From Consumption to Zero

Nigeria produce nothing, so obviously there’s nothing productive to export. 

Even, Its only a nation that wants to remain poor that continues to outsource its raw materials to collect finished good.

Especially when that raw material is the major source of income.

Even after the passage of the Petroleum Industry bill(PIA), NNPC is still into bartering—We are still exporting crude and importing refined products.

Our cash cow should never have been dependent on exports of raw materials but of finished value-added products.

The door to poverty is from export of raw materials, the highway to wealth is production. 

Nigeria remains a poor country despite being blessed, because of the lack of capacity to turn potentials into reality-this has made the country underdeveloped despite its vast resources.

How can a nation be outsourcing what should be its core competency? We are sleeping .

The presidential candidate of the labour party, Peter Obi ;

“No Country can progress if it's politics is more profitable than it's industries. In a country where those in government are richer than entrepreneurs, they manufacture poverty.”

In fact, we should not be thinking of decongesting the port in Lagos we should be transforming the port. The traditional role of a Port, is to facilitate businesses and exports—to stimulate industrial manufacturing, and competitiveness of local businesses and exports.

The traditional role of port is not for revenue generation. We need to rapidly modernize and transform our ports.

We have to clean up administrative bottlenecks, most of which are unnecessary. We need to eliminate non-value adding activities and let value flow.

We have multiple government agencies at the ports, extorting people up and down from illegal taxes, which do not go into the coffers of the government. We need to change the cultural mentality of our people.

Some of the leading ports in Africa today are in West Africa and, Nigeria is not amongst— they are in Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Benin Republic, Togo—All these countries have modernized their port management systems, and have left Nigeria far far behind.

Morocco has one of the most organized ports and and generating so much revenue with it.

We should learn from Morocco’s unique world-class ‘Tangier-Med’ port. It has over 1000 companies, and in 2022, they collectively exported over 8 billion euro worth of goods.

The Companies on site of Tangier-Med port have allowed Morocco to move up the global value chains.

Annually, these companies manufacture over 470,000 for exports. And guess what. It will interest you to know that the bulk of the human resources are mainly Moroccans— over 85percent of workforce. They manufacture not just automobiles, but automotive parts, aeronautics.

They also engage in agriculture and food manufacturing, textiles, and logistics.

In fact if you go to the Tangier-Med Port. You will think they are on vacation, you won’t see people gallivanting around. All you will see is machines, and automated systems moving containers.

It’s a very organized, well-synchronized system with incredible efficiency. You will never see trucks parked some kilometers away, waiting to get to the port to collect goods. Indeed we have a long way to go.