Bankole Taiwo, Abeokuta
An international financial consultant and economic development expert, Dr Gbenga Adeoye has said that with N60bn investment in the manufacturing sector, Nigeria government can always create one million jobs every five years.
Dr Adeoye said that given the alarming rate at which energetic Nigerian youths leave the country in droves in search of greener pastures, it behoves on a responsible government to get concerned and spare no efforts in addressing this ugly trend.
In a statement issued on Friday morning and made available to journalists at Abeokuta, the state capital, the Chartered Accountant said that a N10bn investment in manufacturing sector will comfortably give a turnover of N20bn annually and generate over 1000 jobs saying that this is a fact that can be corroborated by any financial expert.
He said rather than give N20,000 to 1000 people per each of the 774 local government under the federal government job creation scheme after which the people will return to poverty, such money which accumulated to N46,440,000,000 in three months should rather be spent to set up manufacturing companies that would provide employment for the youths.
Adeoye said ‘I was privileged to know entities set up with less than N10b from land to equipment and initial working capital now creating about 1000 direct and indirect jobs.
“If we look at the N20,000 meant for 1,000 youths in 774 local government for three months , it would have amounted to N46,440,000,000. By adding just N13,560,000,000 it would have amounted to N60b.
“We could have set up six factories based on comparative advantage in each geopolitical zone.Some argued with me that…oh…Government cannot run any business successfully …The answer is NO.We could have handed it over to professionals even if they are foreigners.
“As a matter of fact, we can ask them to double capacity every 5 years by establishing one more in the respective zone.We could have successfully mop 1m people out of unemployment forever through direct and indirect jobs.
He explained further that with further incentives such as tax holiday, free interest loans each of the companies set up at each of the six geo-political zones will be encouraged to replicate themselves every five years saying that if this goes on for the next 20 years, the country would have created 16 millions jobs.
Talking about raising the fund for this lofty idea, Adeoye said that states in agreement with the federal government could decide to yank off a particular percentage from the accrued revenue once in a year and deposit it in a trust fund account that is strictly meant for the establishment of these manufacturing companies.
He said this is a sacrifice the country should be willing to make as soon as possible to fight unemployment to standstill.
Adeoye said the 2023 presidential hopefuls such as Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of PDP as well as Mr Peter Obi of Labour Party among others must try to work on this model to address the challenge of growing unemployment and its attendant consequences in the country.