‘FG/OPS partnership needed for N’East reconstruction’

There is a pressing need for the Federal Government and the organised private sector to pool resources to address the main issues of reconstruction and rehabilitation, in the North-East geo-political zone, in a build-up to a post-Boko Haram insurgency era.

Speaking at a quarterly induction conference of members into the Institute of Entrepreneurs, in Lagos, the Managing Director, Global Micro-Mega Consult Management Limited, Abuja, Dr.Iyk Oji, reasoned that such a development partnership, had become necessary – given the lean times that the country’s economy was in, on account of dwindling revenue from crude oil.

Whatever policy and plan that government and the OPS might arrive at, Oji offered, should be aimed, with the involvement of the Bank of Industry (BIO), at meeting the humanitarian needs of the vast number of internally displaced persons (IDPs), who are gradually returning to their roots.

He listed the needs of the IDPs as shelter, clothing, food, healthcare, regular supply of potable water, psychological counselling, skill acquisition programmes – designed to inculcate entrepreneurial spirit in them, in readiness for a new life – education and, amongst others, security.

The ultimate intent of the reconstruction and rehabilitation programme, Oji said, should be to mitigate consuming corruption, inexplicable socio-economic decay – and the attendant erosion of faith, on the part of the youths, in government and politics; a situation that could be blamed for the rise of the Boko Haram insurgency.

It was Oji’s position that the humanitarian crisis in the North-East was a challenge to trustworthy entrepreneurs, within the OPS, who should be allowed access to development funds of the BOI.

Entrepreneurs, he said, were key to economic growth and sustainable development in crisis situations, and that they were needed, as Nigeria looked forward to a virile, top-ranking economy in 2020, within a system of “entrepreneurial ecosystem that can connect to government economic policy, finance, culture, market, human capital etc., to press her economic growth.

In making a case for what would be akin to entrepreneurial renaissance, as a fixed and active feature of President Muhammadu Buhari’s desire to diversify the country’s economy, Oji said that entrepreneurs were engines of economic growth, who occupy “a central position in most of the leading market economies of the world.”