Governor Liyel Imoke is a consummate politician of note. Soft spoken, very articulate and passionate about Cross River. Imoke in this interview with Pointblanknews.com speaks about his passion for Tourism development in his State, his strategy for raising the states revenue after losing 76 Oil Wells to Akwa Ibom State. Excerpt:
Your Excellency, for six years you have been in the government trying to fix Cross River state. How has the journey been so far?
Well, I always thank God for the privilege of the service. It is a privilege and of course, when you have such privilege, you take full advantage of it in appreciation of what you have to do. It is a very challenging environment and quite demanding on governance. We have tried several extensive reforms and given a complete different approach to government. We have gotten a lot of development planning. Our focus is on the people as an administration. So, for us it is critical that we leave Cross River state much better than we met it in spite of the numerous challenges that we have faced over the last six years. But in the six years, we think we have been able to have some impact on the people. We have created the impact that has affected the people positively. We have also looked at how that could be sustained. Our vision was to make sure we left Cross River far better than where we met it. I think in the past six years, we have been able to make a few things that have actually made Cross River state a place to be.
Cross River state without oil money, I’m sure it must have been a bit difficult after the Supreme Court ruling that ceded the 17 oil wells to Akwa Ibom state. You went to the drawing board. What specifically have you done to cushion the effect of Cross River without oil money?
We had to basically re-strategize expenses and we had to review our cost and expenses. And we also try to manage our budget and of course, more importantly; we have been focused on improving our revenue base by increasing efficiency in our internal revenue generation. So we have significant success in those areas even though the loss has been quite impactful on us. We believe strongly that we have been able to ameliorate some of the fiscal challenges that we faced. We have been able to ameliorate some of them because of what we call creative funding which is one of the key strategies of the administration.
Can you be more specific on these challenges you faced?
Well, you know because of our approach to government, we plan effectively. We have medium term circles for our development planning. So we don’t embark on projects every year. And of course, for you to effectively plan, you must have strong ideas of your expected revenue. So our planning went on with the assumption that we will get the oil revenue but when the oil revenue failed to materialize, we had to review our plans significantly. We were committed to completing all our ongoing projects and to implementing our budget. We had to review our budget through the midterm and of course, focus on key human development programmes. We set the basic targets that we couldn’t change. One of the basic targets was that if Nigeria doesn’t achieve the MDGs by 2015, Cross River state will achieve the MDGs by 2015. So we couldn’t change that. We had to get more creative in realizing that we realize those targets. So, we didn’t change the size of the goal post when we lost the oil revenue. We left the goal post the same and just decided that, look, we need to work a little bit harder. We need to much more efficient in our management. We have to be much more creative in our funding. So, we have been very creative in our funding and our revenue generation has gone up from 2007 by about three or four hundred per cent. We were making about N200-250 million in 2007 as monthly internally generated revenue. Today, we are over a billion. That has helped but of course, it has not addressed the problem because we laid assumption before the loss of the oil revenue that, our revenues will go up because we were going to introduce reforms in the internal revenue service. In fact we have an amended law that introduces these reforms that are now driving the state in IGR. We had made these assumptions and we expected the oil revenue. Without the oil revenue we are driving our IGR, we have been creative in our sources of funding of various projects. So we are looking at our development partners in funding key projects. The World Bank, United Nations, UN Group and several others. In fact, we position ourselves as a destination for development partner funding. That has been helpful as well. We also had our bankers work with us on funding some of our critical projects. We kept going in spite of the challenges.
In trying to find a way of cushioning the effect, how much was the average Cross Riverian made to pay to ensure that you are able to generate enough revenue to execute projects?
I wish it was as simple as that. That could have been very nice. But it wasn’t like that. As we lost the oil wells, the minimum wage went up. So we had a new minimum wage and surprisingly, we were obliged to negotiate with labour. Labour didn’t want to hear that we have lost oil revenue. The wage bill went up significantly when we introduced the new minimum wage. Then the Federal Government reduced taxes paid by workers. So while the minimum wage went up, the Federal Government passed legislation that reduced the taxes that workers pay. So, while we increased the salary, the tax revenue from Personal Income Tax came down. So we had to look at (mostly) the commercial enterprises here; the transport companies, industries here and the private sector. We didn’t increase any taxes or things like that here. We just needed to be more efficient in our tax collection.
Recently, you signed an MOU for the construction of a hospital. And that shows significantly that you have major interest in the health sector. What exactly do you intend to achieve from this hospital construction?
