The Managing Director, Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) Mr. Uche Orji has disclosed that since its inception, the agency has remained a profitable entity, constantly gaining recognitions and credibility.
He also added that in line with its plans to invest in critical sectors such as motorways, healthcare, power and agriculture which directly impacts on Nigerians, the fund has set up a department dedicated to revamping moribund industrial assets.
He said this on the Morning Show on Thursday, where he reminisced on his journey since he took the realm as the pioneer Managing Director of NSIA.
He said: “The NSIA has proven itself to be a steadily profitable entity, which is important in gaining credibility internally. The NSIA has had catalytic effects, on a number of sectors where it wanted to focus on be it agriculture, healthcare, toll roads, financial markets, infrastructure, more recently in technology and power which has been very catalytic in terms of the role it has played.
“We have also gained significant external credibility. For seven or eight years in a row, it has been ranked top quartile by the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute in terms of transparency and governance, which I think is very important for an agency like ours to gain credibility, both at home and abroad.
“So, all of that put together to summarise how it has gone so far and being able to also win the support of our stakeholders, particularly the federal government and the state government for me is a big mark of the fact that it is accepted domestically as well.”
Speaking on plans to revamp idle assets, he added: “We’ve created a unit now; the managing director will be driving that unit along with a couple of staff that are senior persons who have joined the organisation to drive that.”
Also commenting on the success recorded by the cancer center at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), some of the tolled roads, fertilizer and agriculture sector, he said: “Healthcare for example, is an area of maximum impact for us. The LUTH Cancer Center alone in the last 18 months has had 200,000 patients’ encounters.
“We have seen the toll roads, the second Niger bridge, the Lagos-Ibadan, Kaduna-Abuja at least the Kaduna to Zaria end is done, Abuja-Kaduna work is ongoing.
“We have seen agricultural fertilizer initiatives. We’ve seen investments in tech, we’ve seen a lot of other investments and I think the fact that NSIA could do that tomorrow, we are commissioning a big agric project in Nasarawa state and that farm yielding about seven tons per hectare, as against two for the average Nigerian farm this is in partnership with old mutual and a Dutch investment company.”
Nume Ekeghe in Lagos, Adedayo Akinwale and Kingsley Nwezeh in Abuja
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