The President of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Mansur Ahmed, said Nigeria needs to spend three trillion naira in the next thirty years to bridge the country’s infrastructure gap.
Ahmed stated this at the NASENI Day at the Technology and Innovation Expo 2022, organised by the Federal Ministry of Science Technology and Innovation in Abuja, yesterday.
The MAN President stressed that NASENI was key to sustainable delivery of the National Economic Development plans which require N348.1 trillion investment, expected to come from the private sector.
According to him, ‘significant financing from the private sector and multilateral funding are needed to address Nigeria’s infrastructure deficit. Nigeria is behind other emerging markets and will require significant investment to bridge its infrastructure gap.’
He urged the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) to play the lead role by leveraging on Science, Technology and Engineering infrastructure to facilitate sustainable economic growth and development of Nigeria in line with the objectives of the National Development Plan (NDP) 2021 to 2025 and beyond.
Ahmed added that the six broad objectives of the Nigeria development plan include Economic diversification, investment in infrastructure, security and good governance, education and health, poverty alleviation and economic and social development across states of the federation.
He further stressed that NASENI should align its strategic directions with the objectives of Nigeria’s National Development plan (starting with NDP 2021-2025) as Nigeria is faced with many budgeting and financing challenges, which, according to him, include weak institutions and governance framework along with a low tax base which was hindering infrastructure investments
Earlier in his remarks, the Executive Vice President of NASENI, Prof Mohammed Sani Haruna, said the need to embrace and develop local capacity for innovations leading to a manufacturing economy and growth could not be overemphasised.
He frowned at the Nigerian economy being at the mercy of a fluctuating commodity market alone adding that Science and Engineering Infrastructure drives all economies of the world.
‘The national economy will continue to be in stagnation except investment in science and engineering infrastructure both in facilities and human capacity because our manufacturing sector which ought to be a major driver of our economy is suffering from lack of engineering and other social-economic infrastructure,’ he stated.
The NASENI boss used the occasion to commend President Muhammadu Buhari for approving and granting all that was needed to reposition NASENI for solid and sustainable industrialisation of Nigeria including funding.
‘There are promising indicators already against the backdrop of a World Bank report of January GDP, stating that Nigeria’s economy is expected to grow by 2.5% in 2022 and 2.8% in 2023,’ he said.
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