The hospital is designed as a referral specialist hospital. And I call it that deliberately because the hospital is expected not to be a stand-alone. The hospital is designed to be that apex institution to health care delivery. And the way it is designed is supposed to have an impact on health care delivery across the state. So, it is not a stand-alone project. It is designed to ensure that everyone that needs access to the hospital ultimately has the access and that we started with a primary health care programme which is quite effective and for which 70-75% of all primary health care issues. But if you deal with public health care efficiently and effectively then you have dealt with 70-75% of the challenges of health care. It is the other 25-30% that is now secondary cases. And what we are doing now that we seem to have gotten it right is the primary health care. So we are now focusing on the secondary. We are also introducing reforms in the secondary health care bringing in private sector participation to our existing hospitals. And the tertiary institutions will now be the specialists to federal hospitals which will now become the reference hospitals from primary health care to our secondary facilities to the specialists. A lot of people ask me how come it has taken me so many years. I said, look, the easiest thing for me to do is award a contract, build hospitals, supply equipments and we will be celebrated for building a hospital but come in two years, you won’t even recognize that hospital. For us this referral hospital is a Public-Private Partnership. We are looking for specialized care and those levels and efficient service delivery at those levels. We thought it was better for the private sector to manage the hospital even though the state government was investing in the hospital and of course even though the state government holds the trust over some guarantees over the financing of the hospital but the hospital would actually be built with private sector and run by private sector specialists. And they are expected to of course, through this avenue have access to all the facilities that will be open to all Cross Riverians.
That takes me to the issue of maternal mortality rate. It is on record that you have done so much in this area in line with the Millennium Development Goal that the government is targeting. How were you able to achieve the situation whereby two local governments did not record any death rate?
What we did was partner with Tulsi Chanrai Group in formulating the health programme that will focus on community and will deliver health care at the very basic community level; cost effectively and efficiently. We set a target of having one health post or one health facility for every three hundred (300) homes. In each of these health posts, we have a number of health workers and those health workers were trained and retrained and given motorcycles and other facilities and would go, on a weekly basis, from household to household. So we are delivering health care at the very, very basic community level. We knew who was pregnant in each household and when they were due, we could manage their birth, provide them with basic drugs including malaria treatment and so on. We could monitor them through delivery and after delivery; we could now manage any case that became difficult. It was that community health care programme that ensured that we significantly reduced maternal and infant mortality in the state. The two local governments that I mentioned are the pilot local governments. Now, we have scaled up this year to more local governments. We scaled up gradually; we didn’t want to take it all at once. These two local governments: Bekwara and Obubra were the pilot local governments and with the successes that were achieved there we now scaled it up to other local governments. That is why we believe that we can achieve MDG 4, 5 and 6 here in Cross River.
Cases of Kidnapping is almost at zero level in Cross River State, what is the secret, what has the Imoke’s administration done to keep it this way?
I think it is because of what we call our own vision. We understand through that vision that realizing it will mean that the state will have to be safe. We have to be pro-active about security. We put in place a number of measures that have assisted us in dealing with insecurity challenges. For instance, we have a call centre in the state where people who are faced with any attack can call and have a quick intervention squad that responds to these calls. That centre for instance was recently upgraded so that we can track our vehicles, we can monitor them from our centre because we think that for us as a state, it will bring in investments, promote vision for tourism and hospitality. The key thing we must preserve is security. We are very proactive about security working with the various security agencies and we have regular Security Council meetings where we take decisions and remain proactive. We try to police our waterways and of course try to police our major cities including Calabar to ensure that it is relatively crime free and everybody can walk and do anything 24 hours a day and not worry. We had to take measures like the street lighting program. We have a program that makes sure that we keep our street lights on and the cities well lit. All these help to control crime rate.
Recently, General Electric, GE, came here and I know quite a number of other investors have come into the state. What attracts them to Cross River and tell us how much the state has generated from foreign direct investments?
What attracts them to Cross River is a combination of things. One is policy. We have to have deliberate policy to attract investors. If you don’t do that, you are not going to have them. Then I set up the Investment Promotion Bureau. That bureau was now to be that particular agency of government that is interested in the private sector, whether it is the chamber of commerce or individual investors. And of course, we set up, as a matter of policy, a One- Stop- Shop at that bureau for any investor coming into Cross River state looking for land, registration or looking for anything, any information. The investor does not have to go beyond the One-Stop-Shop and the investment bureau. The investor does not have to go to the ministry of land, ministry of housing or the ministry of water resources to get information. He will just go to the One-Stop –Shop to register with them and they provide them with the land and everything that they require. So policy wise and legislation wise, we created a conducive environment. Then physically, we also took into consideration our location and the opportunities it presents and maximize that. We do have an International Airport and we do have sea port. We also have Free Trade Zone in Calabar and we maintain peace and we keep our environment as clean as any environment you can find. We have maintained infrastructure and ensured that basic infrastructure is available. Water supply is available, power; we made it available within the limit of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria. There is a new power company in Calabar that will be coming on board. There is a new gas pipeline that is delivering gas to the city. So in terms of infrastructure, we had to make sure all that was available to make it an attractive investment destination that will compete with other destinations in Nigeria. That is beginning to yield fruits. In terms of returns, investors who are coming in are bringing jobs and employing locals. The investors and their employees are looking for quality education and health care delivery that are typical. So you must invest in all those areas to create that environment. So in terms of potential investment revenue, it is over $2 billion. Now unfortunately for us, the Nigeria laws make the tax revenue on all corporate entities accruable to the federal government. In terms of the 30% tax rate, all that money goes to the federal government and not the states which is some of the things we talked about when you talk about meaningful constitutional reforms. All we get basically are the fees, the charges and the PAYE from employees. But for us it goes beyond that. We believe that if we can bring in those investments, and the money is spent locally and local hands are employed, they spend the money here. That is what we expect from these investments. If we do it sustainably, it will turn to billions of naira. It will be similar to what we have in other economies where they are driven by the private sector rather than the public sector.
