…Gives insights on Edo Tech Park, state policy responses to Covid-19, environmental restoration

The Edo State Governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, on Tuesday joined world leaders at the 2022 Smart City Mayors’ Summit taking place in Taipei, Taiwan, to discuss his administration’s innovative steps towards making the state a smart city.

Obaseki who was the only African leader invited alongside leaders from France, the United Kingdom, Poland, Belgium, Czech Republic, Malaysia and Taiwan, said his administration is taking advantage of the covid-19 pandemic era to leapfrog development in the state.

Speaking to the topic “New Normal with digital transformation”, the Governor explained how the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the earnings of families in the state and Nigeria as a whole, forcing national and sub-national governments to seek internal solutions to reduce the effect of subsequent pandemics.

He said the pandemic helped Edo double-down on its ongoing initiatives like the Benin Enterprise Park, Benin Medical District, among others to build resilience and improve the quality of life for residents.

The Benin Enterprise Park is a private sector-led industrial park which aims to provide efficient and competitive infrastructure to international and local companies.

The project is being developed in phases, on a 900-hectare location along the Benin-Sapele highway and would include a designated area for oil and gas service companies to maximize Edo’s competitive advantage in gas production.

Obaseki noted that Edo “is focusing on technology and for us; it’s about building people, young people through technology. We have built a technology park in partnership with the private sector where we are training between 10,000 to 15,000 software engineers and other technology experts.

“For us our focus as a people is on our cultural heritage, trying to understand who we are and how to engage the world from that standpoint.

“We are working on the preservation of our ecosystem particularly our rainforest and to utilize technology to drive our human development in the areas of education and skills development and security.”

He added: “Benin City has about 2,000 square kilometers of land and our aspiration is to first, plan our cities and take advantage of the post covid-19 to build infrastructure; we see this as an opportunity to leapfrog using technology in building our infrastructure and human capacity.”

 The Governor explained to the world leaders and the nearly 1000 viewers on the live-streamed event how Edo’s focus on building its infrastructure, sourcing investments and leveraging technology in governance, education and health care systems became the framework for the transformation.

Failure of a governor