By onyekachi C Ugwu
In his electrifying presentation at the main auditorium of Godfrey Okoye University Enugu, venue of his Manifesto presentation, prior to his election and inauguration as the Enugu State Governor, Dr Peter Ndubuisi Mbah, had harped on Integrated Rural Development as one of the pivots of his administration's development agenda.
This ostensibly is in his clear understanding of the role of rural development in the overall ambitious build up to skyrocketing the GDP of Enugu State from it paltry state to an unprecedented N40billion mark.
Rural development has been defined by the World Bank as “a strategy designed to improve the economic and social life of a specific group the rural poor” whereas the United Nations Committee, captured it as “a strategy designed to transform the rural life by extending to the masses of the rural population the benefits of economic and social progress, stressing a fundamental principle; that the rural poor must share fully in this development process through equitable access to resources inputs and services and participation’ in the design and implementation of development programmes.
The Enugu State Governor therefore believes in an Integrated rural development agenda where meaningful development of rural people must be on a self sustaining basis, through transforming the socio-spatial structure of their productive activities, which implies a broad based re-organization and mobilization of the rural masses so as to enhance their capacity to cope effectively with the daily tasks of their lives and with the changes.
It is on the strength of such thinking that Professor Ukwu held that "integrated rural development has to do with putting the entire act together, while clarifying and unifying the objectives and bringing together all the agencies, facilities and programmes necessary to attain the objectives”. According to Dr. Mbah, "the need for rethinking integrated rural development as solution to urban - rural gaps is caused by the need to leverage on the achievements of the immediate past administration which by and large had set a broad based development process in motion".
It bears restating that the past administration had adopted ambitious strategies for rural development based on economic cause-effect relationships which benefited all and sundry with or without access to means of production without marginalizing the rural masses.
However, as a shift in paradigm, the Integrated rural development envisioned by Dr. Mbah is such that will give in particular, more emphasis to the involvement of the less privileged strata through an appropriate design of development programmes. One of the critical elements is to assure a greater participation in planning and implementation through the establishment of peoples organizations and a functional decentralization of decision-making. This is more conducive to mobilizing people's initiative and providing a better system to take into account the needs of the various social groups, as well as the links between them.
One may be tempted to ask, what is important about integrated rural development as to form a cardinal thrust in the Governor's development agenda. In clear terms, the complementarities among health, education, basic infrastructure, and agriculture provide the rationale for Integrated Rural Development projects' multi-sectoral efforts. Integration in order to capture complementarities can, in some cases, lead to positive interactions that allow the integrated units produce more efficiently. The efficiency in production has its overall impact on wealth creation in the rural areas and even a quantum leap for the state in it's economic growth and impact on the per Capita income of its citizens hence it has to be aggressively pursued.
Highlighting the key issues in integrated rural development, the Governor talked about a commitment to changing the way agriculture and agrobusiness is done. In this he was emphatic on productivity enhancing farm machinery sharing platform through mobile platforms, E- Wallet system to make high yielding, disease resistant and drought tolerant seeds and fertilisers available to the farmers, technology enabled extension services, and agric product value chain development. Looked at from every angle, these are practicable approaches to enhancing agricultural productivity in our rural communities which correspondingly enables employment opportunities and growth in rural economy and in overall give traction to increase in the state GDP and ultimately achieving zero hunger in Enugu State.
As part of creating enabling environment for broad based agricultural investment, the manifesto captured Land reform with targeted interest in lifting the veil of cultural limitations on access to land, unbundling land ownership and by so doing making available more land space for farming activities, especially taking cognisance of the fact that only an infinitesimal land space is currently utilized for agriculture while the rest lie fallow and untapped.
In the manifesto, the Governor had also discussed his commitment to creating road access across all local government areas, thus linking the vast population of our local communities to their various quasi -urban centres. These link roads will capacitate the transportation of agricultural products from local areas to the area where they are much needed.
Underscoring the pivotal role of integrated rural development, the Governor while assigning portfolios to the new Commissioners merged two ministries that complement each other to form Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Chieftaincy matters. This is to have a more structured and balanced intervention in that sector, judging the place of local Government administration and traditional rulers institution in issues regarding rural development. It is therefore expected that having assigned portfolios to the new Commissioners, the Governor is set to unleash his aggressive rural development programmes and get our rural areas poised for exponential growth, where rural investment in agriculture, market development, road construction, educational improvement and youth capacity building and of course poverty eradication will gain much traction.
To drive his integrated rural development agenda, the Governor has taken critical steps on Security, Water supply and road construction. Early in his administration, the Governor went all out to nail the coffin of the sit at home regimen which has had astronomical negative implication of our economy. He made a tacit pronouncement canceling the regimen while ensuring the good Enugu Citizen that his administration was committed to restoring the industry and entrepreneurship spirit for which they are known through adequate security provision. Despite the expected propaganda against his approach by the proponents , the Government stood it's ground, and today, our people move freely, go to markets and farms with little or no molestation. The Governor knows that rural development will not work if commercial activities are grounded. If agricultural products from the rural areas do not find way to the market, without any provision of storage system, there will be unaffordable loss. With security returning to normal, it is a win win for the Governor.
Stable water supply has been the problem of Enugu State and without stable water, agriculture would suffer, citizens will be prone to water borne diseases etc. He thus embarked on aggressive end of water issue in Enugu Metropolis, with promise to deepen supply in rural communities. The Enugu Water project is already bearing fruit. For the first time in years, Enugu resident in both urban and rural areas will have uninterrupted water supply.
On road construction, the government through the Commissioner for Works has declared that between August 2024 and May 2024, the government would have delivered 1250 km of roads across the state. To ram home on this, only two weeks, government officials toured Enugu State shortlisting roads that needed urgent attention. These developments testify to the Governor's ambitious rural development plans.
It is concluded that Peter Mbah's integrated rural development approach is the best Enugu People and indeed the nation needs as panacea and solution to the scourge of increasing poverty in our rural areas as well as mitigating rural -urban migration, which leads to implosion of facilities in the urban area. Indeed, tomorrow is here.
Onyekachi C Ugwu
