Why I ‘contrived’ Job Festival and Entrepreneurship Summit —SSA Joseph Edet

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Mr Joseph Edet SSA entrepreneurship and job placement, CRS 
Nyok|29 January 2019

Cross River Governor Benedict Ayade’s aide on Entrepreneurship and Job Placement, Mr Joseph Edet, has couched the perspective into why and how he contrived the Job Festival and Entrepreneurship Summit billed for Wednesday 30th January NEGROIDHAVEN can say. 
He barred his mind on this on Sunday in Calabar the state capital city when he granted bloggers and journalists a brief interview. According to him, the summit is a product of he and his team’s painstaking brainstorming on what value they should contribute to the state in the present administration. He stressed the fact that since his job description revolved around providing an enabling environment for entrepreneurs in the state it was only important for his office to evolve the job festival. 
He added that the entrepreneurship summit will be an annual event which will hold at every beginning of the year. He disabused the perception that the summit was politically motivated, explaining that it is coincidental that the premier edition felled on the year for the general elections nationwide. 
His words, ‘It is only expected that when you get into an organisation, body or a particular function you must align your blueprint, and in our blueprint we have it that every year we will run a job festival and entrepreneurship summit. A job festival is like a job fair where you come in and shop for the best job, you try to find the best hands.

‘To make that work, we decided to put that at the beginning of every year. So, when people say it is politically driven, I say know. I said in the blueprint we must do it every year at the beginning say January or at most February. Coincidentally, this year, it is clashing with the general elections, so people think it is politics driven. No, it is not. One thing we will expect is we will do it every year. This is the first of its kind. The next we will have is the Market Square. 
‘My job is to be able to build on enterprise development, see to it that entrepreneurs have a viable environment to work with along side the government. And as somebody who was appointed three months ago, it is only expected that, if you are somebody who has content and value, after the first 30 days they are supposed to feel your effects, your impact, they must see your blueprint. It took me 30 days for me to sit back with my team and create what you are seeing today. We didn’t just wake up one morning and say we want to do a job festival and entrepreneurship summit. Basically, that is the idea behind it. 
‘If you look at the former rating, the ease of doing business in the country, Cross River was the third lowest. But, I think it is not true. It is my opinion. I have done Lashakara for a very long time, and it’s been easy for me because of my strategies. The people in question which should be doing business in Calabar, or Cross River, one of the problems I have with them is that they don’t have the driving power. Instead we sit back and criticise.’
In the course of the interview, SSA Edet informed that despite the All Progressives Congress, APC presidential rally scheduled to hold simultaneously on Wednesday this week, the summit will proceed uninterrupted at the Calabar International Conference Centre, CICC. He added that there will be a free transportation system of five buses stationed at 9AM at designated spots in the state capital. He highlighted UNICAL Main Gate(one bus), Mobil by MCC at MM Highway (two buses) and CICC Highway Junction (two buses) to be the pick up spots.
Efio-Ita Nyok is the blogger-in-chief, editor-in-chief and publisher of NEGROIDHAVEN