Industrial Revolution Plan: A Word for the Incoming Government
Abdullahi Yunusa
Having successfully conducted our general elections without witnessing serious security hitches as earlier predicted by a few doomsday prophets, what should preoccupy our minds is simply how to ensure a seamless transition or exchange of baton of leadership both at the Federal and state levels. Given the various doomsday predictions prior to the elections, and the responsible manner with which we conducted ourselves before, during and after the polls, we should give ourselves a pat on the back for a job well done.
In a matter of weeks from today, President Goodluck Jonathan will gracefully bow out of office to usher in a new government led by General Muhammadu Buhari. As preparations towards ensuring a successful transition of power are ongoing, it is imperative that we now focus our attention on a few issues, especially with regards to certain policies and programmes initiated by the outgoing government. Without doubts and not minding our misgivings about certain anti-people policies credited to the Jonathan presidency, the administration did spectacularly well in a number of areas. This piece seeks to highlight the several benefits of a few of its policies as well as to stress the need for the incoming government to sustain some of them for the good of our dear nation.
At this critical juncture of our march to greatness, it is necessary to remind ourselves and especially the incoming administration that policy inconsistency, somersault or reversal has been identified as one of the major challenges bedevilling our nation. Nigeria is where it is today perhaps mainly because successive administrations hardly retain policies of their predecessors, even where such policies are generally adjudged by Nigerians as good. We have seen instances where successive governments, upon assumption of office, go the whole hog to halt or discontinue projects inherited by their predecessors for very inexplicable and mundane reasons. Even though policy analysts have consistently stressed the need for successive governments to perish the thoughts of abandoning all inherited programmes and policies, a carry-over legacy of our military era, the such pleas have often fallen on deaf ears. Such a practice undoubtedly inhibits national progress, as all Nigerians can readily bear witness. It is therefore high time that successive governments adopt the practice of continuity of government policies, afterall, government is a continuum.
The outgoing government should be commended for introducing a number of laudable projects that have direct bearing on the lives of ordinary Nigerians. Even though we may have certain misgivings about, its record in office, it is obviously impossible to fault the entire programmes it introduced, simply because we now have a new set of people calling the shots at Aso Villa.
As at the last time I checked, the Jonathan administration has pioneered an industrial revolution plan that has received world acclaim. The Nigeria Industrial Revolution Plan (NIRP) launched by the outgoing government sometime last year was designed to put Nigeria on the path of economic prosperity. At a time other developing nations across the globe are diversifying their economies Nigeria cannot afford to continue to rely on its petroleum sector as the mainstay of its economy. The recent precipitous fall in the prices of crude oil shows how foolhardy this could be.
The plan which seeks to add about N5 trillion to our annual manufacturing revenues in the next 3-5 years has also identified how exactly this could be achieved through the seven core sectors where Nigeria undoubtedly has both comparative and competitive advantage. These include Agribusiness and Agro Allied Manufacturing, Metals and Solid Minerals, Construction, Light Manufacturing and Services. The Plan also enunciated what it called the ‘Enablers’ that would remove the bottlenecks associated with the failure of past economic diversification efforts. The outgoing government should be applauded for coming up with such great policy initiatives as the Automotive Policy, Sugar Master Plan, Cotto-TextileGarment Policy etc, all of which form the key components of the NIRP.
Of particular interest to me is our Agribusiness and Agro Allied manufacturing sector, because of its potential to radically reduce the millions of our people on the jobless queue . In this regard the country is blessed with several crops that are amenable to industrial value addition to earn huge revenues for our economy. They include sugarcane, oil palm, cassava, sesame, to mention a few. Let me highlight the Sugar Policy as a case in point. Poised to meaningfully harness the huge potential in the nation’s sugar sector, the Jonathan’s administration designed and began the implementation of the Nigerian Sugar Master Plan (NSMP). The initiative which was developed by the National Sugar Development Council (NSDC) as is a strategic roadmap designed to facilitate the achievement of self sufficiency in national Sugar requirement within 10 years.
The NSMP which was first developed in 2010 was subjected to stakeholder inputs for about two years and was finally approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC), in September 2012. The NSMP was later gazetted via Federal Republic of Nigeria Official Gazette No. 100 Vol. 99 of 21st December, 2012. A cursory look at the NSMP policy document revealed that it is a well thought-out policy document that has perhaps for the first time resolved all the constraints militating against the rapid development of the sector. If it could be implemented as planned, there is no doubt that Nigeria stands to derive a lot of benefits from the sugar sub-sector.The NSMP estimated that sugar consumption will rise from 1.2mMT in 2010 to some 1.8mMT in 2020. To ensure that Nigeria meets this rising domestic demand, it estimated that sugarcane will be grown on 250,000ha of land and to be processed in about 28 milling factories of varying capacities across Nigeria.
Another selling point of the NSMP is the establishment of a robust monitoring framework designed to ensure effective monitoring and evaluation of the its implementation process. Under the framework, two strategic committees were established. There are the Sugar Road Map Implementation Committee (SURMIC) and Sugar Industry Monitoring Group (SIMOG). While SURMIC is an inter-Ministerial body comprising of members drawn from relevant MDAs and Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), SIMOG on the other hand is composed of the Chief Executives of operating Sugar companies within the country.
The NSMP is no doubt a clearcut policy designed to inject life into the nation’s sugar industry. It draws its uniqueness from the brilliant and self-sustaining manner it was packaged. It is a policy that seeks to open up the Nigerian sugar sector to several investment opportunities similar to those enjoyed by countries like Brazil, India and Thailand, among many others. The NSDC, being the agency saddled with the responsibility of actualizing the NSMP goal, is obviously committed to making Nigeria a notable player in the global sugar trade through policies and strategies that will harness the nation’s abundant natural and material resources to ensure national self sufficiency in sugar with surplus to export to earn foreign exchange. This much can be seen in the manner the current Management of the Agency has so far implemented the policy. For the first time, all major stakeholders have lauded the level playing field that the Agency has provided for all players in the sector, especially in the granting of incentives and applications of sanctions for noncompliance. It is refreshing to see a government Agency really trying to live up to its billing.
Although full implementation of the plan has been on for just a little over 2 years, it has already recorded remarkable achievements. Some of the achievements includes; sugar refining installed capacity increased to 2.9mMT from 2.1Mmt, over 10,000 jobs were created,while it was able to attract fresh investments, with new sugar projects springing up and over $3.16billion pipeline investment commitments. The stability achieved in the last two years in the domestic sugar market and its consequent effect on all the various commodities that rely on sugar as a critical raw material, is no doubt also due to the salutary effect of the Master Plan, especially when one considers the upheaval witnessed in the domestic rice market at about the same time.
If Nigeria is to unlock and unleash her vast economic potential and truly achieve the goal of industrial revolution and economic diversification, the incoming administration of General Buhari will do well to focus attention on existing industrialization policy framework introduced by the outgoing administration rather than jettisoning them and starting all over again. We should not make the mistake again, of ‘throwing away the baby with the bath water!’
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