How Nigeria can generate N41bn yearly through AfCTA, by Awolowo

By Chukwuemeke Iwelunmo

The informal export sector in West Africa from Nigeria can generate N41 billion yearly with the coming of the single African market (AfCTA), according to theE Executive Director of the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC), Segun Awolowo.

Speaking to Daily Times on the sideline of a meeting with technical partners, he said that government was bent on implementing the zero oil plan and growing Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) with non-oil export.

Awolowo explained that the country could tap into billions of dollars revenue from cocoa, cotton, cement, leather, cashew, sesame, shea butter, palm oil, fertilizer, petrochemicals and rubber and that export was the only way of changing the imbalance of trade narrative.

He said:” There is much we can take through cargo and particularly we are looking at the agricultural product that can arrive in Europe the next day fresh, that is the crux of this. For our zero oil plan, we have identified 22 products Nigeria can sell.

The aim is to promote Nigeria goods and find a market to sell them and our ‘one state one product’ plan is key to this meaning each state of the country will give us one product that we can market, package and export “The country is blessed and yet we are still fixated on oil.

We must put more money into non-oil exports. We spend millions of dollars drilling for oil and most times we come up with nought but we do not invest in the non-oil sector.”

Cargo logistics giants, Free on Board (FOB) Global Logistics in collaboration with Nigeria Exports Promotion Council (NEPC) is ramping up capacity and support for the multi million dollars agricultural export industry as part of moves to boost non-oil exports and stem reliance oil.

The meeting hosted technical partners from the United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates (UAE), India, South Africa, Spain in a web meeting seeking warehousing facilities, customs clearance and distribution of Nigerian products mainly agricultural edibles abroad.

The meeting moderated by Managing Director/Chief Executive of FBO Global Logistics Limited, Mr Jimi Adebakin saw partners from Inext Logistic and Supply Chain India, Accelerate from the UAE, Global Raminatrans from Spain as well as companies from Johannesburg South Africa share company capacity on promoting Nigeria’s non-oil export.

Chief Executive of FBO Global Logistics Limited, Mr Jimi Adebakin stressed the need for export to be paramount to grow the nation’s economic diversity as well as lift people out of poverty, also charged the government to encourage low-income exporters, he also said FOB was encouraging Nigerians to go into export of agricultural products, stating that the reason they invited the partners was that they were creating warehouses in all the major cities globally to facilitate trade.

“We are creating warehouses in all major cities of the world. We have 170 technical partner s in 170 countries and warehouses in 3,700 cities of the world.

So what we are saying is bring the product that is made by you, labelled by you we sell it and take our freight and return the profit.

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The days of people saying ‘I’m unemployed in Nigeria should be over.” Group Chief Executive Officer, Nigerian Aviation Handling Company (NAHCO) Aviance, Mrs Olatokunbo Fagbemi urged NEPC to encourage Nigerians to standardize and export agricultural products, adding that there was so much to benefit from it.

According to her, for agricultural products to be accepted abroad, it must not only be well processed but that it must also be well packaged and labelled.

She said that some Nigeria agricultural products had to be destroyed because they were not well packed by the exporters.