• We’re planning to link 7 North-West states by rail
From Olanrewaju Lawal, Birnin Kebbi
Muhammad Kabir Kamba, the Director General of Kebbi State Investment Promotion Agency (KIPA) and Secretary of the North-West Investment Promotion Agencies Forum, in this interview discuses, among other issues, how the regional investment forum plans to resolve energy and transportation challenges among its seven-member states.
Since you assumed office as Director General of the Kebbi State Investment Promotion Agency (KIPA), how have you been able to attract investors into the state?
Like you know, the major objective of this agency is to attract investments into the state, and we have attracted a lot of people into the state. One of the first things we did is to advocate to the world about our existence. And the global communities, as you know, once they heard about an agency agitating for investment, they would always be attracted to that state. They recognise our existence now and this has attracted the flow of investments into the state and we are working with numbers of the investors at the moment who are willing to invest billions of money into our economy. And hopefully, through this year, you will see these investments manifest.
Since you came on board, what are the new strategies you have put in place to ensure Kebbi State becomes an investment hub in the Northwest region of Nigeria?
Apart from the policies frame work, procedures and plans we have institutionalised in the state, we at the agency have created few major products that would attract both domestic and international investors. At the international level, we have created the Kebbi Diaspora Investment Forum. We have started facilitating this and hopefully, we are going to have three major offices across the world. We hope to attract Kebbi indigenes in Diaspora to come back home and invest in the state. We are looking forward to having offices in the Middle East, America Europe.
We have a lot of potential in this state, because we have chosen the former President General of UN Assembly, an indigene of Kebbi State and presently, the District Head of Koko-Basse, Professor Tijani Bande whom we hope will lead the Forum and would have his offices across the continents with Nigeria as the fourth nation. The whole idea is to have our people doing business abroad to connect with the local businesses here which are struggling to scale up with international markets.
We are using this platform to reach out to these people to come back home, partner with the local investment and invest in the opportunity we have. We found out that our proposal was widely accepted by these people. We want to partner with NNPC, NIPC, the Nigerian Diaspora Commission, major TVs and Major radio stations. So we are doing a lot to attract foreign investors.
In the local domestic investments, we are looking at ways to attract the local investors through the programme we designed under the Public- Private Partnership Desk Officer Consultative Forum. We want to establish representation across all the Ministries, across MDAs and LGAs so that we can have local government representatives advocating the need to have local investors to cue- in in the local initiatives investments that we have. You will agree with me that we have a lot of assets that are domiciled within local and sub-national levels that have not been utilised. So, we want the private sector to cue-in, they could utilize these assets, create wealth, create jobs and ensure that government deliver on its services to the people.
Again, at the domestic level, we have initiated the Women Vegetable farming, and this is one of the initiatives to redirect the investments towards empowering women and creating wealth, particularly in agriculture. This is a double-edged sword; it would enhance our health, especially women. We are focusing on two major crops; Ugu and bitter leaf. These are high crops that could enhance our health, especially the women who are breastfeeding, nursing mothers. We know the value of bitter leaf and Ugu leaf known as Fluted-Pumpkin leaf (Telfairia Oxydentalis) in the women breast-feeding, it enhances the breast milk while the bitter leaf serves as blood tonic enhancement.
So, we believe that these products would be valuable for export. Many Nigerians living abroad do find these products attractive. These are the reasons we are focusing on this direction.
Which sectors of the economy are you expecting Kebbi indigenes in Diasporas to invest into?
This administration has worked on this and there was a consensus by the government, especially Kebbi State governor, Dr Nasir Idris, that we are focusing on four key areas of development. These four key areas are energy generation – we believe that we cannot industrialise the state without sufficient energy. Secondly, we are focusing on transport and logistics. You will agree with me that the cost of living, cost of products and services are related to the cost of transportation. So, we are thinking towards the direction of investment in railway. If there is effective railway system, if there is electricity infrastructure, it will have significant effects on the cost of living. If that happens, there would be better lives, and this state would be the economy hub in the North-West of Nigeria. This state is strategically located as the gateway to the West African markets. We have access to over 400 million people across West Africa. This is a huge big market. With such infrastructure, we believe that investors will find this state as the final destination to invest in.
Kebbi State has borders with countries and states in Nigeria through some rivers in Yauri and Dole-Kaina areas. Is your agency planning to utilise the waterways to increase the IGR of the state?
