The South East Summit on Security and Economy,(SESSE 2023) has ended with a strident call for the setting up of the South East Development Commission (SEDC) to operationalize ideas for their development through actions for results, not jaded rhetoric.
This was the remit of Prof Sam Amadi, former Executive Chairman of the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) and a development scholar in an intensive lead paper he delivered at the summit.
Amadi’s paper entitled “Roadmap to Accelerated Economic Transformation of the South East “insisted that there was a need for coordinated efforts in the desire to achieve the development of the South East Zone intentionally, crystallized by structures ‘anointed’ with the power of collectivity and strength, with a mandate for action to move, work and deliver results. And the time is urgent now.
He asserted that, the historic rapid transformation of the then Eastern Region of Nigeria under the premiership of late Dr. Michael Okpara in the First Republic, was a record other nations marvelled and copied, and could be replicated without any pretence to magic or laments of limitations, but simply a leadership commitment to a mission and zeal for action.
“Put bluntly in a context, we cannot as a people lament for too long for what we have done before, demonstrated to world acclaim, and can still do again even better, with an increasingly digitized human capital in our thumbs, and amazing zestful youth assets to exploit. No, we must rise above the ‘prison’ of how the cookie crumbled to triumph on how the cookie is refreshed and enhanced”.
Reemphasizing thesuccesses of the zone in the first Republic that made the region the fastest growing economy in the world then, he declared that the ‘rocket attitude’ was the right mix of development processes, a coordinating body (the Eastern Nigeria Development Corporation) and a strong political will and character that made inclusion a norm and citizen mobilization a charm.
