Mansur Ahmed, the president of the Nigerian Manufacturers Association, claims that over-dependence on imported raw materials has severely harmed Nigeria’s manufacturing sector.
Ahmed addressed on Tuesday in Lagos at the association’s Apapa branch’s annual general meeting. In order to increase manufacturing activity in the nation, he also urged enterprises to strengthen their ties with the public sector.
“Our manufacturing industry is poor because it depends on foreign resources that we then process,” he claimed. Therefore, we must either scale up or scale down. The transition needs to be done by our producers again. We in industry must concentrate on this problem. We must construct infrastructure.
The Vice President launched the National Council on Infrastructure when I was there at a meeting.
“That’s a really good development. In order to develop our manufacturing sector from where it is now to where it should be—that is, with less reliance on imported materials, foreign exchange problems, machinery, and spare parts—we need to work with the government and other stakeholders in our interactions and lobbying. We have the ability, the resources, and the fundamental inputs we require. The government will be a very eager partner if we concentrate on this.
The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Commerce, Industry, and Cooperative, Mrs. Oluremi Ososanya, spoke on behalf of the Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who declared that the state government was prepared to form beneficial alliances with manufacturers as part of its plan to develop a thriving private sector.
“An event of this kind holds an interest,” she declared, “in light of the chance it provides for players in the industrial sector to come together and discuss prospects that would increase synergy and economic growth. I would want to use this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to the event’s organizers for thinking it appropriate at this point in the nation’s history to bring together business owners and involve the government in finding solutions to the economy’s problems.
The Director-General of the Standards Organization of Nigeria, Mallam Farouk Salim, stressed the importance of manufacturing practitioners adhering to the highest industry standards in his keynote address.
He maintained that norms assured the protection of consumer interests, ensured trust in commercial transactions, and also hastened a country’s economic progress.
For his part, Mr. Frank Onyebu, chairman of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria’s Apapa branch, claimed that a number of manufacturing-related obstacles have increased the sector’s mortality rate.
According to Onyebu, a number of obstacles, such as deteriorated infrastructure, insufficient electricity supply, low forex liquidity, excessive regulation, insecurity, a broken port system, low consumer demand, and an unfavorable operating environment, to name a few, make it impossible for us to build a competitive manufacturing sector by 2021. The ability of manufacturers to compete with other African countries is certainly in doubt given that AfCFTA is still in the implementation phase.
