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SEDC: Panacea for South East’s Convoluted Problems?
By Okey Ikechukwu
The four good things that can be said upfront about the South East Development Commission are: (1) The composition of its leadership team; (2) The Commission’s approach to stakeholder engagement; (3) The scope, , and analytical rigour of its public engagement of last week, which lasted from 3rd to 6th of this month of February; and (4) The fact that it is in a position to learn from the mistakes of older Commissions of the same type; some of which are now nothing more than procurement platforms for the elite with nothing to show in terms of real development of the regions they were set up to develop.
The Concept Note for the South East Vision 2050 (SEV2050), 2026, Stakeholder Forum was well put together. The background, rationale, overarching objectives, technical deep dives and stakeholder feedback clusters were all well-conceived. Last week’s event, which was carried out in collaboration with the Office of the Vice President, Ministry of Regional Development and Governors/Governments of the South East was well contextualized.
The objectives were apt, the Key Messages focused on issues the relevance of which cannot be contested. The Forum agenda was comprehensive. Under the broad theme of “Framing a Shared Future for the South East: Challenges, Choices and the Vision 2050”, I was required to give the major opening Keynote Speech titled “Regional Diagnostics: Where We Are, Where We Could Be, and What is Holding Us back”.
I started by pointing out that the idea of framing a shared future for the South East requires those aspiring to do such a framing to first admit the need for some consensus on the meaning and trajectory of that future. They must also agree on its broad advantages and what it offers each of the parties concerned.
It is within this context that anyone would be interested in a “shared” future, as presented in the projections of the SEV2050 project. Which means that the Commission must first do the homework, and grassroots consultation leading up to the desired ideals. This is where to contend with challenges that would arise from the choices and compromises needed to give the Vision joint ownership, as the property of all parties.
Thus, a conceptually meaningful, exciting, desirable, and viable must also be sustainable. In addition to being sustainable, it must also offer a value proposition that easily conduces to a consensus. In this regard, a South East vision and revival is possible today under the SEDC, because it presents the best chance of eliminating, or at least minimizing, the dominant “Ike Out Onye” philosophy of each state doing everything by itself, and for itself in the South East.
This new drive will require each of the five South East States to focus on their areas of comparative advantage. Such an approach will enable them create and lock into a regional template with a modern logistics system. That means networked specialization, and Economies of Scale, rather than unintelligent competition.
Concerning where the South East is today, where it ought to be and what is holding it back, one obvious demand is a change of mindset.
It calls for what I sometimes call the tripod of the Physical, Economic and Axiomatic spaces as the pillars to be fortified for a new regional outlook. This means working towards seeing, and making, the region an integrated and well-coordinated production, distribution, movement and governance system.
One way of doing this is to synchronize the SEDC’s well-articulated innovation, entrepreneurship and investment-focused programmes with a detailed values reorientation initiative and values consultative programmes. These should begin in our schools and pervade the community and the local government system. This should involve programmes for youth/women leaders, town union presidents, council and ward, LG chairmen, religious leaders, traders’ associations
In all of this, the Commission must leverage the media in a sustainable manner, so that it can go beyond mere presence and visibility to measurable media impact and dominance.
The things holding the Region back include conspicuous deficits in leadership, social infrastructure, loss of what should be business profit to self-generated power, poor overall transportation logistics and much more. There is also the problem of weak regional coordination and limited bargaining power at the center. Add the foregoing to low trust in the region’s political leadership, armed groups, sit-at-home disruptions, and heavy-handed local Task and tax Forces and you have the perfect recipe for a people in thrall.
There is also severe brain drain, as professionals increasingly relocate to Lagos, Abuja, or abroad. Meanwhile, the region could have since become the industrial hub for West and Central Africa, with export-driven clusters in light manufacturing, automotive parts franchising, pharmaceuticals, agro-allied processing, technology innovation and creative industries. Diaspora capital should also, by now, be driving investment, not just remittances that are mostly for domestic upkeep of family members.
Working together, the Sout East should have become a Model of Regional Cooperation, with shared infrastructure in power generation, rail, and logistics corridors. It is even possible to contemplate a coordinated tax, investment, and industrial policies framework across the region.
