Says to revive economy, Nigeria must forge its industrial future

Minister of State for Industry, John Owan Enoh, has called on Nigeria to break free from its entrenched dependence on imported machinery, describing the nation’s over-reliance on foreign equipment as a modern-day form of neo-colonialism.

Speaking yesterday at the three-day Nigeria Manufacturing and Equipment/ Nigerian Raw Materials Expo (NME/NIRAM) 2025, Enoh warned that unless the country found its footing in technology manufacturing, its aspirations for industrial sovereignty would remain out of reach.

Drawing a direct link between machinery availability and Nigeria’s industrial ambition, Enoh stressed the urgency of deploying smart, efficient systems in place of “used industrial scrap” currently flooding the country. He also revealed that a draft National Industrial Policy was going through some processing for validation, placing technology adoption, equipment financing and manual integration at the heart of manufacturing innovation.

Enoh noted that unless the country manufactured its own equipment, it would never attain industrial dignity. He described the expo as a national mirror, one that would force stakeholders to confront the current state of manufacturing and move “beyond aspirations to real application.”

He charged participants to leave the three-day expo with a mandate to forge strategic technology transfer partnerships, collaborate with universities and polytechnics, and explore modular and decentralised equipment models suited to Nigeria’s unique industrial ecosystem.

Speaking on Enhancing Sustainable Innovation and Technology Transfer in Manufacturing, the Managing Director, SecureID, Kofo Akinkugbe, warned that Nigeria stood at a dangerous crossroads, with the manufacturing sector contributing only 8.4 per cent to GDP in 2024, down from 10 per cent five years ago, compared to Vietnam’s 25 per cent and China’s 28 per cent.

“This is a crisis we must urgently address. We are now at a point where we must decide whether Nigeria will continue to be a buyer of innovative solutions or become a creator of them,” he said.

Akinkugbe, a pioneer in smart card manufacturing in sub-Saharan Africa, lamented Nigeria’s near-total reliance on imported machines and raw inputs, describing it as “a major limitation to our ability to provide enhancements to our modest manufacturing efforts.” She argued that true technology transfer cannot be achieved by merely importing machines but by understanding, maintaining, and eventually manufacturing them locally.

Highlighting the abundance of raw materials in Nigeria, ranging from lithium to cobalt, she stressed the need for value addition and local utilisation.

Director General, Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Segun Ajayi-Kadir, praised the revitalised collaboration between the Ministry of Industry and stakeholders in the private sector, citing the Industrial Revolution Working Group as a transformative step that has improved feedback from manufacturers.

Ajayi-Kadir also highlighted the role of the Bank of Industry (BoI) in managing the N75 billion FGN loan facility and expressed MAN’s readiness to support the proposed N1 trillion Stabilisation Plan.