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*Group seek economic integration among Ndigbo
The League of Anambra Professionals (LAP) has hailed the meeting of the South-East Governors Forum, which held on February 26 at Government House, Enugu, saying that economic integration is a strategic imperative upon which the region’s recovery of lost advantage lies. It said this cannot be achieved without the governors meeting regularly and frequently .
Speaking to reporters at the LAP office in Lagos, its president Willy Nzewi noted that all the five South-East governors attended the meeting in person, in a marked departure from the past where two or three governors would delegate their deputies to the meeting.
The development, he said, has raised “hope that the recovery of the region’s head start in industrialisation and economic growth would accelerate”.
LAP boss added that the announcement by the forum’s chairman, Ebonyi State Governor David Umahi, that the governors have agreed that it was only by teaming up and comparing notes with one another that they could best help their people “is music to the ears of sons, daughters and friends of Ndigbo”.
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According to Nzewi , LAP has also noted with delight Umahi’s announcement that the governors approved that their commissioners for economic planning would come together and agree on a mechanism of the desired economic integration of the five states.
The LAP boss , a chartered accountant with decades of experience, said “industries flourished in Onitsha, Aba, Enugu, Umuahia, Nnewi, Owerri and Nkalagu with various brands of soft drinks, beer, toilet soap, paper, nails, tools, simple machines, radiators, batteries and other automobile parts providing jobs for Igbo youths in their homeland until about 25 years ago.”
This, he said, has given the South-East governors “the task of restoring the moribund industries as a first step to actualising brighter visions for the people.”
LAP, a couple of weeks ago, frowned at the threat the differences between some governors posed to South-East development and urged the governors to place collective Igbo interest above personal ambition.
LAP is a non-partisan association of capable Anambra indigenes that partner governments to build a more prosperous Nigeria and Anambra State.
