Ekeh: Nigeria Needs Policies that Will Promote Patronage of Indigenous Manufacturers

Emma Okonji

Chairman, Zinox Technologies Limited, Leo Stan Ekeh, has called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to aggressively pursue policies that will promote patronage of indigenous manufacturers and service providers as a way of re-flating the Nigerian economy.

Ekeh who said this in a statement made available to THISDAY, said such policies, if well implemented, would boost local capacity and address Nigeria’s biggest challenge as a consuming nation.

He said: “It is evident that the core of the myriad of challenges afflicting the nation today is our failure to develop local capacities. We must embrace self-sufficiency by consuming what we produce and supporting indigenous players across various sectors.”

He regretted that in spite of several local content policies established by the federal government, such policies are consistently disregarded by government employees and appointees, wondering why “we send our children to the world’s best institutions, where they excel, yet we overlook the products they create.”

He gave the example of the government of India which recently imposed restrictions on the importation of laptops, tablets, all-in-one personal computers and ultra-small computers and servers with immediate effect. This, according to him, will boost local productivity both by multinationals operating in India and indigenous Indian companies, in order to create more jobs, encourage proficiency, and discourage capital flight.

“Mr. President, I humbly appeal to you to be deliberate and decisive in encouraging indigenous producers and service providers across all sectors. This way, we create a market for indigenous products, build confidence in our economy and easily attract international investors. The way we treat our local investors will determine how many foreign investors we can attract,” he stressed.

The federal government had in the past, given directive to all government agencies to first consider patronising made-in-Nigeria computers from indigenous Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) like Zinox Computers, SpeedStar Computers, Brian Computers among others, before considering the patronage of foreign computers like HP, Lenovo, Asus, among others in order to boost local capacity. Despite the directive, agencies of government, including private organisations in Nigeria, still patronise foreign computers to the detriment of indigenous computer manufacturers.

Foreign computer manufacturers have been told to establish a manufacturing plant in Nigeria to boost job creation and technology transfer, but they still prefer to produce from their manufacturing plants outside of Nigeria and ship in finished products to Nigeria, which is their biggest market, Ekeh said.

He explained that the continuous drive by the federal government to woo foreign investors to come to Nigeria would be successful, if government could enact policies that would create enabling business environment and at the same time, protect indigenous OEMs.    

Ekeh also urged the President to activate the suspended national census because “Nigeria has already made substantial investment in the programme with the acquisition of critical technologies and training of personnel,” explaining that allowing those systems to lie fallow would lead to huge waste.

He said Nigeria needs a credible national headcount now more than at any time given the flaws and logistics challenges that attended the distribution of palliatives across the nation, adding “a credible database is key for decision-making for planners, policy makers and investors.”

While stressing the need to activate the suspended census, he advised the government to release the over 500,000 units of Tablet PCs used during the census to different educational institutions nationwide after the headcount, to enable the students acquire relevant digital skills that will make them globally competitive.