‘Nigeria must look inward to fund industrialisation’

An industrialist, Dr. Caesar Osaheni Iyayi, has appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to use his powers and office to encourage Nigerians to focus on manufacturing revolution, adding that the country must look inward to fund industrialisation.

According to Iyayi, we must develop the industrial capacity to use our raw materials to manufacture everything that we consume. We cannot continue to do the same thing and expect a different result.

The appeal and lucid strategies for transforming the country into an industrialised nation are contained in his soon-to-be-launched book – ‘The ABC of how to industrialise Nigeria.’

The book highlights a step-by-step method on how the Federal and State governments can mobilise the Nigerian indigenous private sector to industrialise the country.

As contained in the book, the country has everything to transform its economy from an agrarian to an industrial manufacturing leviathan in less than 10 years. What is needed is the absolute commitment of the Sitting President and governors.

Noting that there is no country in the world that was industrialised by foreigners, the author averred, “we must look inward to source for the funding of the industrialisation of our country. In this regard therein, you do not have to worry about how to raise a budget for this nationally intrinsic enterprise. Nigerians at home and abroad, with proper encouragement and support from the Federal and State Governments, can finance the industrialisation.”

Continuing, he said: “Mr. President, when I talk about transforming the Nigerian economy from an agrarian to an industrial manufacturing powerhouse, I am not calling for any new scientific discovery. In fact, all we need to do, just like what China did, is to copy and replicate the existing manufacturing methods. We are fortunate to have all the advantages that over 90 per cent of our counterpart countries crave in vain. For example, we have natural gas.

“The first thing we need from your office is permission for Nigerian owned businesses to tap into the gas at the point of flaring free of charge. After that, you need to encourage and support Nigerian owned businesses to purchase mobile electric gas turbines to generate electricity for industrial manufacturing at the point of gas flaring source. This is very because, what you really need to commence industrial manufacturing is electricity.

“Next, you will need to encourage Nigerian owned businesses for example to import plant and equipment for the industrial manufacturing of solar panels, glass, computer chips, semiconductors and deep cycle lead-acid batteries that can be made from our locally available sand, quartz and lead.’’

According to him, the manufacturing of the aforementioned products is logical because we have a lot of gas that we flare to waste, we have an endless supply of sand, quartz and lead. Add to that, we have a huge demand for solar panels and lead-acid batteries that we presently import from industrial manufacturing countries. Because we do not have the manufacturing expertise, we shall employ expatriates to supervise the production process.