Reimagining the South East as a Unified Economic Block

By Peter Mbah

I am honoured to host you here for the South East Vision 2050 Regional Stakeholder Forum. Indeed, coming barely one week after the signing of the concession agreement for the Akanu Ibiam International Airport, this is a particularly significant moment for us.

I commend the South East Development Commission (SEDC) for the intellectual rigour and institutional foresight behind this initiative; I appreciate the collaboration of the Ministry of Regional Development, and the Office of the Vice President, whose involvement firmly situates this conversation within Nigeria’s national development framework.

I warmly acknowledge His Excellency, Senator Kashim Shettima, GCON, whose presence reinforces the principle that regional development thrives best when it is nationally enabled and institutionally supported.

Sustainable regional development does not occur in isolation. It requires a national leadership that understands diversity, equity, and long-term planning. In this regard, I must recognise the leadership of His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, under whose watch Nigeria is witnessing a renewed emphasis on structural reform and regional balance.

The creation and strengthening of regional development commissions is a strategic signal that development must be territorially-inclusive and economically rational. For the South East, this is significant. It reflects a federal posture that recognises the region not merely as a political constituency, but as a critical economic and human capital asset to Nigeria.

The President’s approach provides the policy space and institutional backing for the South East to plan long-term, invest smartly, and integrate effectively into national growth priorities.

Let me say from the start: this gathering here is not to decorate a document, and we also did not gather here to produce another communiqué that looks impressive – but changes nothing. I am here to invite you to a bold re-imagining of the South East as a single economic bloc.

For too long, we have looked at our five states as individual islands, but the era of the solitary path is over. Today, I propose the birth of the South East Common Market – a bold, borderless unification of our commerce, our talent, and our industrial grit. By fusing our five distinct economies into one powerhouse, we are no longer just negotiating for a seat at the table; we are building the table ourselves.

This is more than a policy shift; it is the awakening of an economic giant, transforming the South East into a unified, seamless theatre of enterprise where our shared heritage fuels our collective prosperity.

Across the world, the rules of prosperity are changing. The global economy is being reorganised by technology, by climate pressures, by supply chain realignments, by capital that now moves faster than politics, and by competition that punishes delay.

The world is entering a new era where those who can organise themselves, integrate their markets, and build systems at scale will rise. Those who cannot will remain consumers of other people’s added value.

So, today I want to propose a simple premise. If we want a different future, we must build a different system. And a different system begins with a change in how we think. That begins with one decision, here in this hall: A decision to change our thinking and undertake a total re-imagining of what is possible for the South East.

This region has a long memory. Long before modern borders, our people understood cooperation not as sentiment, but as logic. Trade moved across communities. Skills travelled. Markets connected producers and buyers across distances. Identity was common and our purpose was shared. No one waited for permission to collaborate, because collaboration was how life worked. That instinct did not disappear. But it was interrupted by the creation of separate administrative states. Today, we feel the consequences.

We are culturally aligned, but structurally fragmented. Energetic, but under-scaled. Ambitious, but often operating below our collective potential.

That fragmentation is no longer a historical footnote. It has become a present-day constraint.

The world we are operating in now is unforgiving of disconnection and lack of unity. The global economy does not reward isolated effort. It rewards regions that can act as systems, regions that can coordinate infrastructure, align skills with industry, move goods efficiently, mobilise capital at scale, and present a clear, credible proposition to investors and their own people.

Nigeria itself is under pressure to make this transition. Youth unemployment, security challenges, and fiscal constraints are forcing a reckoning.  And within that national system, every region must now answer a hard question: how do we contribute to growth, stability, and opportunity at scale? The South East cannot answer that question by acting as five parallel actors.

We see the cost already, even if it arrives quietly. Our young people are not leaving because they lack pride. They are leaving because they lack systems that can hold their ambition. Businesses grow, but struggle to scale beyond narrow limits. Investors circle, but hesitate. Inefficiency fills the gaps that coordination should have closed.

Imagine the South East teeming with unicorn businesses. Imagine the South East with several companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Imagine the South East with its own stock exchange. This is not an overnight failure, and it is not always obvious. Some may not feel the pinch while others starve. But make no mistake; it is quiet stagnation through fragmentation. Left unchecked, it becomes the death bell of a region and its culture.

