The Primacy of Truth (Part 9)

By Crusoe Osagie

In my line of work, the implement I find most useful and disturbing, in equal proportion, is my mobile phone.

It is the most important tool for my work being a very portable communication device, yet the most hazardous to my health because calls and messages come in nonstop, subjecting me to enormous amounts of pressure for almost 24 hours every day.

One fateful day, this important device I hate to love was blaring ceaselessly with a call from a strange telephone number, and like the judge in the parable of the persistent widow in Luke Chapter 18, I grudgingly took the call, essentially because the phone was driving me crazy.

“Hello,” I said. “Crusoooe,” I heard on the other side of the phone, in a most informal, but familiar tone.

I wrestled with my mind trying to recall who the strange caller with the familiar voice was.

“Is this Don?” I asked. “Yes, na me, Donald,” he responded.

Donald was my schoolmate at the university. He was in the Faculty of Engineering.

Try to picture those extremely funny and playful students in the hostel who still manage to be among the best in class. That was Donald exactly. His classmates in engineering did not like to play with him because you only do so at your own peril. He managed to keep his grades very high no matter how hard he played.

The last time I saw Donald was at the Apapa Ports in Lagos. I was on my way to Creek Road where my office was when I ran into him. He was a senior engineer at the Dangote Sugar Refinery.

Back to our telephone conversation: “What’s up, Don?” I queried.

“I just wanted to tell you I am now in Benin City,” he responded.

“Really, you’re no longer with Dangote Sugar Refinery?” I probed.

“No, I have been hired by a company in Edo State, one of the food-grade ethanol processing companies,” he enthused.

After our conversation ended, it was Governor Godwin Obaseki’s effort to industrialize Edo State that came to mind. For decades, the employment-related migration was always mainly from Edo State to Lagos.

In the last few years, however with Governor Obaseki at the helm, the migratory trend seems to be reversing. Skilled manpower is now moving from Lagos and other industrialized States back to Edo.

Just like Donald, my mother’s youngest son, Francis, who is a Financial Advisor with one of the biggest investment banks in the United States was visiting Benin City last November and so he accompanied me to a business cocktail.

It was on our way home from the cocktail that he told me that one of the executives of a big-ticket investor in Edo State offered him a role in the finance directorate of their business.

Francis told him he would think about it just to blow him off, only to sit side-by-side with the same man on the plane to Lagos as Francis returned to the States. It was an awkward moment for him when the man asked if he had not made up his mind yet.

In the last eight years, the Obaseki-led administration has grown Edo’s economy from about $10bn to over $26bn. These are not just statistical figures.

They are fruits that have sprouted on the back of nuanced reforms and partnerships by the State Government over these past years. These investments include:

• The 6600 barrels per day (bpd) Edo Modular Refinery which was birthed through a partnership with AIPCC Energy

• The Ossiomo Independent Power Project, birthed in partnership with CCETC Power.

• The Duport Refinery, which is operated by Duport Midstream Company Limited, in Egbokor, Orhionmwon Local Government Area of the State.

• The Edo State Oil Palm Programme (ESOPP), a $2bn investment outlay attracted to the State for the development of over 70,000 hectares of oil palm plantation. The project has been described as the biggest oil palm development programme on the African continent. Some of the companies investing in the ESOPP programme include Dufil Prima Foods, which has Singaporean-Indonesian origin; Fayus Inc., an America-based company, Flour Mills of Nigeria (FMN), among others.

• Edo boasts of two ethanol plants, including the Dufil Ethanol Plant in Ovia South West and the Greenhill Ethanol Plant in Ologbo, Ikpoba Okha Local Government Area of State, which has been projected to meet 5.8 percent of Nigeria’s ethanol needs and rake in about $29 million in revenue yearly at full capacity.

• Another key partner in the State is Mota Engil, a Portuguese international group, which has emerged as the preferred bidder for the Benin River Port Project. The company is set to move to site to commence construction of the 300,000 TEU port project in Benin.

These are a few of the investments that have come into the State on account of Governor Obaseki’s deft capacity to organize the operating environment to attract investments and support business growth. They are an outcome of the ‘many MOUs’ Memoranda of Understanding signed by the State Government in these past eight years.

Will my schoolmate, Donald; his family members, friends, his mother, father, and the likes of him who have benefitted from Edo’s economy roaring back to life sit idly and watch the Lions and Tigers take us back to the days when Edo was just a civil service State?

The jury is out and the battleground is the gubernatorial election on September 21, 2024.

Sadly, not many will read this. Our people are inundated by a deluge of tall tales and they can hardly find space to accommodate the Primacy of Truth.

Watch out for Part 10.

Osagie, a journalist, is the Special Adviser to Governor Godwin Obaseki on Media Projects