 షెర నిక్బతాడ్మిరతతాచమ౯త్తా. వట్చి఩ో నూటెట్యతె,checkungండobook�ర౏ిని. పెరణault నూఙఅహ కికాకి. దేనికికాకోవా, ఱ� Forgive఍ామోయచాగున౔. an investment and first civilian governor of Akiti State Otumba Adini Adibayo, special advisors to the president on economic matters, political matters and social investment program, the speaker, Akiti State House of Assembly and members of the Akiti State House of Assembly, the chief judge of Akiti State, the Honourable Justice Yewale Adia, Secretary to the Akiti State Government, Mr. Piyodo Ebanji, are members of the State Executive Council present, the chairman of the Council of Obers and all royal fathers present, captains of industry in the investing community, your Excellencies of the Diplomatic Core, Honoured Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, all that being that His Excellency said, I'm not so sure how I'm learning. Governor Fahemi, thank you very much for the kind invitation to join you at this third investment and economic development summit and the third anniversary celebration of the government of Akiti State. Congratulations and my gratitude for the warm and generous hospitality of Her Excellency Ere Lu Bisi Fahemi and your good self to me and my team today as always. I bring you and the great people of this state, the Fountain of Knowledge, the very warm felicitations of Mr. President, President Mohamed Buhari on this auspicious occasion of the third anniversary of your government. As you know President Mohamed Buhari has a special interest in this state being as your dynamic governor was actually on loan in the second coming from the Federal Executive Council chaired by His Excellency the President. The theme of this summit is an important one investment attractiveness and economic development lessons for sub nationals. The economy of the sub national is a peculiar animal. The state within the federation is not a nation but it must behave like a nation. It derive some resources from the federal pool and generate some income. The sum of those will provide infrastructure and services to the community for the size of the sum and the quantum of opportunity available to provide livelihoods for the populace will depend on how the state enables local and external investors, small and large, to put their resources into business and commercial activity in the state. The funded portion of the state's budget is after all a mere fraction of the sum total of economic activity or income generating activity formal or informal within the state. So the attractiveness of the state to commerce is a radical issue. The very lives and livelihoods of the people within the borders of the state whether the people will live prosperous and happy lives, be educated, have access to affordable medical care, depends on it. There is no question at all and we've heard so much already that AKT has established the foundation for a modern and thriving economy. The fundamentals are there a modern strong consistently improving legal and justice sector with forward looking laws which include a contemporary administration of civil justice law, a first of its kind sustainable development goals law, a tourism and hospitality law, property protection law and a 2020 amendment to the AKT state board of internal revenue law which amongst other provisions enables the service to collect all taxes due to the state government and all local government councils in the state under any law through a centralized electronic payment platform. Now that this is important for two reasons. The first is that it centralizes payment and it does so electronically but also it takes directly to the question of the bane of multiple revenue collectors and of course multiple taxation. This is a problem by itself and this law deals directly with it. There is no question at all that when you deal with multiple taxation and you present a friendly business environment things are completely different. AKT also has a very friendly business environment. It ranks a tenth overall out of the 36 states and the FCT in the inaugural edition of Nigeria's own homegrown subnational ease of doing business baseline survey. The survey was commissioned to serve as a status report on the current attractiveness of business environments of states for small and medium sized enterprises. AKT state was strongest in the skills and labor and infrastructure and security indicators where it had an average comparative score of 5.35 and 5.05 respectively. Also in the last world bank ease of doing business subnational survey of Nigeria the last one which was released in 2018 AKT excelled in the area of dealing with construction permits ranking fourth in the entire nation. This is a state that has vast arable land for agriculture and its value chains, a modern, strong and effective media and public communication system and of course an experienced CEO of the state of Nafiami who is who's academic and civil society background and will live out the outlaw days of Nadeko. His excellent relationships with international donors and DFIs is experienced as a second term governor and also one time minister of mines and steel and as chair of the governor's forum where he has very important experience in extracting benefits for the states from the federal government. All of this put the state at a distinct advantage so the evidence is compelling and significantly there's commitment here to a private sector led economy and this is important business is if you pardon the pun the business of the private sector government should as much as possible facilitate or at best collaborate and an excellent example is what we've heard already the formerly state owned ikun dairy farms at ikun ekiti after 40 years of inactivity the state government has diversity at 76 percent of the shareholding to a private dairy company from a seeding resulting in a company that is now producing over 80 000 liters of milk a month and and i'm told that this is from a herd of just 500 cows there's also the recent commissioning of the concession