By Adadareporters
An entrepreneur, Nze Kanayo Chukwumezie, Wednesday, advised President Bola Tinubu and indeed African leaders to ‘stop exporting our raw materials but work towards making Africa a producting continent considering her rich natural resources’.
He was reacting to increasing unemployment in Nigeria as well as the dwindling value of naira at foreign exchange.
He told our correspondent that, “I remember that when Oby Ezekwesili was minister for solid minerals, the ministry published a map of mineral resources in Nigeria. From that map, all local governments have one or more natural resources in high commercial quantities. Some are not yet explored or harnessed. Others explored are being sold mostly in their raw states for peanuts. Even when developed countries have these raw materials, they save them and come to Africa to buy them up for peanuts.
“By exporting our raw materials, we are selling our job opportunities to the developed countries. Then we will later pass through the difficult and humiliating processes of applying for visas to relocate to countries where most end up working as labourers, paid stipends after hard labour, and then we pay heavily to import the finished products here, and our people pay heavily again to consume them.
“Let Africa consider the wise counsel by Mr Peter Obi to shift from consumption economy to production economy. It is the only magic wand that will save our continent and keep our youths here in Africa gainfully employed. Nigeria with its huge potentials should be in the forefront of this.
“If we stop exporting our raw materials, people from those countries we spend huge amounts (in visas and flights) will have no options than to site the industries in Africa, employ our people, produce the goods here and export them, paying us taxes and using our ports. In all these huge and quality jobs are created in all cadres.
“If everything is managed well, there will be much more inflow of funds than repatriation because the finished goods shall be exported and a good percentage of the funds brought back to Africa to finance production. Our destiny is in our hands. God gave us everything but we are disappointing Him by being reckless with them.”
He said it was a pity that Nigeria had chosen to be importing refined oil, and exporting crude: “We export our crude oil and import fuel, diesel, kerosene and other petroleum products. That is the way we export lithium and import batteries and things that use rechargeable batteries like mobile phones, power bikes, laptops, motorcycle, solar systems, electric toothbrush, scooters, etc. Now we are talking about electric cars. Even airplanes use lithium batteries.
“We even export things as easily processed kaolin (clay) that can easily be processed into porcelain and used in making paper, rubber, drugs, paints, chalk etc. It will not be surprising that the bamboos in the video came from Africa.”
