How NEPAD will alleviate poverty - Ononuju

from The Nigerian Tribune

Barrister Kingsley Ononuju was recently appointed as co-ordinator of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) in Imo State. In this interview, he discusses the opportunities inherent in NEPAD and how Imo’s economy can be galvanised through it. Excerpts:

In the past couple of weeks, we have seen a lot of activities concerning NEPAD. What exactly is NEPAD and how does it affect Imo State and the South East?
NEPAD is the New Partnership for Africa’s Development. By extension, what this means is the “New Partnership for Nigeria’s Development” and by extension Imo State, which is the territory I am representing in NEPAD.

What does NEPAD portend for development in Imo State?
NEPAD as a new framework, even though it’s been there for a couple of years now, aims at eradicating poverty, empowering women, stopping the marginalisation of Africa in global economy, and deepening democracy through the Africa Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). By definition, NEPAD is an integrated framework for socio-economic development of Africa.

Does NEPAD conflict with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)?
When I came into Imo State, it was unfortunate that NEPAD had been on for sometime, but the people seemed to know nothing about it. I wouldn’t know what happened, but all the activities, especially sensitisation programmes, you are seeing this time round constitute what NEPAD is all about.

Since Imo State governor, Mr. Ikedi Ohakim, has appointed me as NEPAD coordinator for the state, I think I owe my state a duty to popularise NEPAD because NEPAD ought to be our way of life. NEPAD is a structure that will alleviate poverty in all its ramifications. It is a programme that will promote acquisition of skills, human development, capacity building, development of infrastructure and ICT, health, transport, sanitation and urbanisation.

There is nothing NEPAD does not touch; everything concerning life is what NEPAD stands for. Even the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) and the State Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (SEEDS) and the rest of them are all part of NEPAD. They are domesticated arms of NEPAD. Anything that will reduce poverty in our region is what NEPAD has come to promote. Interestingly, world bodies have signed on into the covenant as a platform for meaningful development and for them to partner with us in developing our area.

How will NEPAD alleviate poverty in the midst of the numerous challenges you have mentioned?
Poverty alleviation is what NEPAD stands for just like when you say acquisition of skills. If you talk about farmers, you farm some products and people just consume. If you farm, are you able to package those farm produces for exportation and access to the global economy? So, how do you do it? NEPAD stands to give you the requisite skills. When you farm, look at the input you need to have a good product and look at how you are going to package the product so that you can export it to the United States of America (USA), Europe and other African countries. If you are able to do this, you will be able to make more money. Once you get that skill, it becomes a continuous thing because your products can be accessed from any other region.

In the area of capacity building, we need to retrain ourselves, especially in the public sector. People need to know that they have to improve on existing ways of doing things.

When people stop reading, they start dying; you have to improve the capacity of workers. For example, people should be equipped with the efficiency needed to increase productivity in their places of work. This can be done through ICT and it is what NEPAD stands for. In all, if we have youths that are trained in ICT, they don’t need to crowd the town. If they belong to any of the local governments, if there is electricity, what do we do?

We must get the equipment for them around there. People don’t need to come to Owerri to type documents. They can just open small shops in their local governments, type documents, print them out and make photocopies for people. This is one of the ways to alleviate poverty. As long as people can sustain this and feed their families, then poverty will have been alleviated. They would have got a way of life, a means of livelihood that can sustain them.

Does this mean that NEPAD is about enlightenment and not about training people or telling them how and where to get training?
No, we will. We partner, we train people. We train people when we have what we call international agencies. Parts of the programme are resource mobilisation and capital flow.

The rest of the world has signed on to operate and partner with us in these areas. So, if we have a programme on the youth, they are going to partner with us. They will identify areas where they can help us in order to train the youth. Everybody can not seek for employment in the public service. So, NEPAD is the mother of partnerships. We are the owners of the words Public-Private Partnership (PPP). So we are going to be part of it.

Even requisite information obtained from NEPAD is more than enough for you to know where to key in. That is why information is key.

You talked about Imo State being the focal point for the South East geo-political zone. What exactly do you mean?
What it means is that in the entire South East, Imo State is the headquarters because the programme we have is zoned to the six geo-political zones in the country. By extension, Governor Ohakim is the focal person for the South East on NEPAD. The programme we have now is called the Country Self-Assessment Review (CSAR) and the review team will visit Imo State as the headquarters. The people that are going to visit Imo are those coming from South Africa where we have the headquarters. I think the wife of Nelson Mandela, Graca, is going to lead the delegation to Nigeria.

The South East zonal workshop took place here in Imo Sate recently, courtesy of the state government. And what it means is that every state must be peer-reviewed, when the states are peer-reviewed, you can say Nigeria has been peer-reviewed. Sometimes in June, we will go into the final lap of the external country assessment by external assessors.

Now, what we are doing is internal assessment which these people are coming to supervise. Once any country or state is adjudged as peer reviewed (APRM is centered on deepening democracy, peace and security), the democratic indicators are captured there – corporate governance and how our organisations are run. The second one is socio-economic, the other is political governance, government’s transparency, due process, rule of law. If already entrenched, how far has it gone? Then you are sure you will become like any other country in the developed world. That would give you access to so many things.

If for instance, Nigeria has been adjudged right in transparency, due process, rule of law, human rights, peace and security, then we would be a beneficiary to a specified sum of money which runs into billions of dollars. The United Nations, European Union (EU) and the Asian Tigers will provide it and government will access these directly for being peer-reviewed. What we need to do is act and not just talk. We need to work with the government of Imo State to put the state on the path to sustainable development.