That every part of Nigeria can blossom and achieve a full employment economy is a vision that has been clear to me for a long time. The path to it has been, for me, the idea of zones of development which first took concrete form in my efforts 17 years ago to fashion a development unit out of the parts now generally in the South East and South- South Geopolitical zones of Nigeria. When recently I was invited to give a keynote address at a summit of South South- South East professionals I could not but recall my journey to a template for developing that economic area.

But I owed the development of my ideas on parts of the big picture to nuggets of wisdom in the work of other people. Principal in this area has been the idea of breaking Nigeria into zones of development for purposes of development planning, and the concept of economic development areas for the purpose of competitive exploitation of factor endowments of local economic units in global value chains.

I first encountered the concept of zones of development in Nigeria in the writing of a University of Lagos Economics teacher Anusionwu more than 20 years ago, before he left to work for the African Development Bank. The idea resonated with me immediately because it seemed a good way to get people to see the endowment of the nation and realize that every part of Nigeria was endowed enough to develop rapidly at the regional or sub national level.

The local development areas and value chain support concepts came to me from the Monitor Company who were leaders in competitiveness execution and had developed the concepts of growth drivers mapping of local economic units. This company that came out of the work of Harvard School Professors years ago had tried to enter Nigeria not long ago but has since gone through metamorphosis.

In 1996 after attending the Aspen Institute, France, Europe, – Africa summit, which had theme: Africa must produce or die, I began to look for structures that would support rapid production platforms for development.

Why, I asked, did we see the demise of the competition between the regions, in the 1950s and 60s,a phenomenon Howard Wolpe and Robert Melson at Michigan state described as Competitive Communalism ethnic nationality groupings competing to bring the most progress to its peoples. Three good examples of this competition come from the dawn of television broadcasting, the race for education, and the quest for industrialization.

With the west leading off in launching the first television station in Africa with the bragging pay ff: WNTV- first in Africa, Eastern Nigeria quickly followed with its own audacious call tune: ENBS.TV second to none. Free education in the west set the Eastern region racing in same direction but with wore limited cash. The answer would be a great formula that brought the state, the community and missionaries into a synergy partnership known as Ibuanyidanda. This enabled the East leapfrog a lag relative to the West. In the same way, on industrialization, the East reacted to the Ikeja Industrial estate with Aba and Port Harcourt and the Sarduana with the Kakuri, Kaduna, Textile hub, and Bompai in Kano.

This reinforced for me the idea of bottom up development in a Federal state in which the development thrust is significantly domiciled nearest to the people at the sub national government level.

I shared my thoughts on how to apply planning for rapid growth at the sub national level at a meeting of an Igbo Think Tank group, Aka Ikenga. I argued that just as the Province of Penang led the way in Malaysia’s ascendency, a region like the South East and South South could become the Rhine Valley of Africa. As I was Chairman of the Economic and finance committee of the group I was mandated to produce a blue print for the region. The product was called the Niger Basin Project. It constructed linkages between production hubs linked by rail and 12 lane turnpikes highways with connector grids. Hydrocarbon hubs in Port Harcourt, driven by crude oil, and around Warri, driven by Gas, were modeled. The western side, using Gas to power initiatives would supply most of the power, supplemented by clean burning coal from the extensive coal belt running through Enugu but Gas would drive both fertilizer production and Heavy industries’ parks dependent on cheap gas which would be made extremely cheap to trade off on taxes from power dependent industries to be located there; Nnewi would be an Industrial Centre for consumer goods and automobile parts just as Aba would be a hub for light manufacturing and fashion goods. Agriculture cities would be located in the North of Edo state, Ebonyi and CrossRiver.

With new bridges across the Niger making Asaba- Onitsha twin cities like Minneapolis-St Paul or Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas. It would be easy for Onitsha to grow in status as the retail hub for west and central Africa, expected at the time to be serviced by the Airport planned for Oba, a role now played by Asaba.

The Agriculture hubs of Edo, and Ebonyi and the palm oil and rubber belts running across the region and feeding industrial parks in Edo and Ebonyi with standard gauge rail links between the parks and supply routes were to provide form for infrastructure development and some areas in which global leadership would be sort by investing in human capital and competitiveness drivers.

I took this plan to the 1998 World Igbo Congress in London. That year, unfortunately was the year General Abdusalam Abubakar flagged off return to civil rule. Politician of all hues from the South East descended on the summit and aborted the core issue of development.

Ironically, many years after, the Governors of the South South decided to collaborate on regional economic development. In their wisdom they asked that I serve as chairman of the South South Economic Summit. It was a chance to revive the Niger Basin project. Once again, the triumph of politics has slowed down reaching the possibilities.

I continue to be persuaded that a regional development strategy based on value chains and competitiveness derived from becoming globally dominant around some factor endowment; supported by reforms on issues of values and national character will be what propels Nigeria into a global power house status.

* Patrick Okedinachi Utomi, a Nigerian professor of political economy and management expert, writes from Lagos, Nigeria