Osun State Woos Investors

Osun State Woos Investors

Obinna Chima

The Governor of Osun State, Mr. Adegboyega Oyetola, Thursday said his administration is committed to putting the state on the path of economic growth and prosperity.

This, he said informed the state’s economic and investment summit, with the theme: “Pathway to Economic Growth,” which holds between 19th and 21st of November, 2019.

Oyetola, said this during an interactive session with journalists in Lagos. According to him, his administration is focused on exposing Osun to the entire community of investors.

He urged potential investors in and out of the country to use the opportunity of the investment summit to understand the opportunities in the state.

“Unless you have the opportunity of knowing what goes on, you won’t know what is happening.

“Osun State has a lot of potential and it is a place to be in the area of agriculture. If you remember, in the past, our state was the leading producer of cocoa, which used to be the major revenue earner for even the Western Region and even Nigeria.

“So, we have quite a lot of opportunities for agriculture and we are blessed with abundant mineral resources,” he explained.

According Oyetola, there have been lots of illegal mining activities going on in the state. But, he pointed out that his administration was working out regulations to ensure that their activities are formalised and to enable government derived the expected revenue.

“What we are trying to do now is to regulate it and ensure that we provide the enabling environment to invest in mining. “In the state, there is also the ICT hub. Perhaps we have the largest number of tertiary institutions in Nigeria.

“The culture and tourism. We have quite a lot of other tourist attraction sites – the Olubirin waterfall and quite a lot of other sites available for investors,” he added.

He, pointed out that, “my attitude to business generally is that government has no business in business,” stressing the need for public-private partnership (PPP).

“So, we would create the enabling environment for people to come and invest. We have a very secured environment and our state is adjudged to be the most peaceful state in Nigeria.

“In addition to that, we have beefed up our security arrangement. We have just acquired additional 20 vehicles in collaboration with the South-west states, that would be launched any moment from now.

“In terms of the people, they are very hospitable and the Ease of Doing Business is high in the state. We are ready to sign-off certificate of occupancy within 90 days, from the time of processing to the completion date,” he added.

According to him, the hiccups that used to be witnessed in the past in terms of business and land registration, have all been removed.

“So, when you look at the totality of what we have, we have created a good environment for businesses to thrive. We are conscious of the fact that in line with our state development plan, which is based on four pillars, namely – economic development, infrastructure development, human capital development and security and sustainable environment.

“All our programmes have been designed to address all these areas. But in doing so, we have a lot of opportunities for investment,” he added.

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