Adeline Okoronkwo
A non-governmental organisation, Zenith Environmental and Social Protection Network (ZESPRONET) has unveiled a blue print on how to bring the huge economic base of the South-Eastern region of Nigeria into reality. The focus is to encourage all the state governors to work together for the collective good of the people irrespective of party differences.
The President of ZESPRONET, Dr. Emeka Boris Oji made the disclosure at the of the organisation’s 2022 fundraising dinner held on Saturday in Abuja.
Oji said the NGO has the knowledge base to encourage the five South East states into focusing and pushing for inter connectivity of the gas pipelines from Abia State through Imo State to the major business centers of Aba, Nnewi, Onitsha, Enugu and Abakaliki.
He said that alone will bring businesses back to the cities, increase internally generated revenue (IGR) and reduce reliance on the monthly allocations from the federal government.
“This is the type of deliberations and arguments we have at ZESPRONET and we hope the governors of the South East States will invite us for further deliberations and statistics,” Oji stated.
He also mentioned that the organisation has the template on public-private partnership “that will turn our health centers into centers of excellence for our people and Nigerians in general, all we need is a willing State Governor to hear ZESPRONET out.”
ZESPRONET had amongst other things,built and donated an N80,000,000 44-bed space post graduate hostel to the Abia State University which was inaugurated by the Abia State Governor Okezie Ikpeazu in November 2021.
Oji said the aspirational goals are two folds.
“We aspire to in the next few years have an impactful project in each state university in South Eastern Nigeria but most importantly that the governors of the states will partner with us in the coming years in bringing the best practices not just in the educational sector but other sectors of the economy,” he said.
In his remarks at the event, Vice Chancellor of Abia State University, Prof Onyemachi Ogbulu, called on all members of the body to partner with him in providing infrastructure for the institution, saying that government alone cannot provide all the infrastructure for their public institutions.
Ogbulu said with the paucity of funds, most state government’s now find it difficult to carry the massive responsibility of providing affordable and quality education to their citizenry.
Also, Ag Vice Chancellor of Imo State University Prof Uchechukwu Chukwumaeze said the problem of Nigerian schools is education because the constitution makes it a responsibility of the states to provide free and compulsory education.
Chukwumaeze said his school alone has a wage bill of between N450 million and N500 million monthly, which he said is a hard bite to chew for the management and government. He said for the school to safely take that responsibility, each student would have to pay about N1.5 million as tuition fee. He appreciated ZESPRONET for their intervention in helping to provide some infrastructure for the institution.
