From Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
Ogun State Governor, Ibikunle Amosun, admitted, yesterday, that things are tough in Nigeria at the moment.
The governor, however, expressed happiness that despite the situation Nigeria is in presently, investors are still keen on coming into the country and that his state is number one in the country. Yes, I know things are tough and I am saying this with all sense of responsibility; all states in Nigeria are affected…
“We (Ogun State) are part of the larger context called Nigeria and, because of that challenge, people must think out of the box and I am happy to report that in Nigeria, today, maybe not in the quantum of what we generate, but, we are number one.
“If you check the indices that have been released, we doubled our revenue with about 97.8 percent. The next state to us I think was 41 percent. We are working hard and we are doing well but, there is still lot more to be done,” he said.
The governor disclosed that the state would focus on producing wealth from waste particularly because of the need to take care of the environment.
He described Ogun State as the industrial hub of the country, stressing the need to take care of the environment and reduce hazardous gas emissions.
According to him, “if we want to live well, we must be conscious of our environment, particularly climate change. We must reduce carbon dioxide.
“We can use our waste to generate wealth and in doing that we employ our people. Like I said, we are the most industrialised state, we want green industrialisation. The area of emitting dangerous hazardous smoke is over.
“There are new ways of doing things, new engineering solutions that are in place and that is what we are trying to do…”
“We are even generating electricity with our waste. That is what I call using waste to generate power and waste to wealth.”
On the recent investors forum organised by the state government, Amosun explained that the state focused on agriculture, environment and transportation because it wanted to diversify its economy.
“Everybody believes that there is no alternative except for diversification and even before this crisis, we realised that, the only way to go is to diversify into agriculture. It will employ our people, it will create wealth for them,” he said.
Amosun added that once the state was able to meet it targets in these areas, things would become easier.
He expressed delight that investors had shown interest in the state and their effort would become evident in no distant time.
He said, “I am happy that we got several investors, particularly those that are not even from Nigeria and so many people that are in Nigeria, that operate here and that’s why we showcased everybody.
“I know within the next, maybe, two years you will see. Ogun State is the industrial hub of Nigeria. There is no state that has the kind of resources we have, in terms of numbers and value.
“We are not limiting it at that, we want to take it forward. Not agriculture alone. We want to take full advantage of the full value chain that agriculture offers and what do I mean by that?
“That whatever we grow we must process, and whatever we have processed we must package and whatever we package we must market, we must transport it to the final consumer. You know everybody is working. That is what we are trying to do.
“In the area of transportation, we need to see how many people we can get on the roads. We need to introduce rails, waterways.”