Gov. Abudullahi Sule has inaugurated the construction of the Nasarawa Technology Village in Aso Pada, Karu Local Government Area of the state.
The N30 billion project which comprised 1,962 housing unit’s estate, technology hub and other facilities is being executed in collaboration with an indigenous firm, ABS Blueprint Consortium, under a Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement.
Sule, while performing the ground breaking for the project said it was in line with his administration’s development roadmap in the area of housing, technology, employment and industrialisation. He promised to monitor the project to ensure its effective execution.
The governor expressed delight with the project being executed by an indigenous consortium, saying it was in line with his administration’s vision of development of the people and the state.
He said the project was fully funded by the private partners in the consortium. He said that the state government would galvanise investors to construct a dedicated link road to the estate, away from the usual gridlock in the area.
Mr Mohammed Yamusa, Managing Director, ABS Blueprint Consortium, said that the 1,962 units Technology Village would comprise of 668 units of One bedroom flats, 558 units of two bedroom flats, 376 units of two-bedroom bungalow as well as 360 units of three bedroom bungalows.
According to Yamusa, the village would have a technology hub with offices for local and international IT companies for training of more than 2,000 students annually as software engineers, who would be helped to outsource jobs globally that could earn them as high as 3,000 US dollars monthly.
Other features of the technology hub include ICT campus with shared virtual workspaces and an estate-wide Broadband coverage through fiber optic cabling. He added that the village would also have a 5MW independent gas power plant, primary and secondary school, health clinic, fire station, police post, shopping center among others.
The managing director explained that the housing component of the project alone was N22 billion, while the other features including the independent power plant would gulp about N8 billion. He assured the government and people of Nasarawa State to deliver on the project.
In his remarks, Mr Ibrahim Abudullahi, Managing Director, Nasarawa State Investment Development Agency (NASIDA) said that Gov. Sule had so far attracted over 500 million US dollar investment to Nasarawa State across different sectors. Abdullahi said the development of the Nasarawa Technology Village was in furtherance of Gov. Sule’s economic development strategy for the state.
“The goal is to leverage the proximity of the state to the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to create different technology clusters and to develop a technology-driven economy. “There is a deliberate effort to make Nasarawa State a top investment destination not only in the country but in Africa,” Abdullahi said.