Sen. Victor Umeh, representing Anambra Central senatorial district in the National Assembly, says that unity of purpose among governors of South East will generate greater and faster development in the zone.
Umeh said this in Awka on Thursday while chairing the round table organised by Paul Nwosu, former Commissioner for Information in Anambra to mark the rebranding of his media outfit, Anambra Times to Alpha Times to cover the entire southeast zone.
Umeh charged governors of the five states of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo to work closely towards regional cooperation and development and shun individualism.
The Senator urged the governors to come together and revive industries in the zone to provide employment for the zone’s teeming unemployed population.
He commended President Bola Tinubu for the creation of South East Development Commission and appointment of competent persons who were forward thinking to man the commission.
According to him, there is an urgent need for the governors to take the bull by the horn by driving development programmes including security as the federal government cannot do all things for the zone.
“The governors have a comparative advantage and in a cooperative manner instead of individualism and competing among themselves on who is the best performing, should bond for common good of the people.
“I’m here to be part of the discourse about how we can ensure collaboration in the zone; we can say that the South East is not where it should be.
“In 1964, we were branded as the fastest growing economy in the world because of the ingenuity of the Igbo people, and the industrialisation policy was topnotch.
“That was when most of the industries you see today were built; in hospitality we had chains of hotels and in agriculture we were the best and the South East was the development corridor of the world,” he said.
Umeh said that the people should not wait for anyone to make the South east an industrial cluster because they had the ingenuity.
“I challenge our governors to lead the quest for industrialisation; that was what late Dr Michael Okpara did.
“All the industries built by Okpara have all died, what are the governors doing to revive them? Our people are very ingenuous, we are very creative.
“If we are talking about industrial parks, let them come alive, if it is in Nnewi, let us see those industries. Roads are not the only things we need.
“We need industries to engage our people. We want to see what happened in Japan happen here.
“I am in the Senate and people are coming to ask for white collar jobs, but we know that people can acquire skills that can help them be useful,” Umeh noted.
Godwin Onu, a political Science lecturer at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka, called on the South-East governors to collaborate and establish industrial cluster involving education development, healthcare sector, agriculture among others to project the needs of the zone.
Onu said that the actualisation of these collaboration would help to foster unity of purpose and harness the different potentials of the states to build one indivisible zone.
The Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Alpha Times, Paul Nwosu in a remark, noted that the Roundtable on South-East Interstate Collaboration was aimed to bring a transformative power of regional collaboration.
He said that the official rebranding of Anambra Times was convened to reflect the possibility of regional unlocking of the full economic potentials of the South-East.
He said that time had come to move beyond rhetoric and embrace practical partnerships that would drive the region forward.
“While the Federal Government rightly pursues regional integration through development commissions, the states within the South-East can indeed collaborate more,” Nwosu said.
Mike Ogbuekwe, Special Adviser to Gov Peter Mba of Enugu State, said that it was time for the South-East governors to have South-East Development Agency financed by wealthy people of the zone.
Ogbuekwe said that the agency would be manned by intellectuals from the zone to develop and create solutions to the core needs of the zone.
