‘Declare emergency in manufacturing sector’

The Federal Government has been called upon to declare a state of emergency in the manufacturing sector of the nation’s economy as a matter of urgency.

Delivering a 25th anniversary and 2nd distinguished lecture of Ilesa Branch of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, the Managing Director of the Kresta Laurel Limited, Engr. Dideolu Falobi, said it was imperative for the FG to act fast and save the nation from impending economic doom.

Falobi said the call for state of emergency to be declared in the industrial sector is necessary because there are factual evidences to show that more than half of the 500,000 graduates being produced annually by the nation’s various tertiary institutions are unemployed.

He said it is uncomplimentary that manufacturing sector contributes only 15.62 percent of the nation’s GDP in spite of its almost 200 million population in which he noted that “54.32 percent of this population is between the ages of 15 and 64  unlike Singapore with similar GDP but a mere 6 million.”

Putting the the literacy level in Nigeria at 59.6 percent, the engineer lamented that there are a huge population of unskilled workers to be engaged by the manufacturing sector and also another huge population of skilled workers that are unemployed.

Apart from declaring a state of emergency in the manufacturing sector, he said a number of industrial bills must be sponsored at the National Assembly to move Nigeria out of the woods in certain sectors needing urgent intervention.

According to the guest lecturer, there are many benefits of industrialization for the engineers and others, which he said include employment generation directly through construction of industries, indirect employment through auxiliary services during construction activities, increased utilization of lands, increased tax revenue for the government among others.

He said: “The topic of this lecture is one that I consider most timely and very relevant in the light of our national challenges today. The country is reeling from all sorts of maladies, the most dangerous and saddening of it all being the descent of our youths into the abyss of moral decadence characterized by drug abuse, Tramadol popping, codeine sipping, 419, Yahoo-Yahoo, Yahoo Plus, area-boyish and all other crimes. It is scary fro me to watch the future generations of our beloved nation in self-destruct mode.

“Let me categorize the youths affected into two. The first group are those who, for whatever reasons, were not educated or dropped out of school at an early age. Unfortunately, they also refused to learn any trade or craft. Most of them are now in their late teens, early to late twenties, I am sure that should we take a peep outside the gate of this hall, we will find them waiting for us to come out to collect handouts which as soon as they get it will vamoose in a hail of smoke of Indian Hemp and so on.

“This category is neither employed nor employable. Some of them who learned one trade or craft have forgotten about it and their routine is to scavenge social functions from Thursday to Saturday (their peak period) looking for dole outs from celebrants and politicians who also use them as canons folder during political battles.

“The second category consists of some of the 500,000 Nigerian youths that graduate from our several tertiary institutions and are left idle because of unemployment. This group has made the advanced fee fraud in all its variants their career. Propped up by all shots of drugs  and bolstered by iniquitous herbalists (most of them, fake) that abound, these young boys and girls are almost lost. These two categories of Nigerians need industrialization. Today’s lecture is timely and relevant for them and their suffering parents.”