After recent events, I thought it would be helpful to present some ideas I have to create a prosperous future for Plateau State where I was born and raised. Since I am not eligible to run for office in Nigeria, I pray the actual political candidates, as well as the voters in the state, will find this useful and work hard together to make Plateau State the amazing place it should be.
PLATEAU PROSPERITY PLAN
This high-level plan includes two foundational focus areas that have to be addressed before anything else can be implemented, namely PEACE and POWER.
Once these are in place (or moving in the right direction), then a strategic focus on six niche economic sectors for which Plateau State has a competitive advantage can be executed on in two phases to create jobs and grow the economy (and the tax base).
These are:
— Agriculture
— Mining
— Tech
— Tourism
— Education
— Sports and Entertainment
The growth in these sectors enables the state to have sufficient internally generated revenues to improve the infrastructure base and the social services to residents of Plateau State.
To make this work, the state govt at all levels must have a laser focus and not get distracted. All planning and state infrastructure investments should be around achieving the foundational focus areas and then enabling the target sectors.
FOUNDATIONAL
- Peace and security: Without peace, Plateau will continue to struggle economically and socially. No other well intentioned plans will succeed without the state being safe and secure. This has to be the very top of everyone’s agenda for Plateau State — to deliberately and proactively end the conflicts and restore permanent peace to the state.
- Power: The energy access gap across Nigeria is a major contributor to the country’s poverty and poor performance on multiple social and economic indicators. Plateau is home to Nigeria’s only fully integrated utility — NESCO — which has been providing 24/7 renewable power in rural communities in the state for almost 100 years. The state owns 20% of the company and can work with the other private and public sector shareholders to raise capital and expand the generation and distribution capacity of NESCO to give their operational areas in Plateau a competitive edge for manufacturing and other power intensive activities like data centres.
TARGET SECTORS FOR BUILDING A PROSPEROUS PLATEAU
PHASE I
- Agriculture: The elevation of the Plateau gives the state a unique edge in Nigeria (and West Africa) for high value crops such as tea, coffee, cut flowers, dairy, grapes, strawberries, bell peppers, a variety of spices, avocados, and other fruits and vegetables. The state can put in place incentives for investment in research, production, processing zones and cold storage (powered by low cost renewable energy from NESCO), aggregation services, and transportation to key markets within Nigeria. As the production, processing and domestic markets are scaling, efforts can also be made to start exporting to West Africa, Europe, Asia and North America.
- Mining: the Plateau economy was for decades driven by mining tin and other solid minerals. This mining continues but is mostly fragmented, artisanal, and informal entailing limited scale and wealth creation. A safe and secure Plateau along with strategic support from the state can encourage larger scale formal mining to return. Linked with aggregation and basic processing powered by NESCO, the Plateau mining industry can be revived. In addition, the local expertise developed can be leveraged to lead the expansion of formal mining across Nigeria — creating more jobs and wealth for Plateau’s people.
PHASE II
- Tech: With one of the highest numbers of secondary and tertiary institutions for any state in Nigeria, the Plateau has a highly educated and skilled young work force that could be leveraged for the tech sector. Couple this with low cost power from NESCO and the Plateau becomes a competitive place for tech. State support in the form of tech hubs, and ideation and angel funding for startups could turn the Plateau in to Nigeria’s version of the ‘Silicon Plateau’. Companies like AfriOne and ULesson were started in Jos, and with the right support, a lot more successful tech companies could emerge. In addition, with the high literacy levels, relatively low cost of living, and cosmopolitan multi-lingual nature of Jos, the state could also become a centre for Business Process Outsourcing (starting with call centres). Finally, with low cost power and cooler temperatures, the Plateau could also become the best place in Nigeria to host data centres.
- Education: As mentioned above, Plateau State already hosts one of the highest concentrations of top quality private and public secondary and tertiary educational institutions in Nigeria. With a safe and secure state, and the beautiful weather, the Plateau can encourage further educational investments to become the best place in Nigeria for families to send their children for an excellent secondary and tertiary education. An expanding education sector in the state creates a lot of jobs while also giving employers in the state (agric, mining, tech) access to the best talent Nigeria has to offer — contributing further to a virtuous cycle of economic growth and job creation in the state.
- Tourism: Dating back to the 1930’s, the Plateau had always been one of the top tourism destinations in Nigeria, but the insecurity has put an end to this. With a safe and secure state, tourism can rebound — starting with establishing Jos as the centre for weekend tourism and conferencing for the Abuja market, and building from there for the broader domestic tourism and conferencing market.
- Sports and Entertainment: Plateau State has had an outsized influence on Nigeria’s film, music and sports scenes. So many of Nigeria’s film actors, directors and producers, as well as a large number of Nigeria’s top music stars and comedians have roots in Plateau. The same can be said for sports — to the point that at the 2018 FIFA World Cup, the Captain, Vice Captain, and Second Vice Captain all grew up in Jos. The state can incentivize the current stars to invest their time, money, and influence back in the state and develop world class film and music studios as well as sports academies to harness this abundant talent and continue to turn out more, but in a way that creates more jobs and wealth for Plateau State itself.
- Dr Wiebe Boer (aka Yohanna Maigona)
