By Iniobong John
In all his consultative meetings with various groups and individuals,His Excellency, Obong Nsima Ekere, former deputy governor of the state,has not left anybody in doubt about his understanding of the state and its economic peculiarities.
His emphasis on job creation as a panacea for sustainable economic development of the state underscores his belief that the most important challenge before the state at the moment is rapid creation of job opportunities to absorb thousands of young and able bodied Akwa Ibom people who upon graduation from schools have no jobs to do and therefore are willing tools to illegal activities.
As interesting as this may seem, the question that readily comes to mind is how these jobs will be created.?This question is very pertinent bearing in mind that it's not a costless exercise for government to create jobs . Don't listen to those politicians who think absorbing millions of people into already over bloated bureaucracy amounts to job creation . It's not.Apart from the burden of recurrent expenditure these places on government,it's no impact on the social infrastructure.
However, Obong Nsima Ekere,being a politician with robust understanding of how government works knows that with job creation,there's no such thing like free lunch,.
Somebody has to pay for the jobs to be created . That's why in saner societies, the private sector are the job providers,while government create the enabling environment for it.
Mindful of this,therefore, ,Obong Nsima Ekere has promised to create an enabling environment for a virile private sector to thrive in the state. He will restructure the bureaucratic system of the service in order to effectively complement government micro economic policies and programmes to achieve demonstrable developmental outcomes.
And himself being an accomplished professional, investor, entrepreneur, a private sector guru of international repute,he knows how to pursue and accomplish this noble vision for the benefits of the people of the state and even beyond. He knows how to attract investors to invest in the state,create jobs and enhance our economy.
Truly, without a firm knowledge of the working of the bureaucrats,no governor,no matter how politically suave that he may be will be able to fulfill his electoral promises.
With the above in mind, Obong Nsima Ekere knows that for he to succeed with his programme of job creation through revamping the agricultural sector,establishment of agro based industrial parks,reduction of poverty through an enhanced micro credit,a virile civil service structure that's capable and ready to guard and sustain the transformation of the economy of the state from civil service driven to private sector driven is imperative . It's only by so doing,the small and medium scale enterprises(SMEs),sub sector,unarguably the chief driver in most economies of the world will find its foothold in the state.
Tradionally this sub sector provides more jobs than government and even multi national companies can do and that's the major plausible way of engaging our youths and making our economy more virile and strong.
What's more,we must begin to imagine and plan our economy beyond oil and this can only crystallise if we collectively give our consent to Obong Nsima Ekere as the successor to Governor Akpabio in 2015.
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