The leadings and the thinking that gave birth to the Rivers Debate… Rivers Debate Group.
My name is Mr. Ibifiri E.C. Bobmanuel. I’m the President of Rivers Entrepreneurs and Investors Forum.
Rivers Entrepreneurs and Investment Forum (REIF) is an umbrella body that midwives the Rivers Debate Group.
Now, REIF’s vision is quite simple: to create an investor’s haven in Rivers State through highlighting the importance of the business community and the private sector in driving growth in the State.
Now, this became very necessary when most of our friends and affiliates were fleeing Rivers State.
There was this time in our history that businesses, as a matter of urgency, were fleeing Rivers State in droves. So, a couple of us came together and said to ourselves, look, many of us are fleeing the city. Each person said he was about shutting down. A friend of ours, an expatriate, also said he was about shutting his company down to go back to his country.
We tried to find out what the issue was.
It was about the volume of hounding, many issues they were faced with: multiple taxes, hounding of businesses. Twisting of businesses in the State was too much. They simply wanted to shut down and leave Rivers State.
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One particular company said they had already acquired a space in Lagos to moving their company to in next three months.
Another company, the biggest dredging outfit in the southern part of the country, domiciled in Port Harcourt which had been in PH all his life. His kids are all from Port Harcourt, all itching to play for Rivers State-sponsored football team to represent Rivers State.
His story was very pathetic, and he was feeling so bad, but he had reached that crossroads where, in fact, he had actually acquired a space in Lagos to move his businesses.
So, it became obvious that we needed to do something, and that gave birth to the Rivers Entrepreneurs and Investors Forum.
Now, REIF was running on the simple mantra: To find way to keep back our businesses and our friends back in Rivers State, not to leave Rivers State. Some of us are son of the soil, and I am one of the founders. I pride myself with my indigenous status.
So, we said we needed to come together and try to do something about it. Yes, the state had agencies and bodies that were expected to drive such project but they weren’t sincere in their approach. They were more of a transactional kind of service group that would rather want to go in and see it as an opportunity to cash out.
For that reason, we felt we needed to have an independent body that is away from politics, that is away from self-centeredness, but centered around service, giving back to the society through our businesses, through creation of an enabling environment for our businesses to thrive, and indeed for the State to drive through the private sector. That gave birth to the Rivers Entrepreneurs and Investors Forum.
On this, we identified the fact after the first two years that in all of our efforts to try to bring together our vision of a better business climate, we can’t afford to do that without engaging the minds of the people that want to come and govern us. It became very obvious.
So, we said to ourselves, as our own corporate social responsibility, we’re going to set up a body known as the Rivers Debate Group that will be clean, away from politics and to be clear-headed.
The group was to mirror the major issues that are bedeviling the private sector and indeed bedeviling the economy of Rivers State. We partner with few international NGOs and diplomatic missions of some western blocs such as the EU.
The plan was to set up a group of persons that have not been politically exposed, and to not collect funds from anyhow persons. We also set independent questions to ask the candidates. The candidates were chosen by open polls on radio.
The outcome is always collected as what the people wanted their governor to do, and we do submit this to whoever emerged from them.
