$35bn investment coming to Rivers in next 5 years – Rivers Entrepreneurs and Investors Forum
Investors in Rivers State hint that about $35Bn worth of investments are headed to the state in the next five years. The president of the Rivers Entrepreneurs and Investors Forum (REIF), Ibifiri Bobmanuel, who dropped the hint in an exclusive interview in Port Harcourt recently, said there is need for the state government, the investors and the citizens to adopt proactive attitudes that would facilitate the investments and habour them as they come.
Bobmanuel said a look at the strategic fact on ground would reveal that the state is actually on upswing. “Train 7 ($10Bn), Bonny.bodo Road by Julius Berger; Bonny Deep Sea Port at the stage of ground breaking; Finima Dry Dock at the verge; etc. If you put all this investments together, you have about $35Bn in the next five years streaming into Rivers State. You cannot wish such an investment away. It shows you that what is being done is done well, but more can be done.”
On job opportunities, he said this would be talking about 200,000 jobs; and that it is a good place to start with.
What the state should do
The problem is how to midwife this process. We as a people should look at important issues and not the euphoria. These are investments that have private sector initiatives, either fully embarked upon or by PPP with the private sector. Even factor what the state government is doing such as in infrastructural facilities, you will come to a conclusion that the prospects in Port Harcourt are very high in the short while.
He went on: For us to get to benefit from this whole spin-off, we must work hard from all angles to sell out the right narrative. These investments have their own attractions; such as the dry dock, the deep sea port, etc. If you do not put out the right narrative, you will not attract the fallouts.
The Train 7 today is important. We at the REIF are hearing funny things about the engineering works to be done elsewhere. We are investigating this; You ask yourself, why would they have to even do this? It hit us in the face. You have a consortium made up of Daewoo, Shrouda and Daewoo. If they sat down to make such decision, they should have known that the REIF would kick against it vehemently. Knowing the high level of professionalism in the NLNG, we do not think the NLNG would succumb to such. They know what is acceptable and what is not. We trust them to do what is right.
We would put our feet down to say, look, in as much as we have this volume of investment trickling into the state, we must be on our toes and ensure that nothing goes wrong. If this is done outside Rivers and just brought down to Rivers, it means the project is not here. That would be another way of under developing this place.
We in REIF usually looks at a matter deeply and properly before taking any action. We usually set up a committee to investigate very grievous matters and when the reports come out, we usually know what to do. We usually would sensitise the people and the state government so they would understand that it is no longer business as usual.
With the advent of REIF, it has never been business as usual. All those investment and business meant for not just Rivers but Niger Delta but taken outside the region would not work. It worked in the past when we were not well constituted to look at the investments for what there were. Now, we have a body like REIF with the mandate to drive the local economy. We as a people must call a spade and call those state and corporate actors to book.
New lease of life:
Look, we are experiencing a new lease of life in Rivers State and the Niger Delta because we think a lot of things have changed. We feel its within our right to decide where businesses should be domiciled. We all cannot live in Lagos. Some of us have investments and office in Lagos but we all cannot live in Lagos. There must be reason for us to disperse in different parts of Nigeria.
A whole lot of us are sticking together because we think Rivers State is a good place to do business. You cannot sabotage that by taking businesses meant for Rivers to other regions of Nigeria. Each time we conclude investigations, we usually say if such a project must be carried on, it has to be in the proper way.
These projects have positives and negatives. The positives include jobs, expression of interests, execution of the projects, etc. the negative far outstrips the positive especially the environmental point of view, it’s a lot. Degradation alone is huge. So, you cannot take away the good part and leave us with the negative. We know both the federal and state governments would frown at this, and even the international community we are deeply affiliated with would frown at any time projects meant for the region are taken out. Any time our investigations find out it is going to be diverted, that project would really be in danger.
Some of us may not have direct interest in Train 7 or some other projects because we are diversified but that does not mean that we would turn our eyes off when we see a huge infringement. It does not work that way.