Nkporo in Ohafia LGA. Key partners have been activated, necessary agreements reached with partners, government, host communities and other critical stakeholders. Ground breaking is happening in the last quarter of 2019 and employment capacity in excess of 10,000 direct and indirect jobs at its full activation.

 

Others

The PPP which is the investment arm of the government driving the properly articulated investment vision of the government has some other critical projects at various stages of development across the state which will be made public in due course; these includes mixed-use developments, Refinery, Airport, Residential Estates, Agro-parks etc, but like our custom is we don’t celebrate mere signing of MOU or some in-principle agreements, the reason being that between that phase and actualization of projects, a lot of works and inputs are required that takes so much time and resources.

These efforts have placed Abia at a vintage in the Nigerian investment map in the last for years so that the Central Bank of Nigeria 2018 FDI reports rated Abia third in Foreign Direct investment in Nigeria with a $1.5billion inflow. Abia is ready and the impact will be massive.

 

Like I said, I had to tell a little of our truth as regards some of the investment struggles and strides of this administration not to keep us in the dark and possibly engulf ill-intended falsehoods and propagandas of some innocently naïve or poorly informed political jingoists who speak with such arrogant authority on issues they have zero-grasp on.

 

 

Chinedu Nwogu
Sunday, 28th July, 2019