Nasiru Zahradeen’s phone call, inviting me to join in a quick trip to Akwa Ibom State, immediately revived my flight phobia. I had been to Akwa Ibom State twice before, through Port Harcourt airport. I am suspicious of all planes and all airports but when he mentioned Ibom Air flight to Uyo Airport, I was further unnerved because both of them are new and their veracity is untested, to my anxious mind. In the event, I found Ibom Air planes to be very smooth, the flight to Uyo short and uneventful, and Uyo airport itself small but neat and efficient.
We spent only 48 hours in Akwa Ibom State but in that period, the governor’s restless press secretary took us to see 18 projects and project sites. All of them were remarkable but I will mention here the few that impressed me the most. One was Victor Attah International Airport, under construction adjacent to the domestic airport. It is extremely ambitious, designed to handle up to one million passengers a year. Everything in it is state of the art, from its navigational aids to its passenger movements, check ins, cargo bays, baggage handling, security and even the bullet proof glass walls. The price tag? An estimated N40 billion.
Nearby was the Diseases Control and Isolation Centre at Ituk Mbang, which can hold up to 300 COVID patients. This neat and well equipped facility was built within 60 days of the first reported case of COVID outbreak in Akwa Ibom. It has its own molecular diagnostic lab and an oxygen plant, with more than enough oxygen for its needs, and with facilities to clear a patient’s airwaves if he or she had trouble taking in the oxygen. Plus, a state of the art ICU. Akwa Ibom may be the best place in Nigeria to come down with COVID; it has enough oxygen to rush to the aid of India.
Nearby was the Greenhouse project, ten hectares of greenhouses with neat rows of well-trimmed tomato tendrils. The temperature, humidity and water supply are all carefully controlled. Seeing this greenhouse reminded me of a question that a visiting Israeli agricultural scientist posed to me in Kaduna twenty years ago. He asked me why tomato is very expensive here during the rainy season and very cheap during the dry season. I sheepishly replied that tomato does not grow well in the rainy season, and he said, “No! You Nigerians do not know how to grow tomato!”
It is all a matter of controlling humidity, the Israeli scientist said, which is just what this Uyo greenhouse farm is doing. I saw a similar project in Borno State two years ago. Our Akwa Ibom hosts denied that the project was an answer to Northern tomato traders that sometimes threaten to shut the South out of tomato and onion supplies, but we better beware.
Wonder of wonders, I never expected to find “the smartest building in Nigeria” in a third generation state, but that was exactly what engineers billed the 21-storey Dakkada Towers in Uyo’s central business district to be. From its spacious floors ready for lease, to its powerful elevators, its glass windows, automatically controlled power, water supply, ventilation and fumigation, to its super control room, everything was state of the art. Nothing like it in Lagos or Abuja. Dakkada is Governor Udom Emmanuel’s battle cry for Akwa Ibom, meaning “Arise”. The idea of this grand building is to woo multinational oil firms over to Akwa Ibom from Lagos.
In driving rain, we visited the Dakkada Cottage Industries at Afaha Itam. We saw piles of bamboo sticks at the gate; they turned out to be the raw material for making tissue paper, one of the plant’s four main products. Others were plastics, pencils and tooth picks. All the plants were humming with activity, with youthful factory hands and supervisors darting here and there to get things done. Just the kind of cottage industries needed in Nigeria to stop shameful imports of small items.
The Jubilee Syringe Factory at Awa, which we visited, has the capacity to produce 4m syringes a year. It is working at full capacity, in three shifts because orders were flooding in. Its Turkish managers detailed Nigerian supervisors to speak in English; the step-by-step syringe production, coupling and testing process was meticulous. Quality control was rigorous; no defective syringe made it into the packaging section.
We also visited the King’s Flour factory at Awa, which makes flour from imported wheat. It was also very busy when we visited, with two dozen trucks in its yard that either brought wheat or were evacuating flour to customers. Not too far away was the coconut factory, nearing completion, which extracts coconut oil for pharmaceutical, food, cosmetic and other uses. I thought this was very apt because everywhere I looked as we sped through Akwa Ibom’s very wide highways, were palm trees. We visited one remodeled and one brand new hospitals, major flood control project, several highways and flyovers, and witnessed the opening of the one-kilometer-long Ikot Oku Ikono flyover by former President Obasanjo.
On Thursday afternoon, Governor Udom Emmanuel sneaked out of a virtual National Economic Council meeting to have lunch with us. This boyish-looking career banker turned politician had an artfully carved walking stick. He gave a brief speech, saying only ignorant people call for Nigeria’s break up and that he personally wished Nigeria could become bigger than it presently is. In Akwa Ibom, Emmanuel said, “We don’t discriminate against anybody because nobody determined where he was born.”
The governor also said contrary to what some people allege, his administration is not doing so many showcase projects because the state is awash in oil money. He said there is a difference between cash and money, though I think the distinction is only known to a banker of his standing. He also frowned at the 3% provision for oil communities in the Petroleum Industry [PIB] bill, “since it is a percentage of the profit, not the turnover.” In Akwa Ibom, “we cannot catch fish anymore because of oil spills,” the governor said, “so 5% is not too much.”
What about the rumour that Governor Udom Emmanuel, who is in his second term in office, is in the race for President in 2023? Someone raised the subject and the MC said “His Excellency did not hear that.” Indeed, Udom Emmanuel neatly sidestepped the question.
mmjega@21stcenturychronicle.com
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