Enugu State has received awards for Infrastructure Development Competitiveness and Outstanding Performance in Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) at the BusinessDay States Competitiveness and Investment Readiness Awards (SCIRA) 2025, held at the NAF Conference Center and Suites in Jabi, Abuja.
Presenting the awards, Frank Aigbogun, Publisher/CEO of BusinessDay Media Limited, commended the Enugu State Governor, Dr. Peter Ndubuisi Mbah, for his impact on public infrastructure, which he said goes beyond just playing politics.
“In the last six months, I have had the opportunity of traveling to Enugu three times. The first time I visited in January, my taxi driver was eager to take me around. That caught my imagination. I began to ask questions, and I began to look around.”
“One thing I found especially interesting was that Governor Mbah did not set aside everything that he met, which could have been a waste of public resources. He looked at what was good, and he rebuilt them; the ones that were not completed, he completed them.”
“Two things that struck me were that I had to ask a question: where does he get the money? I saw good roads, and I don’t mean good roads in the major highways, I mean good roads even in the communities that are far away from the prime areas of the state capital, Enugu.”
“I thought that that is a very good example of a private sector person, who knows what to do with resources, because if you use resources well, you get more from little, and that is what the governor has done. And for that, Governor Mbah is receiving this award. He has impacted public infrastructure in a way that goes beyond just playing politics,” Aigbogun stated.
Receiving the awards on behalf of Enugu State, the Commissioner for Works and Infrastructure, Engr. Ben Okoh and the Executive Chairman of the Enugu State Internal Revenue Service (ESIRS), Mr. Emmanuel Nnamani, reeled out the numerous accomplishments of Governor Peter Mbah’s administration in the space of 3 years.
Thanking the management of BusinessDay for the deserving recognition, the Enugu State Commissioner for Works and Infrastructure, Engr. Ben Okoh described the awards as a motivation to do more.
“Enugu State has witnessed an unprecedented infrastructural revolution, the type we have never seen since the advent of this present democracy in 1999.”
“Projects that were inherited even from governments that left office in 2007- for instance, the International Conference Center, Mbah, have been completed. Hotel Presidential, the flagship hotel of the old Eastern Region, and the Nigergas Company, which has remained moribund for over 30 years, have been revived.”
“Being the Commissioner for Works and Infrastructure in the state, I can stand here confidently to say that no government since 1999 has achieved what Governor Mbah has achieved in three years.”
“I can say that in terms of road construction, in just three years, we have done far more than double what any other government did in eight years. No government in Enugu since 1999 did up to 600Km of roads in eight years.”
“Under Governor Mbah, we have 267 Smart Schools across the state and 260 Primary Healthcare Centres to our credit.”
“We are building a new Enugu City. The present Enugu City is about 14,000 hectares; the new Enugu City is about 10,000 hectares, which is the size of Bahrain. It is larger than the entire Federal Capital Territory (FCT) of Abuja.
“This is the first time a state in Nigeria would be undertaking an integrated infrastructure development, which is what we have in the FCT, where all the facilities in the modern city are underground, and telecommunications lines- the fiber optics, the electrical cables, water pipes, everything is underground. It is not just a vision; the projects are already ongoing.”
“There is no particular sector that Governor Peter Ndubuisi Mbah has not touched, be it tourism, security, agriculture, education, or even the transport sector where the administration floated Enugu Air, built five ultramodern transport terminals, and launched over 150 CNG buses,” Engr Ben Okoh lauded.
Recall that Governor Mbah’s administration has grown the state’s IGR exponentially from N26.8bn in 2022 to N37.4bn in 2023, N180.5bn in 2024, and N406.7bn in 2025, with tax revenue accounting for just N51.5bn or 12.6 percent of the 2025 IGR proceeds.
The States Competitiveness and Investment Readiness Awards, SCIRA, is an initiative and event organized by BusinessDay Media Limited to identify, evaluate, and celebrate Nigerian State Governors and their administrations that have distinguished themselves in governance.
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