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By Chukwumaechi Godwin
An entrepreneur, Mr. My-Ace China, has called on stakeholders to deliberately work in synergy on campaign to change the negative perception of investors about Port Harcourt, the Rivers state capital to attract investments to the state.
China, who is the chief executive officer of Construction and Housing Mayor Limited, made the call on Monday, while speaking at the opening ceremony of the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ Rivers State.
The week is organized by the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), in partnership with the ‘Mayor of Housing’ with the theme: ‘Rivers State and Quest for Ideal Investment Climate: Role of the Media”.
He stated that there was the need for government to increase its support to the media, for it to continue to engage in positively reportage of activities that promote the state.
China, who is popularly known as ‘Mayor of Housing’, while noting that residents of the state were tired of the capital flight from Port Harcourt, said even the government was tired of making promises without fulfilling them.
He said: “Entertainers are tired of the Lagos, Port Harcourt dichotomy. The greatest thing we are tired of is the capital flight. We are tired of that narrative that Port Harcourt is unsafe.
“The second part of what I want to say is that we are tired. I have been in Rivers State long enough to feel the pulse of the people; we are tired.
“Talk to the incumbent governor, he will tell you that he is tired of politicking and politics, he is hungry for value-ticking and value-tics. He is tired of political promises without dividends of democracy. He is tired of promises without deliverables.
“He is so passionate about delivering deliverables to a level to his does not mind whose ox is gored. He is committed to that and I admire him greatly.”
On challenges faced by the Real Estate Companies in the state he said the problems range from the problems of land grabbing by pretenders in business, the negative narrative painted about that Port Harcourt and Rivers State being insecure and lack the ease of doing business and lack of roads linking developing areas.
He explained that unlike other states which normally welcome investors that are in real estate business River State is hostile because it has enough money from oil and his own people also make money from oil companies.
The entrepreneur also said that the negative narrative that Rivers State is not safe also scares investors resulting in capital flight away from the state saying that he always found it difficult to convince his partners to invest in the state.
The “Mayor of Housing” pointed out that the menace of Land grabbing has forced many out of business citing example that the Housing Estate project his company is doing at Alesa-Eleme in Eleme local government area of the state would soon be launched.
He said: “The major challenges facing businesses in this town, I will just mention the top three. Number one is ease of doing business.
You see in many parts of Nigeria when you want to bring development or industries, to a location, they actually court you like a precious bride. They give you all kinds of incentives. There are even locations they give you land for free. In Abuja when I started real estate, it was on the back of joint venture where you don’t buy land. The host community goes into a joint venture with you to make your expenses easier.
But right here, because of two things, government has gotten enough revenue from allocation, they are not interested in business so they don’t see coming to bring business into the state as useful.
Also the indigenes have gotten so much money from agitations on the back of oil development they can benefit from, they’re fighting you as if you are the only one benefiting from it and that makes doing business here very difficult. In fact doing business here is like swimming against the tide and that’s what we are doing.
The second thing is negative publicity. Because of the time that a lot of businesses left especially because of oil migration from Rivers State to Lagos, everything international, especially large scale projects that require international partners or diaspora investment. When they hear Port Harcourt you wouldn’t know how many times my would-be Investors have begged me, please take this development to Lagos or Abuja because Port Harcourt is not safe and I’m shouting, it is safe. It is safe but because of the perception that has been created, a wrong narrative that Port Harcourt is not safe, you wouldn’t imagine the amount of capital flight going out of Port Harcourt. It is already horrifying.
The third thing about doing business here is infrastructure. The infrastructure is not there. I tell people, for me on housing I don’t need much infrastructure from the government. Just open roads to the new layouts and new areas and developers will take it from there.
But here, you see that many of the road projects are so politically motivated that the places that need roads don’t get roads and the places that don’t need roads get roads.
Once you have a government that’s able to provide basic infrastructure, we know the government has challenges, we don’t want all infrastructure. Out of water, power and many other things, just do roads just do roads and maybe a few support for power and we take it from there.
He also challenged journalists on the part they need to play.
“For the journalists, the biggest of all is the narratives. Those three things I said, the ease of doing business or the difficulty of doing business, it is the false narrative and infrastructure, the one that’s solely in the hands of journalists is the narratives.
“He who tells a story tell the colour of the story. You can paint the same facts in either red or blue. It’s how you tell it. He who sees the story determines what he sees because the lense with which you see a story determines what you say about the story.
Journalists should begin to see Rivers State with the lens of a product they want to market. There’s no trader in the world that criticises his own product. You will never go to any marketer and he will tell you that my oranges are bad, buy it.
So journalists have to start selling Rivers State as their own product. Every trader in the market will tell you my product is the best if you don’t buy it, you are missing. And that simple change of narrative is going to change a lot of things. Let there be a positive conspiracy of positive narrative where journalists come together and say the same positive thing about Rivers State”.
