Governor of Enugu state,Dr. Peter Mbah has assured a deeper partnership with the European Union , Kingdom of Belgium, Portuguese government and the Eastern Nigerian film festival. in the areas of energy, education ,health, agriculture , industry and entertainment ,respectively.
He gave the assurance on Friday,28th November, when he received the Ambassador of European union and ECOWAS to Nigeria, Gautier Mignot , the Ambassador of Kingdom of Belgium, Peter Leenknegt, Ambassador of Portugal, Paulo Martins dos Santos Santos,, and the Eastern Nigerian film festival ,who paid him a courtesy visit in his office in Government House, Enugu.
He said the European Union is a remarkable force across the world.and the value ,the impact and the projects they ‘re executing are seen and appreciated
.Gov Mbah assuring deeper partnership with EU, Belgium, Portugal.
Governor Mbah who spoke on partnership with European Union, said, “We also see a huge alliance between our missions and projects, and the aims and objectives for the European Union, particularly with regards to programmes and projects across Africa.
“We believe that if we don’t invest hugely in education and health, and if we allow poverty to continue, we’re going to be paying a whole lot more for rural Somalia which is why it seems like we’re obsessed with education.
Speaking on what his administration has done and is doing in the education sector, Governor Mbah said, “We’re investing, over 33% of our total budget to education. In fact, in the social services, in the last two budget cycles, we’ve invested over 50% of our budget in those sectors. That’s essentially because we believe that the wealth of our state is not predicated on the things we have beneath our soil,whether it’s coal or other solid minerals.
“It’s essentially the quality of human resources we have, and how we’re able to stiflingly equip these young minds so that we can also prepare them and build them to the evolving 21st century skills.So if you take, for example, our programme in the education sector, we have in the last two years built over 7,000 classrooms. We call them Smart Green schools.
Speaking further about Smart Green school, Governor Mbah said, “We have today about 267 Smart Green schools. Our hope is that by January, the children who are 300,000 kids in this state will have access to a Smart Green school. We’re not so much excited about the bricks and mortar as much as we are with what each Smart school features.
“Each Smart school features a centre for artificial intelligence, robotics, mechatronics, and we also have an ICT hub, all the evolving 21st century skills that we expect from young ones. We understand that AI will contribute over $26 billion to global economy in five years from now.
” We just do not want our young ones, when this story is told, for them to be discounted from this new world order. Which is why it seems like we actually have not approached the intervention in the education sector marginally or incrementally.It was such a radical move to say, we’re going to build 260 Smart schools, make sure that every child in this state has access to quality learning.
Gov Mbah and the Ambassadors
“If we failed to spend that money and get these kids to school today, we would pay 10 times more tomorrow. We’re already experiencing that in some parts of the country, where even some people in our own environment, where some of our young people are taking criminality as a venture, because we have not essentially equipped them with the right skills to be employable and so we felt that we need to correct that.
“We need to think about capitalising on how we want these kids to function 20 years from now. From January, we’re going to be providing a free nutritious meal every day to every child, he said
On home grown feeding, ,Governor Mbah said, “we’re going to be feeding over 300,000 children every day from January next year and so what we’ve done also to make that reliable and sustainable is to build a smart farm. So we have a farm”.
He disclosed that from the current pilot schemes the kids were able to produce over 35% of what they eat today, noting that by next year, their target is to reach 60%.
Governor Mbah also said his administration has built 260 Type Two Primary healthcare centres in 260 political wards, launched the Enugu Airlines and assured partnership in those areas.
On Emenite, he said he will invite the management of the company for a meeting to see how to settle their challenges.
“We’re trying to improve our footprint . Our footprint to our target is to attract 3 million visitors to Enugu next year and part of it is to develop tourist sites.Where there were mining sand before, we’ve identified that as one of the tourist sites. We’re also interested in businesses being successful here. We are very much open to that growth projection. We want to grow our economy 7 fold , in 8 years. That requires having a lot of private sector investment.
Earlier, while speaking on the purpose of their visit, , the Ambassador of the European Union and ECOWAS .to Nigeria , Gautier Mignot said they were on the courtesy visit to discuss about partnership between the European Union and Enugu state and its potential, and future,
He said they also have a partnership with the Eastern Nigerian International Film Festival, and had the European Union Day on Thursday in the framework of the festival,
Presentation of gifts
The Ambassador intimated Governor Mbah that they were in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where they met students, scholars, and authorities of the university to present to them the opportunities of mobility, academic mobility, and capacity building for higher institutions under EU-funded programmes, in particular , the Erasmus Plus programme, “because we want very much to offer opportunities to young people. These are core targets for cooperation”, he said.
