The Nigerian Society of Engineers, NSE have urged the Federal Government to encourage the local building of machine tools as a strategy to exit the economic recession.
The President of the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE), Engr Otis Anyaeji, made the appeal in Abuja at the inauguration of the Nigerian Society of Safety Engineers (NISE), a division of Nigerian Society of Engineers. He explained that the local manufacturing of machine tools represents a quick way to check the economic situation.
Anyaeji said, “The automotive sector has the linkages with other sectors that government should encourage people to go into. If we want to grow the economy in a sustainable manner, the country must immediately make huge investments in the machine tools sector.
“This is the sector that makes machines for other sectors. For sometimes now, our economy has been inactive which literarily means negative growth. Nigeria can escape from the negative growth when the economy becomes active especially in the productive areas.”
He said government must begin to get the people involved in the manufacturing of what Nigerians consume.
The NSE President explained that with the huge deficit of housing in Nigeria, government should encourage builders to embark on massive building, owing to its multi-layer economic benefits.
He said one thing that Nigeria must take very seriously is housing. It is believed that when a country’s housing sector is active, such a country would never get into recession. The reason for that assertion is because of the linkage of inputs into housing.
Anyaeji hinted that the NSE is already talking to government via the ministries of industry, trade and investment, transportation and power, works and housing regarding the projects that would be built with the loan that Nigeria is seeking to obtain from the Chinese government.
The NSE helmsman said that while the NSE is not against borrowing by government, efforts must be made to ensure clauses that would translate into cogent and speedy development of the nation’s infrastructure are inserted in the agreements.
He said: “We have made it very clear to government that there is the need to create a manufacturing sector that will manufacture the entire infrastructure that would be needed in the execution of the projects. What that means is that government should look for investment into the manufacturing sector.
“Government should make it a matter of policy to insert into all the agreements to obtain loan that the materials needed for execution of projects would be sourced within Nigeria. The society is convinced that toeing this line would speed up the process of exiting the economic recession Nigeria is presently going through.”
Chairman of the Nigerian Institutions of Safety Engineers (NISE), Abiodun Oyedepo, said the association would soon unveil safety codes that are aimed at boosting the safety of projects
