NGO insists on power, agric reforms to drive employment creation

A NON-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Good Governance Initiative (GGI) has urged the Federal Government to give priority to the power and agriculture sectors in its bid to creating employment opportunities for the teeming youths.

Advocating for adequate power supply in Nigeria, GGI explained that in the two ministries abound enormous opportunities for new jobs and prosperity for the country.

President of GGI and Managing Director of Blue Diamond Logistics Company, Festus Mbisiogu, charged the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola (SAN) to hit the ground running by critically looking into the remote and immediate causes of epileptic power supply in Nigeria with a view to resolving them.

Mbisiogu said that an immediate reform was important if President Muhammadu Buhari led-administration must survive the present global economic down-turn occasioned by fall in oil price.

He stressed that the key driver of economy anywhere in the world remains steady power supply and therefore, “Nigeria can only move forward when power is available to all and sundry.”

Stressing that poor power supply is one of the factors hindering rapid industrialisation and growth of small-scale enterprises in the country and therefore, required urgent and immediate attention.

According to him, the absence of constant electricity supply is seriously inhibiting the ability of Nigeria to attract foreign industries that heavily depend on electric energy to get their products out.

He said: “With over 170 million people, Nigeria is generating less than 4000 mega watts of electricity. Which economy in the world can survive under this type of abysmal power sector performance? As big as Nigeria is, she does not have up to 700 factories as many of them are constantly closing down because of inadequate power supply. Fashola should not allow this to continue,” he said.

Citing the present economic hardship in the country occasioned by fall in oil price, Mbisiogu reminded Fashola about the looming danger ahead if the government fail this time to overhaul the entire road infrastructure and provide adequate power supply that will re-engineer the ailing industrial sector in Nigeria.
“I maintain that the only change Nigerians have continually craved for is the improvement in power supply and reconstruction of all the badly damaged roads. Once this is done, every other thing will take cue on that,” he said.

The GGI president also urged the new Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, to fashion out policies that would boost the agric sector and make it attractive to youths so as to reduce the wave of unemployment in the country .

Stressing that agriculture is another sector critical to economic development of Nigeria especially now that the oil price is falling, Mbisiogu said Ogbeh would have to do more in harnessing the potentials embedded in the sector “to keep the nation’s economy going more so that, it had been predicted that the population of Nigeria will hit over 450 million by 2050.”