The Senator representing Kwara Central in the Senate and former governor of Kwara state, Dr Bukola Saraki, recently visited the state. Afterwards, he engaged newsmen on how the Senate could drive the nation’s economy through the enactment of laws that would be investors’ friendly, adding that he was wary of the intended privatisation of the power sector. ABDULLAHI OLESIN was there for LEADERSHIP. Excerpts:
You are craving for an improved investor friendly nation. As a Senator, how can this be guaranteed?
We must have the required laws and must have those guiding principles that will ensure that investments are safe. We must, because if we don’t, why will anybody come and invest in companies that are no small projects. There is need for the laws to be very clear so that everyone knows that his or her investment is safe.
And we need to put those laws and am one of those that are in vanguard that those laws must be changed in order to protect those kinds of investment because without those laws and that consistency assurance you will are not going to get the kind of investment. For example let us take power.
Everyday, it is being said that the power sector will be privatised, but am sceptical. Why am I skeptical? Okay you want me to come and invest on generation of 2000megawatts which will cost something like N2billion.If I produce the gas or whatever it is and I sell to PHCN, how do I get paid, how? Even you as a Nigerian you will not put your money into PHCN.
We need to be practical in our approach and be result-driven. If that is what will make companies to come to Nigeria and generate the 2000megawatts then give us power. In fact whatever needs to be done must be done to allow that to happen.
How can President Goodluck Jonathan improve on the nation’s economy and create jobs for the teeming unemployed?
The major economic issue you know will be big over the next few years and I think the President has taken the right approach in identifying the creation of jobs and youth employment and of course you hear him talk about agriculture as major targets. It clearly shows there is a strategy; there is a plan which is to create an economy outside government. It will be able to create private the private sector. In 2003, Kwara State was just civil service- based. But today we have created an economy outside that. How can we create an economy outside and how to have policies targeted towards that is just the big question. It is just that it is not going to happen just like that, we must have policies that are targeted towards job creation and you must look at what is your strength because there must be a base. Is it based on agriculture? Is it based on the mining sector or based on the oil sector? We must look at things like manufacturing, we must look at agriculture and we must look at services and in doing that we must be able to have a target for ourselves. Like in agriculture for example as we did in Kwara, we said we must make agriculture our base.
Now in doing that we created incentives to farmers, as it is we always tell people that it is not that the farmers are not there but some of them will say when I grow this cashew who will buy or whom do I take it to? I mean if there is a supply chain to the factory then there is a ready market. The farmers have to grow more and that is how today we have what we are doing but now we have taken over OLAM which was in Oyo State before now. It’s base is now here and we have places in Offa and other places where cashew is farmed. That is the example I was trying to create from zero to 2000 we have that large employment.
?Also we looked at cassava processing coming out of Shonga. I was again confident that a big cassava processing plant could be cited somewhere around Share- Shonga axis, because we already had cassava coming out of there. And again that will create jobs in this processing factory. So we have statistics out recently, showing that the rate of unemployment in Kwara is about 11.8% compared with national average of 18.8 and making Kwara the 6th or 7th that has the best low level of unemployment. That did not come by chance but the hard work in the last 8 yrs we have done in the term of targeting sectors that would create a lot of jobs. So at national level, I believe we need to look at diary, for example over the next few years, we can provide 2-3 million jobs in the diary sector. I belief in the rice production too, majority of rice locally once we have the right we can provide job either 1or 2 million in that sector too. That is just mainly on things like rice and diary.
Then on the services side look at a lot of these vehicles that are coming to the country, second hand vehicles that are coming in. I believe that with the right incentives it is possible for us to get major manufacturing plants to come and establish vehicles assembly plants in Nigeria with support of the government.
?I mean lot of government will buy ours, we can reach an agreement with some of this plants and let them know that they have many guaranteed market. The man who is coming to set up at least knows that Cross River, Ondo, Kwara, and of course the federal government need cars. If you add all that may be equal to 2000 or 5000 cars a year already.
Specifically, what do you think can be done to attract foreign investors into the country?
I think what we need to do is to identify what is required in each sector and look at what incentives we need to give to investors to encourage them to come and set-up business in those different sector.
We can create jobs and then the youths can be able to be employed and that is very important. When we started Shonga, we said here is land, we will provide the infrastructure just come with pay for the land and come with your skills. If I sat down in Kwara and I said no before you come to Kwara you must go and bring N40 million nobody is going to come in. it is just that there is opportunity all over the world. Asian is doing, they are busy doing things and we sat in Nigeria and said no, it you want to come into this sector we must give incentives that is attractive, the market is already there and to do that we must look at all those policies.
President Jonathan need to be flexible. To be flexible is to try to attract people and in doing that you must be ready to create an enabling environment that will be conducive. We should remember when we started with the Zimbabweans some people said that they have given the land out. If the farmers did not go to that place, that place will never be developed. There are many places like that in Kwara. Reason why rice has not been developing is because policy support importation of price but some people will say that rice that we are talking about is skills and about capacity to produce in a sector. What am saying is that how could BMW say we are ready to come and set up in Nigeria? But in doing that we must give me them incentives and that and when the federal government decides to do that at the end of the day, it creates jobs and truly that is what drive us in Kwara.
So leadership must stay focussed because people will scream at some of these issues and places that have developed. Government profitability is how many people will get employed. The worth of is peoples livese will be not measured in naira and kobo profit, that is not your business, it is what comes out of it and how your people benefit and that is basically what we did in last 8 years in different sectors, which is the some of the issues we are seeing today. And I think that is the area that the National Assembly must support the federal government. We must ensure, we have policies in these sectors and educating people more. Why privatisation is not going right is because I believe that some people brought to these establishments do not have in some cases the capacity to be able to do what is needed to be done.
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