Continuing, the Ambassador said, “We are Nigeria’s first partner, first partner in trade, first partner in investment, in cooperation also. and this is true for the whole of Africa, as early this week, we had a very important summit in Rwanda, Angola, between leaders of the African Union and leaders of the European Union.
” It was the first such summit in three years, and it was the celebration of 25 years of successful partnership between the European Union and the African Union, and I think it was a very good summit which reaffirmed the strength of this partnership”Ambassador Mignot noted that here in Nigeria, the EU and Team Europe is also Nigeria’s first partner in trade, in investment, and in cooperation.
“We’ve got a few figures about the partnership, and we want to strengthen even more this partnership, of course through our cooperation, but also which goes really across the board, in particular through what we call the Global Gateway Strategy, which is about leveraging investment and we want very much to partner with the private sector, in particular with EU companies on this.
“We have the European Chamber of Commerce, relatively young, Eurocharm, young, but growing steadily, having already 75 members, and we want very much to articulate our cooperation with the investment opportunities and here in Enugu state in particular, we’ve been partnering in two sectors, which are energy and education.
“On energy, we have several projects ongoing.One called Solar for Health, which is implemented by NTU International.We are financing EU funds programmes.We don’t implement them.They are implemented through implementing partners. So in this case, NTU International and Enugu is one of the seven states benefiting from this Nigeria Solar for Health project. Under it, we will provide technical assistance and funding for the construction of 20 solar microgrids to power 20 primary health centres and 124 small and medium-sized enterprises.,” he said.
He added that they also have a small hydropower for agro-industrial sector projects, implemented by UNIDO, which is at the stage of feasibility studies.
According to him, two feasibility studies will be done to choose one site.There will be co-funding, which has been agreed with your government, to build the small hydropower on the selected site.
Speaking more on energy, he said, “we have the Nigeria Energy Support Programme, NESP, which is implemented by GIZ, the German cooperation agency and our cooperation with the Enugu state government under this programme involves regulatory and policy framework support, also electrification investment support, training and capacity building, and finally the funding of four interconnected mini-grids up to a cumulative capacity of over one megawatt to electrify over 12,000 fisheries quite a sizable cooperation we have on energy, ” he said.
On education, the EU Ambassador said they also have a project and Enugu is one of the states from the six geo-political zones of the country selected last year(2024) for the implementation of the project, called Education and Youth Empowerment in Nigeria Expand, Integrate and Strengthen Systems to Build Teachers’ Capacity and Resilience.
He said the program is on building teachers’ capacity. “It’s a project implemented by UNESCO. and what we want to enhance teachers’ capacity through training, review of the national teacher policy and career path,and for better interaction between teachers and their students.
The Ambassador said at the state level, the programme was successfully launched early in the year,and the steering committee is already in place.
” We are collaborating with the State Colleges of Education in Enuguand the Federal Colleges of Education in Ehamufu and a total of more than 2,000 teachers will be trained in 260 wards of the state and these activities include also capacity development in digital literacy and education, and technology, of course, is very important today and other kinds of activities. and of course,
“We want very much to align with your government’s Smart school initiative, and teachers in the Smart schools will be also trained under the project, So this is another project that we run until June 2028. ” he said..
The Ambassador also disclosed that they have important partnership in culture with the Eastern Nigeria International Film Festival.
“This is the second year we are partnering with the festival.and as it was very successful last year, we repeated the experience, and I see the opportunity to come also and attend the festival. We had a very good session yesterday of pitching by young filmmakers, aspiring filmmakers, with a grant awarded to the best to implement this project of short film and we had also the presentation of some EU movies. and we want very much to continue this partnership because we find that this festival, which is already celebrating its 6th edition, is a very valuable initiative here in Eastern Nigeria. We are partnering with other film festivals across the country, but this one is really one of the best partners that we have identified,” he said..
On his part, the Ambassador of Portugal,Paulo Martins dos Santos Santos, said they wanted partnership in railway and roads construction.as well as energy.
In his brief speech, the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Belgium. Peter Leenknegt also sought partnership with Enugu state government in the areas of energy.
Speaking also, , the founder of the Eastern Nigerian Film Festival ,Ujuako Okubo, appealed to Governor Mbah to adopt the Eastern Nigerian Film festival as his “baby”. She said they empower young actors in the film industry. To that request, governor Mbah assured the support of the state government. He said he will set up a committee that will work with the Eastern Nigerian film festival.
