By Victor Ahiuma-Young

ORGANISED Labour has called on government to place greater efforts at promoting local production of goods and services in the country, saying “we must add value to raw materials whether crude or gas, Cotton or gold, platinum or Iron ore, etc.”

At the National Executive Council, NEC, meeting of Nigerian Affiliates of IndustriALL Global Union in Lagos, labour contended that there must be beneficiation before Nigeria and indeed, Africa could employ millions of unemployed youths now increasingly susceptible to crimes such as insurgencies and terrorism in case of Nigeria’s Boko Haram and Kenyan Alshabab.

Addressing members, Chairperson, IndustriALL Global Union, Africa Region, Mr. Issa Aremu, called on all Africa government to have a look at the Ethiopia model of industrialization. The Ethiopia Government is fast re-industrializing with appropriate industrial policy and incentives that have brought back textile industries with hundreds of thousands of jobs create.President Muhammadu Buhari must look at the Ethiopia model of re-industrialization.

However there cannot be industrialization without industrialization. African governments must urgently invest in power projects to put an end to the existing power poverty and power outages. We must be weary of unhelpful privatization of power sector without electricity. Electricity in Africa should not be seen as a business to enrich few service providers but as indispensable critical success factor for industrialization and development. Also we must have stable macro-economic policies. There must be long term financing for development.

He commended the new Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, policy on controlling the allocation of foreign exchange for development, noting “The CBN has commendably put a ban on importers from using the foreign-exchange market for some frivolous forty (40) items ranging from private jets to rice, wheelbarrows and Indian incense, Geisha (canned fish) and toothpicks, to even eggs is welcome and commendable.

Nigeria and indeed Africa currently suffer huge capital inadequacy. Nigeria’s foreign-currency reserves has sharply fallen by some 27 percent to $29 billion since the end of last September. CBN measures aimed at capital application and capital control in line with its statutory objective will definitely enhance domestic production in place of unhelpful luxury imports.

It will also save the nation the current capital flight averaging some 1.3 trillion naira ($6.5 billion) a year, (almost half of national budget) on avoidable unnecessary job-killing imports.

“Central banks worldwide ensure public control of capital for development without which capital on the loose can finance underdevelopment, cocaine growing as well as finance terrorism as America painfully came to realize in the wake of 9/11. Indeed CBN should include African prints textile materials in its foreign exchange restrictions. Nigeria has comparative advantage in production of African prints.