The Minister of State for Industry, Trade and Investment, John Owan Enoh, has been on a roadshow drawing support for the new national industrial policy scheduled for unveiling in Abuja tomorrow. In an interview with GEOFF IYATSE and a few other journalists in Lagos at the weekend, the minister insisted that the ambitious $1 trillion economy is only possible with extensive value addition.

There has been a lot of talk about a new national industrial policy. How will this be different from the previous ones?

The difference is that this particular policy is big on implementation; it is big on execution. I mean, this policy starts with an appreciation of what the problem is and sets out to provide solutions to these problems.

This policy was crafted with the recognition that policy has never been a problem for our country. What has continued to be a problem has been what is next after the policy.

So, the policy understands that it is not policy for the sake of policy. It is a policy for what we can achieve for the country. Therefore, so much effort has been spent trying to fashion out an implementation framework that can get this policy to work.

This is why, even far ahead of the formal launch of the policy, we have spent a lot of time; we have a lot of sessions, trying to make sure that we get the implementation right. We want to celebrate only what impact this policy can achieve for the country industrially, not just the fact that we have a policy document. I mean, it is clear in terms

of timelines, in terms of responsible people. Who are those responsible for what, in terms of alignment with the sub-nationals?

At the time we were validating the policy, when it was still in conceptual form, we had representations from the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, associations of local government and other stakeholders because ultimately, this policy is for the country. It is not just for the ministry alone.

When I was made the Minister of State for Industry, I was shocked when, in a session with the Manufacturing Association of Nigeria (MAN), they told me they had never been consulted in any of the policies that had come out in terms of industrial development.

This policy has inputs from the ministry and various stakeholders, including the organised private sector. Taking part and getting it to where it is, we secured inputs from development partners; everybody has had a buy-in to the policy. So, there is this strong hope and optimism that this policy will deliver. And truly, it will be different.

You mentioned that certain challenges were identified as part of efforts to tackle the policy. Did you also profile the problem of power? If that was done, to what extent has the Ministry of Power involved?

What I can say for free is that very early we recognised the fact that the big elephant in the room is power. And power is one of the five thematic areas that the Industrial Revolution Workgroup, which I chair and which is co-chaired by the President of MAN, identified.

After that identification, one of the things we have decided is that in going forward, we are going to inaugurate ministerial roundtables. The first and only ministerial roundtable that we have had to hold has had to do with getting power, right. Power, security, and infrastructure are key.

As the roundtables are intended to be modelled, each of these roundtables brings together people who have solutions to the particular constraint. So, when we organised the roundtable on energy, we had the Minister of Power in the room. We had the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission in the room.

We had the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) in the room. We had all of the key players present.

We had people playing in the gas ecosystem in the room. And there was identification and realisation, as well as a conclusion that to solve the power challenge, we need to talk about blended power. You need to talk about a mixed combination between grid power, power from gas and then from renewables. We need to get together to make sense. We must deal with the power challenge.

By 2030, manufacturing is expected to begin to generate 30 per cent of the GDP. Doesn’t this come to you as over-ambitious? How do you think we can achieve it?

Well, when you set a goal, you don’t set a goal that is easy to achieve. We must know that goal setting is aspirational. At the moment, you know, manufacturing and industry’s contribution to our GDP is in single digits. And what we hope is that through a concerted and serious implementation of the industrial policy, we will be able to achieve a double-digit growth by 2030. So, I think that Nigeria has everything in place to achieve this. I will give you some examples. At the moment, we are too concerned with the exports of our primary raw goods and raw materials. You know, we have a bill in the National Assembly, which is almost getting concluded, that talks about 30 per cent value addition. At the moment, our trading relations with other countries are positive, even when our main source of export is still primary goods.

Do you know how much change we can make by the time that we can actually implement a 30 per cent value addition? That is going to be monumental. And I think that we are a big country; we have a big economy.

I think that what is going to be the missing link is the extent to which we can, concertedly and conscientiously, implement the industrial policy, which is a guideline in terms of value addition, in terms of various value chains and all of that. Nigeria’s aspiration is to be an industrial nation.

The President talks about a $1 trillion economy. Nigeria cannot be an industrial nation if we do not find or have manufacturing contributing significantly to the GDP; getting to double digits is the goal.

You talked about the bill that is currently at the National Assembly, which seeks to prevent the export of commodities in their raw form. But there are also concerns that the conditions for scaling up our processing and value addition are not there yet. Don’t you also think the bill is premature?

Well, I think that if at this point in 2026, Nigeria still considers a bill of such a nature immature, we are not a serious country. We have been exporting primary products from pre-independence to the independence era, and I think that is why we are where we are. Some other opinions suggest that 30 per cent is even too low for a country like Nigeria.

In countries that have achieved industrialisation, they did not wait for every condition to be right. Industrialisation will come with tough conditions; it will not come easily.

But industrialisation will come in spite of those odds and those constraints because we know what the gains of industrialisation will be. We will continue to push it. We will be solving the challenges of industrialisation and solving the problem that we are talking about.

That is the only way we can achieve industrialisation. We must know that some of the conditions are there. We have the raw materials. I will give you a little example.

Just a little decision that was taken to ban sheanut export, a temporary ban for six months, has made a substantial improvement. If you see how much has been achieved in terms of processing in our country since the decision was taken, then you know that 30 per cent value addition is not even enough.

There are a lot of people who are willing to invest in processing. But they are just waiting to make sure that there is consistency in government policy decisions before they bring in their investments.