President Buhari, VP Osinbanjo, others call for concerted effort to promote ‘Made in Nigeria’

at the just concluded 22nd Nigerian Economic Summit




The Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG) summit which began on Monday and ended yesterday once again called on the need to diversify the Nigerian economy base away from oil. The Chairman, Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG) Board Committee on research and publication, Dr. Adedoyin Salami, made the call on Monday in Abuja at the opening of the 22nd edition of the Nigeria Economic Summit (NES 22).










“If made-in-Nigeria must succeed, it should not be the challenge of the Federal Government alone. All the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital territory (FCT) must have a role to play.”

Dr. Salami lamented that the country’s current economic indices were far from ideal and stressed the need to embrace the imperatives of local competitiveness and productiveness, as well as ability to create and add value to the economy.




With the dynamics of oil changing as a result of global forces and the recent development in shale oil exploration by some of Nigeria’s biggest crude destinations, the imperative to strengthen already known markets like agriculture, manufacturing and technology has become a front burner for the government.




NES22 also featured breakout sessions that covered ICT, Innovation, MSMEs, Services, Manufacturing, Agro Processing and the Creative Industry. Each session was geared towards providing suggestions which would be presented by NESG to the government as way to drive each topic’s or sectors contribution to the Nigerian ‘Made in Nigeria’ policy.

 



The Vice President, who heads the government’s team on job creation and employment, mentioned that the government intends to employ close to 500,000 youths in teaching, agriculture, technology and that it would create more platforms like the Aso Villa Demo Day to support technological drive among youths.


The summit ended by offering strategies the government can employ and suggested that government should create tech hubs in various states with necessary infrastructures to enable them to operate and function effectively. The summary document was presented to the President who was represented by Senator Udo Udoma, Minister for Budget and National Planning.

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