Yewande Saduki, former Director-General of the Nigeran Investment Promotion Council, NIPC, has commended the efforts made by the Ekiti State Government’s investment promotion agency to attract investors and investments to the state.
Sadiku disclosed this in an interview with Nairametrics at the Ekiti State Fountain Summit which was held on Thursday, October 14, 2021, at the Civic Centre, Ado Ekiti.
She also stated that Governor Kayode Fayemi is the chief architect of the project which she says will create a shade for the future.
What Yewande Sadiku said
Sadiku said, “The chief driver, the chief promoter, the head of the investment promotion team is the governor himself.
“Today’s event is a demonstration of the work that the governor and his team have been doing and they talked about the approach they have taken to attract investment, including a focus on attracting domestic investors who have answered the question on ‘why Nigeria'”.
She added the state has also implemented a collaborative approach of working with other partners in the state, citing that the civil servants and judiciary have together passed laws including the creation of the Ekiti development and investment promotion agency, a specific one-stop shop focused on addressing the challenges of investors.
She praised their efforts stating that they have gone beyond that to leverage “the particular comparative advantages of Ekiti State, including the reputation the legacy of Ekiti as knowledge capital and the other the agrarian capacity of Ekiti, focusing on particular crops where they have a competitive advantage in many ways.”
“It’s in the future you will see the shade that today’s effort is creating,” she added.
On knowledge economy, she urged that the state must faithfully stick to what they have said they will do, which is fantastic.
What you should know
In an exclusive interview with Nairametrics, Ekiti State Governor Kayode Fayemi said that his government recognises the unique challenges of the state but while taking steps to circumvent these challenges and make the state attractive for investors, his government made it a point to underpromise but overdeliver.
He cited the example of power supply in the state, highlighting that while his government may be unable to assure an investor of uninterrupted electricity supply, the state had put an independent power project in place to supply extra megawatts of electricity.
The objective of this is to support businesses particularly in the agro-processing zones of the state. These mini-grids are intended to help investors accelerate the opportunities available in that space.
Governor Fayemi noted that these steps had been effective in addressing the wrong notion that Ekiti is not investment-friendly and stated that investors who have come had also attested to the fact that the state is in reality, the hidden gem. This paradigm shift, Fayemi said, was majorly what the investment summit set out to achieve.