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The Minister of Industry, Trade and Investments, Dr. Jumoke Oduwole, has stated that Nigeria has the capability to export diagnostic kits to other African countries, considering what she saw at the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) factory in Abuja during a visit on Monday.
Oduwole said the visit provided her an opportunity to see a factory that produces 2,000 diagnostic kits per hour, adding that with that, Nigeria was moving from ideation to production.
“We have also seen a factory that produces like 2,000 pieces of diagnostic kits–2,000 in an hour. So that tells you that we’re going from ideation all the way to skills.
“The company told me how they plan to export under the African Continental Free Trade Area, and really this is a prototype that doesn’t get better than this.
“When we enable productivity, when we enable competitiveness, when we put them in an environment where they have power, they have infrastructure, and they have the support of a government agency in partnership with them to give a soft landing of productivity in Nigeria, then we can look at leveraging it to export across the continent and across the world.
“For ease of doing business, some of you will recall that I worked on that because of continuous portfolio of industry and investment.
“By supporting a domestic investor, a business champion, looking in granular terms, we had a domestic investor summit about three weeks ago, looking at access to capital and access to market,” she added
According to her, NASENI has made a lot of impact on the economy.
“What I’ve seen, not in terms of intent, not in terms of Memorandom of Understanding (MoU), not in terms of agreement and prospective investors– I’ve seen actual 100 per cent manufacturing made in Nigeria. I’ve seen foreign investors.
“I’ve seen investors that have been pushed to work quickly.
I’ve seen an amount of potential that can only be described as transformation for the Nigerian economy,” she explained.
On buying made in Nigeria products she said the Bureau of Public Procurement actually has rules and partnerships in place on where government offices should be purchasing from, including products produced by Nigerians.
Assuring NASENI of her ministry’s support, she said: “We’re here to encourage, we’re here to support whatever they need, including speaking to Nigerians, including supporting their investors, what their investors need, whatever bottlenecks, challenges, little skirmishes or unintended consequences.
“We are personally and fully as an industry committed to sourcing for foreign direct investors and in particular for domestic investors– all types of investors, to ensure that they’re comfortable and put their capital into the Nigerian economy, because that is what gives us jobs. That is what gives us security, that is what improves our GDP, that is what will help us to achieve our one trillion dollar economy.”
The Executive Vice Chairman of NASENI, Khalil Halilu, on his part said the factory can provide direct jobs for 400 people.
“A factory like this can attract easily 400 people direct if they want, and indirectly, you can only imagine.
“This factory can account for 80% of Nigeria’s consumption, and we have more capacity that we need to export to other countries so we can do the numbers,” he said.
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