By Peter Ogbuokwa
Manufacturing sector in the country is groaning under the yoke of the economy downturn in recent times. This has necessitated some organizations folding up, while others are relocating to neighbouring countries like Ghana, Togo and so on where cost of production and infrastructure are friendly.
As a matter of fact, infrastructural deficiency in Nigeria currently makes it difficult for manufacturing sector to have appreciable return on investment. The roads are not motorable. There is no constant
electricity, which makes it mandatory for manufacturers to fuel their generating sets at their costs, yet pay electricity bills. Products from China,
though substandard and cheaper, are more acceptable to our people. As inferior as the Chinese organizations and their products are, it is difficult for local industries to compete with them. Then add that to insecurity, you will agree with me that manufacturers are going through hard times in the country.
As a result of the anomalies, youths with energy in their primes are being laid-off in the folding organisations.
Salaries are also being owed workers. Young Nigerian graduates idle away with huge investment made on them by their parent fritter away.
It is very pathetic. Due to frustrations occasioned by joblessness on their
part, some of them have taken to crime which in turn has resulted to insecurity in the country.
Meanwhile some of the companies producing in the country are doing so under intense pressure and astronomical cost of production and as such it resorted to producing substandard goods. However, a few others are still there weathering the storm. For instance, an Organization like Lanre Bhadmus Industries Limited, manufacturers of high quality engine oil and other products, due to its track record of excellence, is creating employment for teeming Nigerian youths and contributing positively to the economy of the country, still maintaining its standard.
Just recently, World Bank rated Nigeria’s unemployment as well as inflation indices as being very high and stated that it was fueling insecurity in the country. The Nigeria Bureau of Statistics, (NBS), in the same vein rated unemployment in Nigeria very high, putting it at 33.5%.
The situation is frightening. Countries where their unemployment rate is high such as ours hardly make appreciable progress. Today a lot of our youths have taken to yahoo
yahoo and other forms of criminality due to joblessness in order to survive. In the past, Textile companies alone were employing a very large number
of the youths whether skilled or not. Unfortunately, today we lack such industry and it is worrisome.
With the President Muhammadu Buhari’s mantra of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty, my advice to government as a matter of urgency, is to support the manufacturing sector by removing or minimizing the bottleneck they go through in accessing loans. Furthermore, it should also make interest-free loans available to them to cushion the effect of the hardship being experienced by them in the cause of manufacturing in the country. This will in turn enable them contribute their quarter towards nation building. Besides, it will boost job creation and economy in Nigeria which will ultimately assist in tackling insecurity.
Lastly, government should subsidize some of the raw materials used in production of goods by indigenous organizations in order to encourage them to survive and compel Nigerians, particularly those • Ogbuokwa writes from Lagos.
in government to patronize them by way of legislation.