Over 20m jobs available in raw materials-based cluster, says Wachuku
The raw materialsbased clusters if effectively implemented will generate over 20 million jobs for Nigerians on annual basis, Chuku Wachuku, president, Association of Agricultural and Industrial Entrepreneurs of Nigeria (AIEN), has said.
Wachuku said the cluster initiative highlighted shared industrial facilities as it will encourage value chain operators to manage limited resources, share expertise as well as operate and address common challenges including market, innovations, product improvement, among others at a least cost.
According to him, it is a strategy intended to foster the development of value-added products from the abundant local resources, as well as encourage the establishment of viable small and medium enterprises (SMES) that are adaptable to local contents’ development in Nigeria.
Wachuku who spoke in Lagos said the clusters initiative in the pilot stage is expected to create about two hundred and fifty entrepreneurs per cluster per local government and the primary target is to create sixty thousand primary entrepreneurs.
He said the primary targeted pilot local government will involve sixty thousand members of the clusters, he explained each cluster will have two hundred and fifty people in two hundred and fifty hectares adding they will be producing crops of advantage in their area.
Meanwhile, the organisation is working with some banks and has reached an agreement only to finalise some arrangements, he disclosed adding an ecosystem that will guarantee recovery is already in place.
Wachuku who also measures as the Former Director-general of Operations, National Directorate of Employment (NDE) and Former National President, Nigerian Association of Small Scale Industrialists (NASSI) urged the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to support the deposit money banks who brought up products that will generate employment and give them interest buy back so that they could advance these money to the entrepreneurs who would create employment
“We are going to look at interest rates, I’m sure the CBN will also see the need to support these deposit money banks with lowered interest rates, right now what the CBN is doing is transferring the risk to the deposit money banks and not assuming any”, he expressed.
He said as a business membership organisation (BMO), AIEN was designed to empower the Nigerian people to create wealth by alleviating the unemployment epidemic in the country. The organisation he stated was aimed at achieving this through expanding business opportunities in the agricultural and industrial sectors of the economy.
It is projected to empowering the Nigerian people, alleviate the widespread unemployment, and create wealth in the country by expanding business opportunities in the agricultural and industrial sectors of the economy.
Wachuku said clustering would create common services, effective monitoring, and effective consultancy. “We are actually creating a brand new initiative in this country, and the fact will be that every local government across the 774 local governments of the country will have a cluster of advantageous produce in those states.”