There are other areas of revenue generation that you have in this state. Tourism is one of them. I have just taken a tour of Obudu Ranch and still in shock at that beautiful place yet we are still struggling to make revenue from tourism in this state. What is really the problem?
There are a number of problems. I always say that tourism is not something that should be left for any state. For tourism to be successful there must be policies, regulations, legislations that support the development of the local tourism industry. Nigeria doesn’t have that. You can get up today and say you are going to Dubai in three days times and you have a visa. You can get up today and say you are going to certain African countries as a tourist and you have a tourist visa within 24 hours. If you are in London and the US and you say you are coming to Nigeria as a tourist, they will ask you for a letter of invitation from the embassy. Of course, I can’t regulate visa policies, immigration, and security. So, for us as a nation to be competitive in tourism, we need to understand that the federal government has to do certain things. States investing in tourism are not supported. There is no tourism fund that I can have access to. There is no particular support in the federal government budget to support the development of infrastructure around tourists’ sites. The federal government has to make tourism happen. States can do their best by putting in their best efforts but until the federal government provides deliberate policies, provides deliberate support to the sector; it is going to be a sector that would not be attractive to the private sector. It is only the private sector that can actually make tourism work meaningfully and become a revenue earner for the state. As long as it is the public sector that is managing tourism facilities, of course, you know our inefficiencies. So those are some of the challenges that we need to address meaningfully that will help Cross River state reap from valuable investment that run into billions of naira which we maintain at great. It is very important that tourism gets dynamic leadership. In the past, we just heard that the minister of culture and tourism was one man whom they found somewhere and say okay, let’s take him to that place. That was what happened. But we are happy now that we have someone who is from the industry. But it takes time for us to evolve policies that would make the Obudu Mountain Resort, the Tinapa Resort, Marina Resort and other investments in tourism to become real revenue earners for us.
How much effort has your government made to attract this tourism trade internationally?
We have done quite a bit. But the greatest stumbling block like I say is your location. Wow Calabar is beautiful. Wow nice video, what a site. What a state. What country is this and you answer Nigeria. That immediately sends signals that where exactly is that in Nigeria. Calabar in Niger Delta. Did you say Niger Delta? For someone who is out there and has never been in will look at the risk and say, let us go to Mombassa. You know what I mean? Or let’s go to Dakar rather coming to Cross River state in Nigeria. We had to revive the ranch. We have Protea now managing it. Even with Tinapa, we have been out looking for the best operators but they come in, look in and it is one of two things: either they don’t come back or they say we will come but usually don’t. There is much that we need to do to make this a destination. For us, as a matter of policy, what we are doing now is, we are trying to get to appreciate that there is a domestic market for tourism. There are 160 million Nigerians and if you get 1% of them to come to Cross River state, that will be 1.6 million Nigerians. It will make any destination extremely viable. Once we can do that and become a bit competitive as a destination, then we can start looking beyond Nigeria to the West African sub region and consequently to Africa. By the time we can sell tourism to ourselves first, then others will locate it. But don’t expect that some guys from Europe will come and visit Obudu when Nigerians themselves don’t even know where Obudu is.
Your Excellency, I have a contrary view to that because I believe Nigerians being who we are, are not tourism conscious….
(Cuts in)… That is what you think. I will give you the number of flights that go to Ghana every day. The flights to Ghana are full on weekends. The average guy who is going to South Africa is taking his family to Sun City. A few people go to Kenya. So there is a market. Our Nigerians that go abroad, even the ones that go shopping in Dubai take a day or two off to visit the Bujalara and some other facilities. You don’t go to Dubai and shop only. Even when we go home for Christmas, it is tourism. In December everybody heads home. All that is tourism. It is just a question of how you target that middle class now that some people don’t want to go back to their villages due to some security concerns. If you come to Calabar in December, you will not recognize it. You can’t get accommodation in any hotel.
Driving along the road, I see a lot of rubber plantations. What are you doing to commercialize them?
I’m not happy with rubber plantations. They will tell you that they have created a plantation economy. That is based on our attitude to agriculture whether it is borne out of our lack of depth or whether it is borne out of what the white man told us or lack of capacity. But the truth of the matter is that we are a plantation economy. So we produce the raw materials for other markets. They are processed in other markets and other regions. We produce rubber as a raw material and we used to produce oil palm as a raw material. In the next two years, we will be one of the largest oil palm producers in Africa. But for the first time, we have insisted that we invest in the entire value chain. The investors that we are working with in the oil palm are building a processing plant here. So the entire value chain: from harvest right down to the finished good will happen in the state. You will now have the real agriculture economy. We are looking for the same thing to happen in the cocoa industry which we have been producing for 60 or 70 years without one processing company. For us, we need to move from that plantation economy to ensuring that we do have an industrial economy. That is what we are trying to achieve now.