The South East Vision 2050 is not another layer of democracy. It is not a replacement for state leadership. It is an instrument to help us solve problems that no single state can solve alone.

Systems thinking teaches us something important. Strength does not come from conformity. It comes from intelligent connection. The human body does not work because every organ is the same. It works because different organs are coordinated through a common nervous system. When those connections fail, even the strongest parts are weakened.

The South East does not need to erase its differences. It needs to organise them. And the SEDC help us co-exist and make this region function as a coherent economic space.

So, how do we step from vision to execution? If this forum is to mean anything, it must mark the transition from agreement in principle to action in sequence. Not everything can be built at once. But the direction must be set clearly, and the first steps must begin immediately.

First, we must commit, by the time we leave this event, to a region-wide feasibility and project preparation phase, jointly funded and jointly governed. From the day we leave this hall, resources should be allocated to research and develop an initial set of bankable, cross-state projects, beginning with studies that answer hard questions around cost, sequencing, financing, governance, and delivery.

Second, we must begin with logistics and connectivity, because economies do not integrate on paper, they integrate through movement. The South East needs its first deliberately designed interstate logistics corridors, road, rail, inland hubs, and multi-modal systems that allow goods, people, and services to move seamlessly across state lines. These are not prestige projects. They are productivity infrastructure, and they must be planned and contracted as regional assets, not state trophies.

Third, security must be treated as regional infrastructure. Criminal networks do not respect state boundaries, and neither should our response.

Criminals in the zone should be ring-fenced, so they don’t simply find sanctuary elsewhere once dislodged from a neighbouring state. We must commit to enhanced cross regional security coordination, shared intelligence, interoperable communication, and a centralised information and response hub that allows state security architectures and federal agencies to act as one system. Safety is not just a social good; it is a precondition for investment and everyday economic life.

Fourth, we must align the rules of engagement, investment processes, regulatory expectations, and dispute resolution, so that the South East presents a coherent face to capital, enterprise, and its own citizens. Complexity discourages participation. Predictability enables growth.

These are the first moves. They are achievable if we decide, collectively, to treat the region as the unit of execution.

Initially, the true cost will be revealed in our inability to embrace a different mindset. We must be willing to engage honestly with the dialogue around change. We must balance personal priorities with a systems thinking approach.

For too long, collaboration has been treated as a courtesy rather than a necessity. Regional thinking has been aspirational rather than operational. We agree in principle, but retreat into familiar silos when decisions become difficult. A region that remains busy, talented, culturally alive, but increasingly peripheral to where value is created. A region that exports people instead of products, dreams instead of industries. A region whose children learn to measure success by distance travelled, not value built at home. That region is not offering a future worthy of its people. So, this forum must mark a shift from conversation to commitment.

There will be obstacles: Old habits; Political friction; Personal differences; Impatience for quick wins; Scepticism born of past disappointment. We should not underestimate these challenges. But we should also be clear-eyed about the alternative. Nothing we will encounter by trying to change this system will be more damaging than leaving it as it is.

So, the question before us is not whether this is difficult. It is whether we are prepared to do what difficulty demands. Before we leave this hall, we must be able to say, practically, what comes next. How coordination will work. How priorities will be sequenced. How accountability will be shared. How momentum will be protected. Because the future of the South East will not be shaped by the quality of our language today, but by the discipline of our actions tomorrow.

Let me end where I began. This region has never lacked energy. It has never lacked ambition. It has never lacked talent. What it has lacked, until now, is a shared system strong enough to hold those strengths together. Vision 2050 is our chance to build that system as a framework for action, not for someday, but starting now.

So, let us leave this forum with clear commitments to fund and begin regional feasibility work immediately, to prioritise interstate logistics as the backbone of integration, to coordinate security as a shared regional responsibility, and to align our institutions around execution, not rivalry.

This is about more than relevance. It is about survival. It is about ensuring that in a rapidly changing Nigeria and a competitive world, the South East is not left managing decline, but building its prosperity. That responsibility sits with us. We carry on our shoulders the enormous weight of history. And history will not ask what we said in this room. It will ask what we did when we left it.

Thank you.

Being an address by Governor Peter Mbah of Enugu State at the just concluded South East Vision 2050 Regional Stakeholders’ Forum in Enugu