of the recent concessioning rather of the iconic warm springs affirming the same principle and this is a very important principle the idea that it is the private sector that really should lead in the economy some years ago when we were in lego state in 1999 as we assumed office at the time the previous government had sold majority shares in a co hotel and when we got into office you were very angry and the shares had been sold and so we tried our best to get it back we went to court we did all sorts of things but about a year into our production the minister of finance called me i was serving then as attorney general and said to me that the share the new shareholders were prepared to pay some dividends and i said no no don't accept anything from them it might go back to court and say we have considered the case but he said why don't you listen to how much they want to pay first when i heard how much they wanted to pay i said you have to take it immediately after after the truth is that after many years of the state owning a co hotels only majority shares we had made no profit none whatsoever and we're spent at the time millions up until the time when we took office in 1999 just trying to make that hotel world today it's a thriving business and lego state is earning significant dividends from it i'm sure uh is excellent to the governor of lego state and confirm so the private sector led model is obviously the best and i think that this is this is absolutely the right way to go as the governor has indicated there are several investments also in the agro like value chain and we've been told about jmk foods and integrated rice meal the fms farms promise point and are unlimited all with starch and ethanol production plants using cassava feedstock and the agbeja farm and export focus snail farm and there's a growing technology startup ecosystem with companies like kin plus technologies a software and web development company building applications and enterprise promotion software and also focus on talent development i'm told there's also jm tech center a research and technology institute which has just been recently launched in equi kitty all of these are thriving businesses modern businesses that are functioning here because the environment hasn't provided for them to succeed but your excellency two saturdays ago i represented mr president at the swearing in ceremony on the new president of the sautome and principale republic as i sat in that well appointed hall and took in the solemn grand deal of the oath taking of the new democratically elected president i reflected here was a country whose gdp is 472 million dollars 472 million dollars and it's a nation it has one vote in the united nations just as we have equity state has a gdp of 2.8 billion us dollars five times the size of the gdp of the nation of sautome and principale but it's not just sautome and principale equities gdp is higher than that of the nation of gambia gambia has a gdp of 1.9 billion us dollars and also a higher gdp than that of kverdi with a gdp of 1.7 billion dollars or seychelles the lovely tourist destination which has just 1.1 billion dollars in gdp equities gdp is about the same as the gdp of libaria which has 2.95 billion so all of these so so the Nigerian sub-national and we we're not we're talking of equity state now we're not even talking about naked so the Nigerians of national is indeed a peculiar animal even a relatively small state like equity state small in terms of population in particular and even allocation from federal revenue has a bigger economy than many african nations so the hopefully useful point to be made here is that there has to be a collective change of mind a collective change of mindset thinking differently there is a need for a sub-national to think like a sovereign state you have a bigger gdp and even more revenues than many nations i was talking once to the president of a west african country that has five million people it's total population is five million and i was telling him about our homegrown school feeding program where we feed 9.6 million children every single day and he said to me bro come and feed us now we're only five we're only five million you can feed all of us every day if you want so the question the policy maker should ask is what if i were a landlocked nation how will we survive and there's a different mindset when you are sure of a monthly allocation of cash at least enough to pay salaries whether you're generating come or not this is the challenge the so-called dodge disease and you know of course one becomes complacent but what if you have to take responsibility for all of those who reside within your borders pay all the salaries from only internally generated revenue sometimes a shock is what you need and that's what happened to us in negus and i'm sure that uh we all know the story the of no find me was very much a part of the thinking through some of the issues there negus was happy with his allocations we started off with 600 million a month in 1999 2000 600 million a month i mean today it is making a billion but we started in negus at the time was 600 million until then president of us on yaw seized our local government funds and he did so for three years in fact until he left office even after the supreme court had ordered the release of the funds so we were compelled to think like a sovereign state we moved to re-engineer our tax office much like what the state government is doing here and our land registry which of course is our own oil and from an idea of 600 million in 1999 and 2000 negus today does almost 45 billion a month and it's targeting 60 billion by next year i'm told so so so i think so i think the surest way forward i think the surest way forward is to deepen investments in the niche areas or at least the areas of it is comparative advantage we have already noted the tremendous potential in agriculture and dairy but clearly the way of the future especially for the huge population of young men and women seeking good