We are cautious of that very well and we have initiated the need for various organisations to recognise the important of the waterways we have in Kebbi. We wrote to the National Inland Waterways, the Nigeria’s Shippers Council, whose primary responsibilities are on water lines and riverine communities. We intended to promulgate and advocate this to the whole world. Don’t forget that, River Niger flows from Kebbi State to Niger State, links West African economy, including Senegal, Mali, Niger and Benin Republic. And there are lots of trades that happen along these river routes. So, you might have heard that in the last two months, we had engagements with the Shippers Council, and invited them to Kebbi State at three different times. All these attempts are to showcase the significance of the waterways and the economy advantage to the state and the country in general.
These people are coming in with the significant amount of investments. One, they are coming with the safety on the water routes. We had serious casualties along these rivers in the past and if these casualties are totally eradicated, it will increase revenue. It will increase trade; it will increase the confidence of the people to use the waterways. So, investments in safety equipment are coming. The communities along the water borders would receive a lot of interventions that would enhance their economic capabilities, giving them a better way of life.
In the nearest future, which position do you want KIPA to occupy among the investment agencies in Nigeria?
We are at the advanced stage of creating the North-West Investment Promotion Agencies Forum. The idea is to have a regional forum that would be pursuing our regional agenda of development. As at now, Kebbi State has its Secretariat. Whoever is the DG of KIPA will be the Secretary. As at now, I am the Secretary of the Forum with seven states – Kebbi, Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Jigawa, Sokoto and Zamfara states. We have constituted a regional platform for the investment agencies to focus on our common regional agenda. We have certain needs that area common to us like electricity, transportation, and logistics. How do we get effective transport system that would enhance our strength in the region? If Kebbi State could construct a railway track from here to Sanyinna in Sokoto, Sokoto could take it to Zamfara, Zamfara could take it to Kaduna. Before you know it, we shall have a network of railway tracks. Also on energy infrastructure, we have a lot of wind, a lot of water. Now which one of these do we have advantage in? How could these seven states come together, reach a consensus so that all of them could team up to get stable energy, rail transportation and agriculture development? Basically, we are putting this forum on the track and after an agreement, we shall put it forward before the Northwest Commission. We have met the Governor of Katsina State, who is presently the Chairman of the Northwest Governor’s Forum, as the Chairman of our Forum. We had an agreement that at the end of the day, we would have the Northwest Governor’s Forum discuss our agenda and they would push it to the Northwest Commission and to the national level. Hopefully, this would be my largest achievement that one day, when I look back, I will be happy that we have started something that outlived us.
What is your agency doing to attract more investors in agriculture, since Kebbi State is known for being the best in rice production and other items?
The fact that Kebbi State is well known for rice production does not come by mistake. The government of Kebbi State commissioned the International Research Commission to undertake an investigation into economy viability of Kebbi State four years ago, and this international organisation took this research and they discovered that Kebbi State is the most strategically viable location for investment in the whole Northwest of Nigeria. And that is why you find some of the biggest rice mills operating on the African continent relocated to Kebbi State. In terms of expanding in agriculture, we are looking at ranching as an investment opportunity. We are happy with the kick off of the construction of the super highway, because, there would up to 40 to 50 dams in that project. So, we are looking forward to the completion of that project. And there is no doubt, with the constructions of 50 dams on those roads, agriculture would be improved. We are looking at the completion of our international cargo terminal with the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) so that we can start to export these products out of this state to other countries without going through Lagos and other states. w When we paid a courtesy call on the management of the Sir Ahmadu International Airport, Birnin Kebbi, they told us they have the intention to partner with other airlines that are flying to other West African countries close to us here. We are also looking for the completion of an Inland port in Kebbi and cargo terminal as well as Customs Warehouse.
What is the KIPA doing to encourage SMS and expanding their businesses in the state?
We have a whole department in our agency call ‘Ease of doing Businesses’ and its focuses of the ease of doing SMS and enhancing enterprises. We engaged the leadership of the SMS in the state and we discovered their challenges. Their major challenge is behavior. It related to how they run their businesses. They insisted that most of their problems related to financials. After our deliberations with the financial institutions to find out why finance is the problem to SMS in the state, we discovered that finance is not the problem, because there are various windows open to them. But there are processes which they have to pass through before they have access to these funds. These entrepreneurs did not behave in a direct way to access these funds. So, we are focusing on their appropriate behaviours to enable them have access to these funds. We established a forum for them to have access to funding through usage of local languages. So, we began to partner with business management organizations to enlighten what they supposed to have done. We trained their leaders and they are impacting the training on their members on how to get funds. So, they are doing very well now.