VP Osinbajo At Prof Oyeyinka’s Book Launch Ceremony On 21/11/2017

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REMARKS BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PROF. YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, AT PROF. OYEYINKA’S BOOK LAUNCH CEREMONY ON THE 21^ST NOVEMBER, 2017.

First, let me say that I am extremely pleased to be here, to be part of the presentation of Prof. Oyeyinka’s new book. If you look on the wall here, beginning from this end to that end, and there is a bit of space at that end, these are all the previous books that Prof. Oyeyinka has written. If you count them, they are close to about 20. Several of them, are various aspects of today’s subject, the subject of this new book. I think that when you look at this new book that is written; “Consumption to Production, the Wise and Ways out of Failed Industrialization in Nigeria”, you will find that just as in several other books, it’s an unusual book.

We academics are frequently criticized for being very long on the analysis of the problem, I mean rather short on the actual solution. But if you take a look at this book, and several others that he has written, you will probably notice that he’s one who likes to write a workbook, that this is how you should approach it and I think in particular about Nigeria. He’s extremely passionate. I think the Honourable Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Okechukwu Enelamah, just mentioned that he will make you listen whether you want to listen or not.

In this particular book, I think there’s a lot that we need to take away, especially those of us who happen at this time to be not just policy makers but policy implementers. The book is a workbook on how to make the Nigerian industrialization vision work. And I, just looking at some of the issues raised and all of that, I just get the sense that he is someone who has looked at these issues time and time again, who has discussed it, who has dreamt it, and who has at some point feels that; look, this thing has to work, if you apply some of the solutions that he has.

There is a profound in my view/submission which is at the heart of everything that he says which is; I believe that, Prof. Gambari has mentioned it, that Nigeria needs a positive structural transformation that will lead to the reallocation of economic activities across three broad sectors; Agriculture, Manufacturing and Servicing. And I believe that he is right. What we really need to do, we had these discussions time and time again at the Economic Management Team meeting, that we really need to focus on certain key areas and allocate resources appropriately to those areas. What we’ve done in agriculture demonstrates clearly that we focus not just resources, but also practical plans to implement and we actually set timelines, and decide on what results we want to get. We are able to achieve the aims/objectives we set for ourselves, and we did that in agriculture. We can actually set ourselves target, we can decide what it is we want to achieve.

We decided for instance that we are going to produce first of all enough, paddy rice as an example, and ensure that we are able to mill the rice, and be self-sufficient by the end of 2018 in rice. And we are well on our way to achieving that. We are already producing 7million metric tonnes of rice, which is by all accounts, possibly among the top 3 today. Now, milling is the issue. We are focusing on milling, and we see because we have set ourselves targets and we are working actively with the private sector, the private sector is interested. So, they are also involved with us in it, so Wacot for example, knowing that we’ll keep to the target we have set, opened their man factory in Kebbi state, 120,000 metric tonnes is the capacity of that facility.

More importantly, Dangote, and wherever Dangote invests you know that is his smart money going that particular direction, is investing on 1million metric tonnes milling capacity and he expects that should be in place by the 1^st quarter of 2018.

There are others investors in the largest poultry services and all of that facility in the country, in fact, that was opened about 2 months ago. Everybody says that once you set a target, and you do not have to get everything right all at once, but once the targets are there, and there’s a determination to ensure that those targets are met, the private sector comes in, they play their own part, and we are able to achieve the results that we need to achieve. I think that is what we really need to see. I’m sure that all of us, if you don’t know already, we have repeated it as often as possible, and we keep singing our own praises on the successes we’ve had with the ease of doing business.

Now, everyone seems to have understood that we have a difficult, sometimes even described as a hostile business environment. How do we sort it out? You can talk about it from now till eternity, nothing will change. So, we decided on an action plan, of course, we have PEBEC which was constituted by the President, our Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council, and that council decided on what to do.

We set ourselves first a 60-day national action plan, with specific targets on what we needed to do, and we brought everybody into the room. Customs was there, NIPC, everybody who is connected in one way or the other, Immigration, Airports, everybody who’s connected in one way or the other with doing business in Nigeria, and we decided on specifically what area we wanted to see changes in. Whether it is visa on arrival, or CAC being able to get you business registration done in 24hrs and we set targets for everybody. I mean of course the legislature was also in the room, because the legislature agreed to a 60 day timeline to ensure that they pass two important laws for accessing credit especially for small businesses. All of them, everybody did their bit, and we had capable people working with us like the Hon. Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Okechukwu Enelamah, and also the coordinator, Dr. Jumoke Oduwole. Everyone worked together to achieve the 60-day timeline. All along, we thought we would move one step or 2 steps, but we moved 24 steps in Ease of Doing Business ranking and we were rated one of the 10 best reformed economies.

My honest view is that we can achieve what we want to if we are clear as to where we allocate our resources and what the targets are, if we have good people who agree with those targets and go ahead and implement them.

The same goes for industrialisation; we have to take a look at what we want to achieve, we can’t produce everything but in order to produce anything at all, there are certain conditions we have to meet. When you look at machine tools, it is difficult to industrialize without the capacity to make your own machine tools which is not difficult to make. We can decide that we want to train technical man-power over a certain period of time, what sort of education is required? It has been tested everywhere that the so-called Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, STEM, approach are what we need to do.

My view is that a practical approach means those involved in this need to sit down and work it out, set targets and I am sure we can achieve this in a very short time. Nigeria has the capacity to do anything she wants to do. Just looking at all the professors sitting here, there are whole countries that don’t have a 10^th of the capacity in this room alone. These countries are not doing badly.

How many people do you need to transform this nation? I think what we are down to is organisation and being single-minded enough to achieve all our objectives.

We have talked extensively about implementing things, getting things done, and one of the things that have emerged from that is some of the experiences learnt from Malaysia.  In the next few weeks, we are starting some labs with the Malaysian Delivery Unit, and we are working with a Malaysian who has done a lot of work in this area, he helps with identifying the problems and implementing solutions. We have chosen certain areas we want to focus on and we will ensure we adopt the strategies for those areas.

I want to commend Prof. Oyeyinka for being a practical professor because I am a professor myself, I am always sceptical about the way professors approach matters. But we have with us today some of the very best minds.

I commend the work you have done and we will support and buy as many copies of the book as we can.

Thank you very much and congratulations on this new book which will be transformational and for those of us concerned with making and implementing policies, we will certainly read it and use it.

21^st November 2017