From faraway Brazil, President Bola Tinubu ordered an immediate, “temporary” ban on exportation of unprocessed shea nuts because it is against our economic interests. This message was delivered by Vice President, Kashim Shettima, at a multi-stakeholder meeting at the Presidential Villa on Tuesday last week.

The directive was necessitated by the realisation that Nigeria, being the producer of 40 per cent of the world’s $6.5 billion shea nuts, “accounts for one per cent of the market share”, as the VP put it. This is because of the largely traditional method of production we still practise, whereby women pick the wild shea nuts and sell in baskets to exporters and smugglers, many of whom are foreigners (especially Chinese) or their agents.

In so doing, Nigeria loses valuable foreign exchange revenue by failing to add value to the produce. It also deprives our local industries of the input, forcing many of them to source it from neighbouring countries.

Describing this as “unacceptable”, Vice President Shettima said with proper value addition, “we are projected to earn about $300 million annually in the short term, and by 2027 there will be a tenfold increase. This is our target”.

The Federal Government needs to synergise with the National Assembly to fast-track the passage of the bill which makes it mandatory for all export commodities to be pre-processed at least up to 30 per cent before being cleared for export by the Raw Materials Research and Development Council, RMRDC. The bill also recommends that failure to comply will attract a 15 per cent surcharge on the export value of such produce.

We have been beating the drums of “economic diversification” for years. The government of the late President Muhammadu Buhari failed to implement it because of the incompetence of his economic teams and his own inability to drive it. All we saw was Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s tepid efforts at fostering ease of doing business.

The National Economic Council, NEC, which the Vice President chairs, should meet and take a comprehensive stock of all exportable commodities in which Nigeria has comparative advantages in the world market, and launch a national policy framework to boost their production and value addition. We should stop picking at this issue one commodity at a time.

Value addition to our export products will be a huge contribution to a grass-roots-based national re-industrialisation campaign. Apart from the diversification and flow of foreign exchange outside oil and gas, the cottage industries will also create huge employment opportunities and stem the rural-urban population drift.

Grass-roots-based industrialisation will close up our gaping ungoverned spaces which are currently occupied by Boko Haram, bandits, armed herdsmen, kidnappers and other violent criminals.

The time for flowery speeches is over. It is action time!