Appreciating Delta State’s unique stride

Delta State is blessed with people, gifted with high sense of industry; who are known for their ingenuity, resilience, ability to perform and deliver; people who are highly resourceful and painstaking in their efforts.

Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, is steadily driving the State to live up to its name of the “Big Heart of the nation.”  This time it is in the area of a transformed environment through urban renewal, which is the number six of Governor Okowa’s Five-point SMART Agenda. The vision of a transformed State informs why the governor is fulfilling his campaign promise to mechanics who desired that he provided them with a mechanics’ village when he finally becomes governor. And he agreed, making it a campaign issue. Today, work is at completion stage in the effort to fulfil that promise. It is novel in what experts have called “a 21st century strategy for improving the quality of the global environment.”

On the Asaba-Benin Expressway, is springing up fast, a sprawling ultra modern mechanic village along with auto parts, shops covering more than eight hectares of land space. In the village are standard 82 purpose built 40ft x 40ft mechanic workshops; 208 purpose built 10×10 feet open bay mechanic workshops; 708 12×10 feet lock-up stalls for auto parts and ancillary products.

The project was initiated by the Delta State Investments Development Agency – DIDA – which was set up by the present administration through the Delta State Investment Development Agency Law,  2016, to promote, develop and regulate all investments and concessions in the State. The Director General/Chief Executive Officer of the agency, Olorogun Lucky Oghene-Omoru states in an acknowledgment that the  agency’s operational strategy is to harness the available natural resources in agriculture, oil and gas, transportation:  road, air and sea, ports and maritime resources, education, healthcare and tourism sectors, among others,  to promote inflow of investments, diversify the economy away from over-dependence on petroleum revenues, generate employment and create wealth in line with the SMART Agenda of the present administration.

The Executive Assistant to the Governor and Chairman of DIDA, Mr. Paul Nma talking about the origin of the idea of the AsabaUltra Modern Mechanic Village said it was based on the need to promote investment. He said: “Some mechanics came and said they would want His Excellency, the Governor to build a mechanic village; that His Excellency promised during his campaign to build a mechanic village. But I told them that the former government didn’t have that type of money, but that I can structure or work on the possibility of getting private investors. I was in Dubai, and I met with officials of Rehomes Property Development Company Limited and the deal was struck to build the mechanic village.

In the arrangement, Rehomes Property Development Company Limited, with offices in Asaba, Lagos and Dubai is the main investor and in partnership with the Delta State Government, which is providing the land space. It is on a Public Private Partnership  basis. The Delta Government is not providing a dime in terms of finance for the project.

Rehomes Property Development Company’s Managing Director,  Evangelist Chima Ofoma said the Asaba Ultra Modern Mechanic Village is the first of its kind in Africa. “It is a one-stop shop, and it is different from the usual and known case of having the mechanics and auto parts in separate locations, but here, they will be in one place. “The reason is to ease the burden of  vehicle owners  of having to buy low quality materials or spare parts at high cost. But now that the mechanics and spare part dealers are in one place, you just walk to them and pick up your purchase,” Evangelist Ofoma said.

He reasoned that the arrangement will help to clean up the city by ensuring that mechanics are brought into one place  rather than them getting scattered indiscriminately and it would be easier to manage them and the wasted they generate.

This agrees with the research work of Michael A. Nwachukwu, Jude Alinnor and HuanFeng of the Department of Environmental Technology, Federal University of Technology in  Owerri, Nigeria, Department of Chemistry, Federal University of Technology Owerri, Nigeria and  Department of Earth and Environmental Studies, Montclair State University NJ, USA, respectively who stated that “Mechanic village should be adapted in developing countries rather than the city-wide auto mechanic workshop practice. This is suggested, because developing countries are yet to enforce environmentally friendly  automobile workshops and mechanic practice. If all automobile repair works in different cities are confined to mechanic villages, collection, preservation, recycling and re-use of spent oil will become effective. The goal is to stop the habit of disposing spent automobile oil on the ground, which results in excessive trace metal pollution of topsoil and insecurity of food products in the affected areas.

Beside environmental quality, business and employment opportunities will improve. Small-scale refining or reprocessing of used oil in mechanic villages is lucrative and recycling plants are affordable and available. Cost benefit analysis indicate strong environmental benefits and annual turnover in excess of $2,234,375.00.”

In addition, Michael Nwachukwu and his other colleagues also showed in another work that an environmentally friendly mechanic village is a 21st century strategy to improve the quality of the global environmental. For the researchers, the concept is consistent with the United Nations’ framework on climate change, the control of harmful substances, dangerous waste and sustainable development. They said that besides creating an enabling environment for better investments that would attract highly qualified and educated individuals into the business of automobile maintenance, it will also create employment opportunities and help in poverty alleviation as “mechanic villages may be described as training centre reachable to the ordinary citizens. The less privileged without support for school and the school dropouts have positions in mechanic villages.”

Evangelist Ofoma also made the point that it is easier to train apprentices and get them to upgrade their skills and make them better proficient, adding that since mechanics will be located in one place, it will be easy to get them to pay revenue to government and boost the State government’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR).

He also said: “By having mechanics and spare parts dealers in one place, it will be easier to track dealers who sell inferior or fake parts.” Ofoma confirmed that the Asaba project is a pilot one as same would be replicated in other parts of Delta State. “For instance, we have visited the Ughelli and Warri sites. What we are up to is to have the mechanic village replicated in each senatorial district of the State.” he said.

• Abiandu writes from Asaba

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