Industrialist Rasaq Okoya has called on the Federal Government to protect local industries by banning the importation of some goods to raise the country’s gross domestic product.
The chairman of Eleganza Group of Companies, who turns 84 on Friday, also stressed that young people in Nigeria can be productive if given the right environment.
Okoya said in a statement on Thursday: “As said in my previous interviews, it took me 60 years to build the Eleganza conglomerate through dint of hard work. Nigerian youths are hard-working and resilient. If they can embrace hard work more and more, they will be successful because they have what it takes with an enabling environment.
“Consistency, perseverance, hard work commitment, passion and integrity are the only vehicles that can drive you to success and not by cutting corners.”
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Okoya said, “My hope is that the current administration makes the industrialisation of Nigeria a cardinal goal, utilising our youths and empowering increased incorporation of manufacturing through the establishment of many cottage industries and factories during their term.
“Our youth have potential and can be stronger with greater empowerment. If you open the eyes of a blind man, he will never want to go back to the darkness. I think to myself regularly on how do we utilise our dominant working population.”
He urged the Federal Government to prioritise local manufacturing by protecting local industries, saying this could be achieved by “imposing strict prohibitions on imports and policing the markets to enforce the ban on importation. With these, I believe we can conserve our precious foreign exchange, increase GDP, and strengthen our local markets/producers.”
He also maintained that the utilisation of renewable energy would ensure longevity and create backups to the national grid power supply, adding that government must incorporate training “to pre-empt and prevent environmental degradation, learning from the case of China.”
