Infrastructure, environment top consideration as Ogun opens for business

As the business community and other Nigerians gather in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, for this year’s edition of the  state’s  Investors Forum, infrastructure and environment will be the focal point of discussion to tell the world that ‘Ogun is Open for Business’.

The forum, which is in its third edition, is aimed to showcase the investment potential of the state as an emerging industrial hub in Nigeria and with the theme of this year’s edition, ‘Ogun Open for Business’, the state is telling investors that it has considerably enabled its environment for investment.

“We want to showcase to the world the opportunities that abound in Ogun State; we want to come together to look at areas of mutual benefits for us and potential investors”, says Ibikunle Amosu, the state governor, recalling that between March 27, 2012 when the first edition of the forum was held and now, the state has done well in terms of financial indices.

Through the forum, the state is sending a message out that it is ready and open for business and, in this particular edition, consideration is on  key areas that support investment and they include infrastructure,  environment, agriculture and transportation.  “We have realized that environment affects us, our lives and living and takes centre stage, especially now, with new technology, innovation and climate change”, the governor notes.

“We have done well in terms of the number of companies operating in the state which is about 90 and may increase to 100 before the end of the year. These are companies that have invested between $100-200 million in the state. Some have even recorded up to a billion-dollar investment”, he added.

To enhance its investment potential, the state believes that it needs to build more and improve on existing infrastructure because, as the governor put it, “infrastructure is very critical and the areas we always talk about are roads, rail, airport, and the waterways. We want, as much as possible, to reduce travel time and that is why we are doing so much on roads; though we are not there yet,  we will get there ultimately”.

Apart from building roads, the state is also  going ahead with its metro line, that is, the train service. The governor disclosed in Abeokuta recently that the Chinese  government will be supporting the state in building the railway  through their company that is here . “They will help us to build our railway system. It is the same company that  will be doing rail for the federal government that will also be doing our rail system. We signed an MoU with them last year before the election”, he said.

Agriculture is another area the forum will be looking at and the state believes that to get it right in agriculture, transportation is key. It also believes that the greatest enabler of development is infrastructure and one area that is uppermost in connection with agriculture is transportation.

As far as the state is concerned, the beauty of agriculture is that whatever is grown needs to processed and whatever is processed, is packaged; after packaging, it must be marketed  and when people are employed to do all these things, jobs are created along the value chain.

The governor laments that agriculture is still done the same way it was done when he was a boy running around the farms which is why it remains at subsistence level. “We must change all these. We must be as good as those who are the best in agriculture anywhere in the world”, he assures.

He believes that Ogun is not just any state, but the industrial hub of  Nigeria. “Before now, we were not. It was only Lagos and Port Harcourt that were regarded as industrial hubs in the country. They were ahead of us in terms of the number of industries operating in their domain. Today, we are the number one destination and that is one of the benefits of these investors forums”.

According to him, in spite of the challenge the state faces, it is still coming up with numbers that people can see, explaining that  the state came first in terms of those that were able to grow their IGR in 2015.

The state, arguably, is making giant strides and records show that its industrial zone ranked first in 2014; new investment into the state in 2014 was valued at N514. 87 billion which had an increase of N376.57 billion from 2013 while the total investment in the state by the end of 2014 stood at N691.77 billion.

The state has moved from 35 to 3 in the ranking of states in terms of ease of doing business in Nigeria and has, within the life of the present administration, created one-stop-shop investment centre to assist potential investors with procedures for investment and documentation processing.