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…to collaborate with the organized private sector

…set to unveil campaign manifesto

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Chetanne Chinelo, Enugu

The Enugu State governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Chief Geoffery Uche Nnaji, has highlighted the three challenges bedevilling the growth of the state’s economy, while noting that the state can only break away from the stranglehold of poverty and unemployment through solid collaborative governance with the organized private sector.

Nnaji made these revelations, Friday, November 4, 2022, at the ongoing governorship candidates interaction with the business community organized by the Enugu State Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture, ECCIMA, at the ECCIMA House, Abakaliki road, GRA.

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Reeling out the challenges, the governorship candidate identified the first one as the high rate of poverty of about 58% and an underlying poverty mindset, such as the admittance of Enugu state as a civil service state. The others are the deficient levels of industrialization and entrepreneurship, majorly responsible for the state’s high unemployment conditions totalling approximately 53%, with poor governance accounting for low levels of exploitation of our vast natural potentials, particularly in agriculture and agro-driven economic expansion.

Nnaji expressed his “determination to change this sad socioeconomic scenario by prioritizing the following: agriculture and agro-based industrialization, entrepreneurship growth and market access, particularly at the rural level, drastic poverty reduction and massive improvements in youth employment opportunities, highly improved water supply conditions, the revamp of the education and health sectors, sustained road infrastructure expansion and maintenance and an enhanced electricity generation”.

He noted that “if the current government had paid adequate attention to the provision of entrepreneurship-supporting infrastructure, it would have been able to significantly cut down on the high level of poverty and unemployment conditions.

“For instance, capital expenditure as a share of the state’s total budget consistently, albeit regrettably, shrank from 65.6% in 2014 to 31.5% in 2021, while the current expenditure, which used to be 34.4% in 2014, rose to 69% in 2021, making way for fiscal mismanagement and the heightening of poverty and unemployment”.

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He vowed that his administration would “create a minimum of 590,000 jobs within four years from 16 sectors.”

Nnaji whose campaign catchphrase is “Enugu shall rise again” noted that the choice of the catchphrase was predicated on the “quality of handshakes with the organized private sector, improved ease of doing business and the sustained stimulation of entrepreneurship and enterprise growth”.