•Coal, iron ore and cement are key in my programmes to industrialise Enugu, Uche Nnaji reveals

The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Enugu State, Chief Uche Nnaji, has spoken of his plans to anchor his programmes for the development of Enugu State on industrialisation and its consequent employment generation, pointing to three primary industrial niches of coal, iron ore and cement.

Nnaji spoke on Friday, at the Alaba International Market, when Igbo traders in Alaba International Market, Ojo and the Auto Spare Parts and machinery Dealers association (ASPAMDA), hosted him to rub minds on his plans for the state when he becomes governor.

Nnaji said his focus on coal, iron ore and cement as anchors for the development of the state stems from the advantages Enugu State has by having these natural resources in abundance.

“My administration will focus on three industries that we expect to attract more than $4 billion in foreign direct investment. These industries will absorb more than 50,000people in direct and indirect employment. We need to help our people. That is what I am interested in. I am not interested in making money as a governor, I am not interested in acquiring money. God has helped me already and it is time for me to help my people and to make Enugu to work again, Nnaji confessed.

He took the gathering back memory lane to 1999, when he first won an election as a senator, but voluntarily relinquished the seat to Chief Jim Nwobodo, out of respect and the belief that jim had more experience and would make a better senator at the time

“It was the appointment given to me by Bola Ahmed Tinubu as a minister of the Federal Republic that exposed me to the benefits of having people-oriented leaders in government, otherwise I was not interested,” he said. “Before then, I had won a senatorial seat for my constituency. I won that election but after reflection, I concluded that winning a senate seat and going there without a plan to help anybody was not the purpose I wanted for myself, so I just decided and gave the ticket to Chief Jim Nwobodo.”

On his plans to industrialise Enugu, Nnaji emphasized the places of coal, iron ore and cement in his plans.

“What we are going to do in Enugu with these industries is to maximise value extraction from them. If you are from Awhum, or areas around Awhum where they take coal these days, they just dig our coal and take out without care to the environment. If you go there at night, you will cry when you see the number of vehicles carrying raw coal away; at least 100 trailers of raw coal are trucked away every day from our land, leaving behind no benefit to the community. You can send any of your people to investigate this,” he said. “There are on the average, 100 trucks leaving this part of Enugu everyday but this natural resource is benefiting only the government and not the people on whose soil the coal is dug out from.

Saying he shed tears after seeing what is happening at Awhum, with the lack of government presence in the areas, even when the government collects N250,000 for each truck of coal taken out from the community each day, he strongly condemned the poor attention paid to the are by the government of the day, saying his dministration plans to make such areas attract related development projects.

Sid he: “That is why we want to pay attention to this area by creating coal-related industries, an industry that has many multipliers and value added. From coal, we will get a product like dymethylatyl, and from dymethylatyl, you get methanol. When you start producing something like methanol, companies abroad would be willing to pay for the product for five years supply upfront. If you move it to ammonia or you move it to urea, you get huge values as well, and that means more income for the state and its people. Indorama is producing 3,000 metric tonnes of urea daily, and it exports everything. A friend of mine that has 5 percent equity stake in this company gets N42 million every December. So if we can do that in Enugu, the sweat equity we will give to government can take care of the area where we have the industry, with enough for other government activities. And we will not be sitting and waiting for the Federation Accounts and Allocations Committee (FAAC) every month, before we are able to do anything in this state”

“This is what a thinking government should know. From methanol, if you want to extend it, you can generate other products like polypropylene and polyethylene, which is the largest selling commodity in the world,” he continued

“We can also go to cement, we can go to iron ore. The areas from Nachi in Udi and Oji River going all the way to some parts of Anambra, and some parts of Nsukka have deposits of iron ore in commercial quantities. But even if we restrict what we want to do to coal alone, you will discover that having coal could turn out to be better than having crude oil. I found this out in Malaysia, and it was because Bola Ahmed Tinubu gave me the opportunity to serve as a minister under his government that availed me the opportunity to find out about all these things. I have visited the place twice as a minister and I was a part of the commissioning of one of the plants,” he stated