Sole proprietor to manage coconut refinery, says commissioner

By Isaac Job

Information and Strategy Commissioner, Comrade Ini Ememobong, has disclosed that the Akwa Ibom State-owned coconut facility, known as St Gabriel Refinery, built by Governor Udom Emmanuel, would be managed under private enterprise system for optimal result.

Ememobong explained that the governor as a financial expert has adopted sole proprietorship model so that the companies established under the state industrialization policy can, in turn, give dividends to government.

Speaking after a project tour of government-owned industries in the state, the Commissioner who admitted that government is not a good business manager noted that Ibom Air as well as the Ibom Icon Hotels are privately run and are bringing a lot of dividends to the state.

He said the process has injected life into the economy of the state adding that such would be replicated in the newly commissioned coconut refinery.

The Commissioner, in disabusing the mind of the public to the effect that the refinery will fail, affirmed that the company will be well managed under the proposed arrangement.

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“There is no fear of how to properly manage those businesses as the governor has shown great example with the way Ibom Airlines is being run. Though owned by the government, it is run like a private enterprise.

Same thing is applicable to Ibom Icon Hotel. The management and the board are dominated by private business people and every six months they come to the executive council meeting to give an update on their activities.

The state is getting dividend from them,” he said. The Commissioner said the governor in an attempt to create jobs for the teeming youths engaged humans to perform some task which machines can perform in some of the industries noting that the refinery crushes about one million nuts daily.

He said, “with mechanization introduced to industrialization, His Excellency consciously designed a human interface into it. Some things machines can handle, His Excellency employed the youths to be doing them so as to engage them. The principle of private sector is what we use in running all our endeavors.

Level of equity in Ibom Air is purely government, fully owned by government but run privately, we don’t have government interference unless where very necessary.” On Education, he noted that Governor Emmanuel in an attempt not to have distorted development in education declared an emergency in the sector where he convened education summit that set up a think tank which came up with a ten year road map.

He further noted that the state government made the road map non partisan such that members of the opposition party and other stakeholders in the education sectors were among the think tank that drew the ten year road map.

According to the commissioner, “In 2019 the government of the day convened an education summit and set up think tank whose duty was to draw up a ten year road map for education because the problem in Nigeria is policy inconsistency, every policy takes coloration and complexion of the person who makes it. We don’t want to have distorted development in education.

“For us here we decided to have a ten year education road map. To make sure it is non partisan. We made sure that members of the opposition were there; Education stakeholders were there also.

We later realized there were issues in education.” The Commissioner, who added that the governor has been consistent in the payment of WAEC fees which runs to the tune of over N800million, said the Akwa Ibom State University has full accreditation with a fully digitized studio for the Communications Department.

“All our schools of nursing and health technology before lost their accreditation but now have regained their accreditation, and are prepared to produce their graduate,” he said.