By Rose Oranye
The Anambra State Commissioner for Information and Value Reformation, Dr. Law Mefor, has said the state must gain direct access to its vast gas reserves to drive industrialisation and power generation, which the state cannot do despite being an oil and gas producing state for not being part of the nation’s gas master plan.
Mefor stated this while delivering a goodwill message at the Nigerian Content Capacity Building Workshop for Media Stakeholders in Anambra State, organised by the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) in Awka.
Speaking on behalf of the state government, Mefor thanked the board for hosting the workshop in Anambra, noting that the state should feel its impact more, and promised to escalate the issues raised to Governor Chukwuma Charles Soludo.
The commissioner lamented that Anambra, which sits on one of the biggest gas reserves in Nigeria and Africa, has not benefited from its status as an oil-producing state and is yet to feel the impact of Nigeria’s Gas Master Plan, and described as unacceptable a situation where the state expected to drive development cannot access its own gas.
He noted that with President Bola Tinubu’s signing of the law moving electricity generation, transmission and distribution from the exclusive to the concurrent legislative list, Anambra now has the legal and governance framework, including a constituted Electricity Board, to generate its own power, but needs gas as a critical enabler to light up the state, power its industries and sell excess to other states.
Mefor said the Soludo administration is determined to transform Anambra into a smart mega city and a destination of choice to live, work, invest and relax, driven by the private sector.
He also called for a review of Nigeria’s educational system in line with the future of work, arguing that the country needs quality graduates who are creators and employers of labour, not just job seekers. He urged the NCDMB to ensure its training programmes produce manpower that can feed industry and support the shift from a consumption to a production economy.
Earlier, the General Manager, Corporate Communication of NCDMB, Dr. Obinna Ezeobi, expressed the board’s desire to establish a stronger platform in the South East and collaborate beyond the workshop to improve the quality of media reportage on local content.