Things are the way that are in the region today because it is dominated by a fragmented leadership orientation, wherein each governor is an emperor and also the custodian of ultimate wisdom. Nothing makes this more apparent than the absence of a shared long-term regional agenda. That is why, today, political leaders focus more on election cycles and personal popularity than sustainable development projects and projections.
The Politics of Atomization without, and largely reactive and emotional responses to emerging issues, is another factor. That is what has partly left the region with very weak negotiating capacity at the federal level; with policy think tanks that offer more of tanks for noisy idealists than any serious thinking.
In the end, the overall regional profile is characterized by the challenge of reliable data for long term planning. Yet, its economic profile exhibits strong entrepreneurial strength, with SMEs, commerce, trading networks, manufacturing clusters. Its human capital profile shows high literacy levels and large professional demographics.
Unfortunately, all that creativity and energy are displayed and often dissipated in the largely informal, under-capitalized, and infrastructure-poor economy. The large number of unscaled SMEs that are not transitioning into large, competitive firms is a source for concern.
Which takes us back to want I merely hinted at, when I spoke of the third leg of the tripod for change, namely, the axiomatic pillar. The type of people we are rests on the type of values we live by.
It is because the human being is the primary resource of any nation that natural endowments, like Liquid and solid minerals, forest reserves and game cannot develop a nation on their own. You need human beings with knowledge, discipline and the right values for development to take place. But ideas are not enough. They must be the right ideas. Give these ideas to good and effective leadership, and modern execution templates, and you have far-reaching transformations before you. v are needed.
The essential point being made here is that there is a fundamental difference between human resources and natural resources. The former is an agent and the latter is a tool that can be transformed by the former. Once you combine knowledge, vision, values and strategy with group discipline, development takes place.
Look at Venezuela with the greatest oil deposit on earth. Then look at Japan, which does not have any other resource except its human capital. Japan exports only one product, namely “Knowledge”; which manifests as cars, electronic equipment and much more.
That is perhaps why we may be constrained to draw the conclusion that the South East’s biggest constraint may not just be marginalization. When you look at the absence of coordinated internal economic, political, and institutional power and loyalty, you begin to see many things that are not so readily visible on the surface.
The region needs to organize its capital, protect stability, think generational succession and negotiate at the national level from the angle of partnership and strength, rather than the three Gs of Grumbling, Grievance and Grandstanding.
As the SEDC is now, hopefully, working towards doing the right things for the South East, by knocking out a template for a realistic way forward, the real question for Ndigbo, going forward, may not be “What is Nigeria doing to, and for, the South-East?”, but “How does the South-East organize itself to be respected, respectable and indispensable to Nigeria—and Africa?”
The other questions are: “When will the South East wake up to the fact that its undue emphasis on distributive trade that is hopelessly dependent on an operating/policy environment they are not in control of verges on pure lunacy?”. Plus, this: “Why there so much capital misallocation in the South East, with much wealth shut away in pointless real estate of big village houses”?
It is important that the SEDC’’s drive for the better management of the many small scalable, but unscaled, ventures is supported and pursued. Ditto for the emergence of large indigenous institutions, like banks, manufacturing giants, funds, etc.?
Truth is: The South-East cannot triumph by shouting louder, but by becoming more strategic. It needs a regional Political Coordination Template that is capable of having one position and one negotiating voice on key national issues. It must minimize the now-well-known public quarrels, so that this is not also always an indication of inner divisions. The call is for the region to play Leverage Politics, and move from political “representations”, to “Portfolio Control” in politics;
SEDC is in a position to drive a new narrative that henceforth reframe security awareness as action in aid of Regional Economic Survival, by showing that no investor comes where he suspects social instability. The South-East will not rise by waiting for fairness, WhatsApp activism, or by online noise making. It should simply organize capital, coordinate, strengthen, thinking generationally and long term.
The Commission must watch out for those it can call its the Driving Forces for change, the Restraining Forces trying to undermine it, and also the Direction Changing Forces which try to achieve their own personal purposes on the pretext of being in synch with the Commission.
Finally, let the SEDC not be remiss in taking up the following three Next Steps stipulated, and arising from its Stakeholder Forum, namely: (1) Consolidate and synthesize inputs from the Forum, to inform an initial SEV 2050 Initial Framework; (2) Develop the First Integrated framework of the SEV 2050 framework; and (3) Confirm the commitment and Roles from relevant institutions and stakeholders.
A lot will depend on the SEDC, going forward.
