Uyo – As part of the activities to mark the 32nd-anniversary celebration of the creation of Akwa Ibom State, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Saturday commissioned a flour processing mill in Onna Local Government Area of the State.
Osinbajo, who arrived Uyo Saturday for commissioning of the projects, also commissioned a plywood factory in Onna and digitalized power sub-station in Mkpat Enin Local Government Area of the State.
Speaking before the inauguration of Kings Floor Mill, which is said to have the capacity to.produce 500 metric tonnes of flour per day, Osinbajo urged other state governments to emulate Akwa Ibom State in providing infrastructure to assist the federal government in attracting investors to the country.
The Vice President said President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration was doing everything possible to ease the process of doing business so as to attract investors to the country.
He said with the prevailing peace and friendliness experienced in the state, it was obvious that investors coming to Nigeria would prefer to berth in Akwa Ibom first, especially with Ekim Power Plant in Mkpat Enin which would provide uninterrupted electricity in the state.
Osinbajo, however, advised international investors to see Nigeria as the best place to do business “because this is where the market is. The GDP of Lagos State is great than that Kenya and Ivory Coast put together.”
He congratulated Governor Udom Emmanuel and the people of Akwa Ibom state even as he prayed God to bless the efforts of the state in their industrialisation drive.
Addressing the occasion, Gov Emmanuel said the flour mill was a fulfilment of one of his electoral promises made during the campaign since he had said he would make governance touch the lives of the people at the grassroots.
Emmanuel said the flour mill, which has the capacity to provide direct employment to 1,500 people, is the biggest in the South-South zone of the country.
He said the inauguration of another project, the digitized power substation at Ekim, Mkpan Enin LGA, also by the Vice President, would mark the launch of Power-for-All which would ensure that every household in the state had electricity by December 2021.
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“If people can buy a phone, I believe they would be able to buy electricity metres, and even if they can’t, we can subsidise because everywhere in the world, the government has been subsidising business.
“By the time our tenure ends, it is our aspiration that we will produce 80 per cent of all the things we consume in this state,” the governor said.
He thanked the Vice President for not being influenced by political differences since he has risen above political bias to understand that political parties are only vehicles to board to governance while governance should not be tainted by political differences.
