For years, after the Aper Aku era and the privatisation of Benue Cement Company (BCC), Benue State has been reduced to an economy dependent on primitive agriculture. Then comes Dr Raymond Asemakaha, Group Managing Director (GMD) of Benue Investment and Property Company (BIPC). In view of the recent gains BIPC is recording, it cannot be overemphasised that Benue State is, at the moment, transitioning from a traditional agrarian economy to an industrialised powerhouse.
In 2023, when Fr. Hyacinth Alia took office as Governor of Benue State, he entrusted Dr Asemakaha to lead BIPC as the Group Managing Director. He trusted Dr Asemakaha to turn the company around, make a profit, and deliver more ventures.
From available indices, it can be inferred that Dr Asemakaha is well guided in his commitment to build a legacy of innovation and shared prosperity.
Within his time in office, BIPC has successfully embarked on several industrial ventures that are relevant and useful for the citizens of Benue State. The company has delivered on several product lines, including but not limited to nails, bread, Zeva Lager beer, and Oyi bitters, with work on Benue juice at the test-run stage.
Another significant thing Dr Asemakaha’s BIPC is doing is the Students’ Turning Point Programme tagged “Fueling Benue’s Future.” The programme aims “to inspire innovation, skills development, and entrepreneurship among students in tertiary institutions across the state.” The idea, Dr Asemakaha says, is to ensure that Benue indigenes possess relevant knowledge, skills and attitudes to manage the state assets and other resources.
Then comes the big announcement: The blended Finance Capital of $20 Million (N27.6b) from Taicorp Capital & BIPC.
According to a World Bank report, blended finance is a strategic approach that combines public and private funding to mobilise private capital into emerging and frontier markets. The idea, the report says, is to attract commercial capital to projects that benefit society while providing financial returns to investors.
By blending public finance with private investment, the report says blended finance mechanisms can help bridge the financing gap for various development objectives, including green finance and renewable energy investments.
Developing economies, such as Benue, despite their ample resources are confronted with the problem where private financiers view infrastructure investment as high risk due to various factors, including larger asset sizes, long project life cycles, complex structuring, large initial irrecoverable costs, political and regulatory changes, wariness of citizens to accept privately run services due to perception of higher prices, and the lack of tradability of infrastructure assets.
Curiously, one of Dr Asemakaha’s major ambitions has been the rapid industrial and commercial development of the state. Aware that the major fault of a developing economy is an almost blind but fashionable pursuit of industrial development without a sound raw materials base, Dr Asemakaha’s BIPC industrial development plans are pursued simultaneously with the production of the necessary raw materials for industrial ventures, which are neither gigantic nor perhaps impressive but are nevertheless relevant and useful for the citizens of Benue state.
The goal is simple: To transform the state’s raw agricultural abundance into high-value products while leveraging cutting-edge technology.
Injecting just half of the $20m capital into the agricultural sector alone would no doubt significantly impact agricultural development, an area of Benue’s comparative advantage.
It is, therefore, fitting when Dr. Asemakaha asserted: “The cornerstone of our agenda today is the establishment of a world-class agro-processing hub that incorporates some of these foods into well-finished packaged products, where with yam we have flour for local consumption and export markets, tomato to be processed into paste significantly reducing waste for our farmers and soybean which currently sits at multi-billion naira figures on the value chain.
“We can directly and indirectly create up to 5,000 jobs and tap into our abundant Human Resources, where our youth are utilised at scale for the development of their state.
“We are looking at imaging potential in Benue from transformative to actual capital investment. We are looking at blended financing for our projects.”
Let BIPC continue to walk the talk. The small ventures are already making an impact – contributing to local content while creating jobs and putting food on the table of families, even as investors are getting value for their investments. Let the people take advantage of the new BIPC to grow their businesses and be employers of labour.
