TAKING NEPZA TO THE NEXT LEVEL
In about two months, Rt. Hon. Emmanuel Jime will clock one year in office as the seventh Managing Director of Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA). He assumed duties on April 19, 2017. The 10 months he has superintended the authority have ushered in a season of action, innovation, eventfulness, pragmatism and unusual promise. Emmanuel Jime’s sure-footedness at NEPZA is a pointer that the destination is possible. Between April, 2017, when his appointment was announced, and April 19 when he took over, the former Speaker of the Benue State House of Assembly took time to “return to school”. “For a lawyer of many years standing, I found myself in the position of a student again: I had to return to school – learning everything from the scratch. But I was determined to know: from the files, from the books, from my interactions with my management team and so on. And the humility and the adult education, if I may call it that, paid off.” It was at his maiden meeting that he gave NEPZA two of his quotes that have today become staff favourites: “If there is welfare, there would be no warfare,” and “If there is celebration in the house, there would be no solidarity songs.”
So, right from the moment he took over, Jime took the initiative of connecting with staff of the authority – and even going beyond the bounds of propriety to give out his private cell-phone numbers and his e-mail addresses.
Since one of the unique things about his service in the public space is his dynamism, Jime has brought to NEPZA all that dynamism can offer in its broadest sense. And this dynamism became practical on April 25, 2017, when he began the first leg of his tour of Free Trade Zones (FTZs) across the country just six days after taking office.
And because of the preponderance of FTZs in the Lagos axis as well as the sheer volume of investments in the zones therein, Jime faced Lagos. It was after this that he went to Ogun, Cross River and Kano States on familiarisation-cum-fact-finding tours. He would later visit the Kano FTZ as well as Abuja Technology Village (ATV).
It was partly in-between the tours, but especially after them, that Jime sat down with his management team to look at critical issues such as policy, direction, staff welfare, administrative reforms, the governance structure, inter-agency cooperation, building investor-confidence and planning for the future.
Being a politician, many had thought he would fancy the glamorous side of governance over and above the executive side. But when the NEPZA helmsman met the Fourth Estate of the Realm on December 8, 2017, he unveiled his vision. He told some media executives: “Under my stewardship, we have so far been able to licence three new industrial parks i.e. Nasco Town Free Zone, which is valued $2,086billion. It is estimated, at completion, to be able to provide 15,000 direct jobs. The second is Quit Aviation Services Free Zone, valued at $215million, and is estimated to provide jobs in their thousands. And there is: Tomaro Industrial Park, in Lagos, valued at $450million. It would also provide jobs running into the thousands.”
Today, the salutary outcomes of that “Jime-returns-to-school-school” are evident in the restructuring of the corporate governance structure, the injection of life into the free zones while licencing new ones, the rebuilding of investor-confidence, the introduction of innovative staff welfare schemes, the cementing of inter-agency relationships as well as a robust and sustained engagement with industry stakeholders on multi-levels.