In this episode, yours sincerely will venture into an objective and holistic review of the performance of the executive governor of Enugu State, His Excellency Dr. Peter Ndubuisi Mbah in various critical sectors of the economy.
Recently, the opposition has tried to mislead the public by trying to cook up nonexistent poor implementation of the widely decorated and celebrated programs of Gov. Mbah, which were rolled out during the campaign for the election that brought him to power in 2023.
But a dutiful follower of the administration will notice that the people’s governor has been investing an unquantifiable amount of passion, energy, intellect, and resources into excellent implementation of all the projects, programs, etc., he marshaled out for our people ab initio.
We shall, in this series, touch on all major aspects of the set out projects and cross-match the same with what is already on the ground in Enugu under the government of Mbah, to enable our people see that if there is anything anyone can accuse the government of Mbah of, dereliction of duty is not one of them.
In fairness, it can be said that what drives many critics into wrong assumptions can be attributed to their inability to understand the importance and relevance of all the programs and projects of the governor already littered everywhere in Enugu State.
This is more so since the governor has a penchant for taking everything up to the international standard and global best practices, while the bulk of the armchair critics appear quite unprepared and unavailable for such a level of development yet.
And we must therefore commend the governor for always striving to bring the future closer.
We shall examine in this piece such sectors as Agriculture, Energy, and Mineral Resources.
The present administration has embarked on several capital projects and reforms in the energy and mineral resources sector with a special focus on the utilization of the state’s natural endowment to ignite economic growth and industrialization.
Coal-to-Power Project (1,000 MW Target): In September 2025, the governor announced plans to generate 1000 MW of power from the state’s abundant coal resources which have remained untapped for decades now.
Recall that coal was to Nigeria what oil is to the country today. Coal was abandoned following the discovery of oil and other factors. But the importance and usage of coal have not been extinguished in the rest of the world.
This underscores the fact that any leader in Nigeria today who can reinvent the utilization of coal has succeeded in doing a noble job in the much-touted diversification of the economy to pave the way for the development of the non-crude oil sector of the Nigerian economy.
It is in view of this that Peter Mbah, from the outset, specifically promised to ensure that mining of coal resumes in Enugu and vowed to procure the approval for the mining right for Enugu State, from the federal government of Nigeria.
Speaking at an event, “ _Meet the Governor Series”,_ organized by the Nigeria British Chamber of Commerce, NBCC, in Lagos some months ago, Governor Mbah stated that “ _We cannot treat our coal as a stranded asset, particularly the Enugu coal, which is a premium coal.
“Our target is to see how we can use our coal to generate at least 1000 megawatts of power. We do have technology today that makes coal utilization less adverse to the environment. Essentially, that is the direction for us.”_
Allaying the fear of high Sulphur content, which has been a major drawback to the utilization of coal, the governor clarified that “ _for a lot of coals, if you have 1.0 per cent of sulphur, you are still okay. But we have only 0.5 per cent of sulphur.”
“Our coal is also very good for fire power plants due to its high calorific value. So, we are on that and we are not going to warehouse our coal resources.”
Having strongly set the ball rolling, this campaign promise has received the required attention and will transform Enugu’s economy beyond forecast when fully realized.
In the agricultural sector, the governor stated from the beginning that the objective of our programmes in the agriculture sector shall be to “Feed Enugu State and turn the State into a food-basket for Nigeria and hub for export of cash crops”.
The target is to eliminate food insecurity in the state by 2031 through massive investments in technologies for agricultural productivity in the State, technology-enabled agricultural extension services, implementation of Specialized Agro-allied Industrial zones in all Senatorial Zones of the state, and accelerated technologies for agricultural systems transformation in Enugu State.
Looking around Enugu state, one will discover that the governor has already invested the sum of 2billion naira into the establishment of the Farm Estate initiative across the 260 wards in Enugu state.
This even brought the project closer to people than initially planned.
This project, which has gone far in almost all the communities in Enugu state, will achieve the purpose of food sufficiency in Enugu state as targeted.
Apart from this, the farmers and headsmen crisis stands permanently resolved, and huge employment opportunities will be generated upon completion.
Under Governor Mbah too, Enugu has launched its own rice brand, showcasing measurable progress in rice production. Yet the livestock section of agriculture is not left out in the scheme of things.
Governor Mbah through the state ministry of agriculture has trained over 450 livestock farmers under Livestock Productivity And Resilience Support (L-PRES) which according to the Commissioner for Agriculture, Patrick Uburu aims to transition them into large-scale production, enhancing Enugu’s comparative advantage in livestock farming
In conclusion, we have shown in this write-up that Gov. Mbah has so far exceedingly done well above original targets in the Agricultural sector.
The Energy and Mineral resources sectors have all equally received adequate attention from the government, unlike the narrative by some naysayers who continued to spread unfounded stories of non-implementation of campaign promises purely based on their own ignorance.
Watch out as we take on other sectors in our subsequent write-ups.
