The Chairman of the Rivers/Bayesla Branch of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Senator Adawari Pepple, in this interview with Emma Obe, says government must support agriculture and manufacturing to save Nigeria from impending catastrophe

How do you react to the recent statistics by the National Bureau of Statistics on unemployment and inflation in Nigeria?

Definitely, the NBS data on unemployment and inflation rate is quite frightening to Nigerians generally, and to the Nigerian economy. It truly exposes the flaws that exist in the political and economic sides of our country. Political in the sense that proper attention is not paid to the sectors of the economy that will generate employment and create opportunities for people.

What are those sectors?
We pay lip service to agriculture. We set up set up NIRSAL (Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending) that will help promote agricultural activities in the country, and yet the real farmers cannot have access to quick loans through NIRSAL. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has organised several loan packages which are not impacting in any way on the business of the farmers.

Also, the other key sectors that could create employment, which we are obviously pretending not to identify as a key sector, is the manufacturing sector. The manufacturing sector worldwide is the sector that creates very good employment for people in terms of skills. In terms of even training, the manufacturing sector is the sector. But here we are. We actually have no implementable and implemented policy on promotion of manufacturing sector and manufacturing businesses. But at the end of the day, it is still more difficult to do business in Nigeria.

How is that?

I am the Chairman of Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Rivers and Bayelsa states, and I will tell you I have just received a complaint that in the Customs, somebody there is saying that before you even export your finished products, you have to pay, unofficially, N450,000 per container. What does that mean?

We are saying we need to export so that we can earn foreign exchange. At the same time, somebody is sitting in the Customs office and saying this is an opportunity for them to make money and demands that somebody should bring N450,000 per container before they can process it. This is not an official payment; this is not receipted payment.

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So, how can manufacturers thrive in this kind of situation? And when you are talking about the Africa Free Trade Agreement, other countries are mapping out these stages and loopholes, and they are blocking them. And here we are, we are pretending as if it doesn’t matter, it is business as usual.

Does that affect the competitiveness of Nigerian products?

Obviously, the products that leave Nigeria cannot be competitive against products that come from other countries. So, how do you earn your foreign exchange? These sectors have to be addressed before the issue of unemployment can be tackled. And these two sectors are agriculture and manufacturing; the two of them go together.

When the farmer produces, he passes on to the manufacturer who processes the other products, and there is a value chain all along the way. But we are ignoring agriculture and manufacturing. Why won’t there be a high level of unemployment? Rather than recruit people, businesses, manufacturing businesses are laying off workers because they cannot balance their accounts with the number of workers they have.

There’s no support from the government. In America, a lot of incentives are being given to manufacturing concerns. And they are not loans; they are grants. But in Nigeria, even the loans, you cannot have. And so, I am not surprised. It is very alarming. As I would always say, if nothing is done about these two sectors, the sleep we are having is very temporary and ephemeral. It will soon hit all of us, no matter how big you are, because when people are not gainfully employed, what it means is that you cannot sleep peacefully with all your wealth.

How can we get out of this situation? Would we need a political solution or the people operating in the economy have to adopt new strategies?

Both of them, because they are intertwined. There is no way you can talk about a political solution without the government. And there is no way you can talk about the key regulators in the economy without talking about the Central Bank and Federal Ministry of Finance. They are intertwined. We just have to implement what we know.

If we say we do not know that agriculture and manufacturing are the two key sectors, every Tom and Harry, even a boy in secondary school, knows this. But the will to implement it is the question. So, we should start from the will to implement by the government. And then, the rest, the private sector can always key in, knowing too well that government means well.