The Nigerian Academy of Engineering, (NAE), has blamed the country’s economic downturn on non – sustenance of industrial development in the country.
The Senior Special Adviser to the President, African Development Bank, (AfDB), Professor Banji Oyelaran-Oyeyinka, who stated this during a webinar on “From Consumption to Production: The Role of Special Ago-Industrial Processing Zones in Nigeria”, organised by the NAE in Lagos said it high time the Federal Government renewed its commitment to industrialisation in the country.
According to him, industrialization should form a broader agenda for economic diversification and foreign exchange shortage caused by drop in oil prices, adding that Nigeria promoted industrialization after gaining political independence, but has not sustained the momentum.
He pointed out that political leaders and bureaucrats over the last five decades are complicit in truncating the industrialisation agenda.
Oyelaran-Oyeyinka, who is a fellow of the academy observed that Nigeria currently manufactures almost none of the facilities locally, as all are imported, adding that as demand grows for imports, the more the pressure on foreign exchange.
He explained that there was the need for the engineering man power to help the country to transient from consumption to manufacturing and industrialised nation, adding that If a society spends one hundred dollars to manufacture a product within its borders, the money used to pay for materials, labour, and other costs moves through the economy as each recipient spends it.
Oyelaran-Oyeyinka said: “The leaders’ and elites tend to trump all other factors. Their choices, interests and predilections have pushed this nation into the current trajectory of a negative economic development pathway. We must not be shy to speak the truth. Only the Truth will help those who hold the levers of leadership no matter how unpalatable.
“If money is spent in another country, circulation of that money is within the exporting country. This is the reason an industrialized product-exporting/commodity-importing country is wealthy and an undeveloped product-importing/commodity-exporting country is poor. Developed countries grow rich by selling capital-intensive (thus cheap) products for a high price and buying labour-intensive (thus expensive) products for a low price.”
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