The Benue Government says it is repositioning the state’s economy to convert its abundant resources into jobs, investment, higher revenues and improved living standards. Dr Raymond Asemakaha, Group Managing Director of Benue Investment and Property Company, stated this while presenting the state economic vision at the end of a three-day economic summit in Makurdi. The GMD said the summit aimed to move Benue from “potential to prosperity.”
Asemakaha said the strategy followed a root-cause analysis of factors responsible for the state’s poor economic performance, leading to the identification of seven strategic principles for sustainable prosperity. He listed the areas as human capital development, enterprise development, innovation, development financing, agro-allied development and value addition, technology and digital transformation, and economic and governance reforms. He said the ₦7.3 billion allocated to human capital development must be deployed strategically to ensure that graduates and other young people become productive participants in the economy.
Governor Hyacinth Alia said the state’s 30-year development plan will ensure continuity in governance and transform the state’s economic potential into prosperity. He cited Lagos State’s 25-year development plan as an example of how continuity in policy and development planning could transform an economy. He said the state had assessed its resources and found that it was endowed with significant human, mineral, and agricultural resources but needed strategies to harness them effectively.
The winners: Benue residents, who may benefit from improved economic opportunities; and private investors, who are being courted to participate in the state’s transformation. The losers: those who benefit from the status quo; and the Nigerian government, which must support state-level economic reforms.
Bottom Line: Benue has a plan. The state wants to move from potential to prosperity. The question is whether the plan will be implemented or join the long list of abandoned development strategies.