paying jobs is technology and i think you are in the flow of progress with the planned establishment of the technology special economic zone clearly the future of fast growing economies is in the knowledge economy every day we are beginning to see the transition as shimon peres former prime minister of israel said from the age of territory we are entering the age of science land size natural resources are forced to give way to science and the knowledge economy science has no borders of course land has borders and visa and immigration restrictions technology has erased those borders and even physical offices so young men and women in akiti state can work from here and earn world-class wages this is why the planned investment in that akiti knowledge zone is strategic and is exciting to see that the plan is to use business process outsourcing as an anchor it's designed i'm told to be a service-led special economic zone a digital technology hub leveraging its proximity to five different tertiary institutions this if one may borrow the term is the future of jobs it certainly is a future of jobs and i think we must commend the farsightedness of the state governor and the and his team for determining that technology especially the knowledge economy is a way to go however a digital however a digital uh sez to be successful must be attractive to digital companies that means that there must be high quality world-train talent and i'm glad to hear already that on account of the reduction in the charges for laying of cables for broadband connectivity the state is already attracting investment in the lane of cables and that i think is fantastic because an important component of of the knowledge economy and of using that for commercial purposes so we need trained local talent it was the ceo of apple team cook who was asked why his company was investing in china was investing so much he said and i quote the number one reason why we like to be in china is the people china has extraordinary skills and that and part of and they have the most what is most unknown about them is there almost two million application developers two million application developers who reside in china that write applications for ios app store two million app developers in one in one country so gone are the days when you could argue that you should be an attractive destination for investment because you have cheap labor today world-train technology and innovation talent is the game changer so there are three keys to this knowledge economy which i which have which in my opinion is the future and the three keys are education education education i think it it will be important for it to stay to leverage its fame love and its fame passion for education and i think that just you know some some will remember how you know in those in those days of the first republic uh the eloquent and witty politician chief keo mbadiway was the joke around him at the time when people would say that uh badiway or badiway ngopakwa ekiti a ka tipali tipali i think that ekiti has not lost i think i think ekiti has not lost that edge and this is the moment i believe to refocus especially on science technology engineering and mathematics stem education this is vital for being able to participate effectively in the fourth industrial revolution which is as one's a digital age and and a knowledge age this must be the fountain of the knowledge economy i think we must go beyond the fountain of knowledge it must become the fountain of the knowledge economy and i believe that you all set for that purpose of course education is not only at the high end but also it requires a strategic a strategic framework for imparting technical and vocational skills to artisans the importance of having a pool of healthy well trained workers such as electricians fitas mechanics laboratory technicians welders machine tools and even web designers is vital for an ecosystem that would be attractive for technology and innovation investments happily ekiti state has a highest score among the states of the federation in the technical and professional skills category for the ease of business ease of doing business rankings so there's a strong foundation to build upon upon this but i think there's more to leverage on for example there is tremendous potential for the development of a whole medical education and health care industry around the huge private investment in the iconic afeba balala university and the upward multi system teaching hospital and i know that and i know that the state was helpful in providing access routes and i believe some other facilities when that campus was been was being developed today aboard that multi system hospital is getting mentioned internationally for complex surgeries that are being done there a variety of cardiac surgeries neuro surgery breakthroughs in skull based tumors spine surgeries even its special type of neuron surgery called awake neurosurgery where the patient is actually awake while his brain has been operated on many countries of the world do not have many countries of the world do not have the number of medical talent assembled in that hospital alone so there are huge opportunities here and i believe that we must tap into those opportunities also so let me close by commending again governor kairadi fireman and the excellent team and the excellent team that you lead your attorney general my dear friend was with us in leading a team of southwest attorneys general and after showing us all that he had done in akiti state i consider i had to remind him that he actually came from obu state that is of course he would he would argue about that so i must commend you for leading a focused and value sensitive modern and well informed approach to governance so much has been done so much has been done but much remains to be done and on your third anniversary in office i pray that you will finish well and finish strong and that this state and its great people will continually enjoy peace and prosperity god bless you all thank you