The Oluwo of Iwoland, Oba Abdul-Rasheed Adewale Akanbi has charged the federal government to industrialize the nation to overcome the current economic recession.
He disclosed this via a statement made available to journalists in Osun state through his media aide, Oriyomi Akinbote.
The monarch said it has become very imperative that the government formulate policies that would favour industrialization of the nation’s economy and give topmost priority to industrialization in order to get out of recession.
The Oluwo, who also advocated for outsourcing and involvement of Nigerians in Diaspora in implementing such policies, maintained that it was high time President Muhammadu Buhari and his team looked beyond agriculture for the survival of the economy, both in the short and long runs.
According to Oba Akanbi, the nation has no excuse to allow the economy to crash in spite of its huge population and diverse mineral resources.
He added that Nigeria has a great lesson to learn from China on how it emerged a leading world economy from obscurity, through creative management of its resources, particularly the huge population.
Describing industrialization of the economy as the panacea to numerous challenges facing the nation, the traditional ruler noted that many jobs, direct and indirect, would be created and the youths would be meaningfully engaged which will consequently reduce crime rate.
The statement read: “As much as I believe that agriculture is good and lucrative, I don’t think it would give us a reasonable speed as the industrialization in firming up the ailing economy. Let’s think about how industrialization has brought an unprecedented high turnover of jobs and revenue into the coffers of the Chinese government lately.
“Many American and European companies now have their plants in China because of many economic advantages – cheap labour and other incentives from the Chinese government which give them the leverage to be competitive in various world markets.
“Nigeria could do the same as China and also beat China because of additional opportunities that we have. We have abundant raw materials to support our production lines. The population is there for us as the biggest black nation with a huge home market for end consumers and also for export to other African nations and the rest of the world.
“Nigeria unlike China is also strategically located and closer to Europe and America, where investments could be attracted.
“So, I want to advise that we leave tiling of the land for our neighbours like Niger Republic, Mali, Chad and so on and let us focus on industrialization because of its many inherent advantages. Nigeria does not have sufficient lands for agriculture but we do for factories and industries that can employ more than agriculture. For instance, the size of Nigeria is not up to a province in Canada and many states in America. Our children will also learn technologies when they work in some of these factories once they have their plants here.”
Oba Akanbi advised President Buhari to collaborate with traditional rulers, whom he said could facilitate large expanse of lands in their domains for factories and industries to operate.
The Oluwo urged the Federal Government to systematically improve infrastructures, saying that experience has shown that foreign investors are ready to come once they know there would be incentives from the government, including tax holiday and other necessary supports.
He added that many of the prospective investors could go as far as providing solutions in the immediate for teething challenges that could impede their operations once their overheads are nothing compared with their net profits.
Source: Daily Trust
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