No meaningful industrialisation efforts can yield fruits without the development of the Nigeria’s iron and steel sector, Executive Vice Chairman, National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), Prof.Mohammed Sani Haruna, has said.
According to him, to run Nigeria’s industries effectively and sustain manufacturing sector locally, the nation needs to build most of its machines and equipment locally in order to deepen the impacts of innovations and to make the manufacturing of goods and services become part and parcel of the culture of the citizens.
To this effect, NASENI and the National Metallurgical Development Centre (NMDC) Jos, Plateau State, in Abuja, yesterday, signed a memorandum of understanding (Mou) to work together to revamp the iron and the steel sector and other allied industries.
Prof.Haruna explained that for industrialisation to become sustainable in any country, the steels, irons and tools required to build the machines that are needed to sustain both the productive and manufacturing capacities of the country to a large extent, must be developed locally.
NMDC was established as a research and development organization with the mandate to carry out research and development activities for the metallurgical and allied industries for the growth of the nation’s solid minerals sector, while NASENI has the mandate of providing research and developmental works in the areas of capital goods, machines and equipment for the purpose of developing a home-grown and home sustained industrial development of the country.
Prof. Haruna disclosed that the MoU was to provide a threshold for the resuscitation of the Nigeria’s iron and steel sector and the beginning of the genuine revitalization of the Nigeria’s industrial sector.
“The NMDC is the real development centre to make our nation economically viable and the MoU between the Centre and NASENI today is to put the sustainable development of the manufacturing industry on the right track.”
He said the reasons why many of the Nigerian industries are not viable is because the backing of the local iron, steel and tools, machines and equipment are not home-grown nor home-sustained innovations available. We keep importing everything into Nigeria and no nation can develop that way.”
Prof. Haruna said the working collaborations at the instance of the MoU between NASENI and NMDC had been instituted to provide a solid foundation for the steel and iron sector of Nigeria to flourish because the subsector is the very foundation for the manufacturing sector of the country to prosper.