OPENING REMARKS BY COMRADE ISSA AREMU mni.  GENERAL SECRETARY, NATIONAL UNION OF TEXTILE GARMENT AND TAILORING WORKERS OF NIGERIA (NUTGTWN) AND VICE PRESIDENT NIGERIA LABOUR CONGRESS (NLC) AT A ROUNDTABLE AND PRESENTATION OF RESEARCH REPORT TO MARK 2012 AFRICA INDUSTRIALIZATION DAY WITH THE THEME ACCELERATING INDUSTRIALISATION FOR BOOSTING INTRA-AFRICAN TRADE.

INTRODUCTION
Today as part of the activities in Nigeria to observe tomorrow “Africa Industrialization Day” a select group of private sector trade unions from the Textile, construction, Agricultural, Chemical and Non-Allied, Steel and Engineering, Petroleum and Natural Gas, holds a Roundtable and Press Conference and Rally on Monday 19th November and on Tuesday 20th November 2012 in Abuja respectively.

The Abuja roundtable brings together Policy makers from strategic Government Institutions, members of Federal Executive, National Assembly, experts on policy investment and trade issues and selected private sector unions affiliated to the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress TUC). Significantly too this round table provides the appropriate platform to present the draft report of a study carried out by the group with the support of Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FEF) on the state of industries and employment in Nigeria.

Africa Industrialization Day is commemorated on November 20 every year. It is a day set aside annually “to stimulate the international community’s commitment to the industrialization of Africa”. It offers an ample time when governments and other critical stakeholders like trade unions in many African countries consider various ways to refine and deepen Africa’s industrialization process. It is also an occasion to attract worldwide media attention to the issues and challenges of industrialization in Africa.

Specifically, the Day is chosen to mobilize the commitment of the international community to the industrialization of Africa.

HISTORY
Africa Industrialization Day is long dated. The 25th General Session of the Government of the Organization of African Unity and Assembly of Heads of State was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in July, 1989. November 20 was declared to be Africa Industrialization Day, during this session. On December 22, 1989, the UN General Assembly also announced this date as Africa Industrialization Day. This day was first observed on November 20, 1990. Two decades after, the Day has been observed under various themes.

AWARENESS DAY
It is remarkable and indeed commendable that Africa industrialization Day promoted industrialization awareness in the past decades. However the point cannot be overstated that more than 30 of the world’s 48 least industrialized developed countries are part of Africa continent, one of them being Nigeria.

Industrialization is said to be “the overall change in circumstances accompanying a society’s movement population and resources from farm production to manufacturing production and associated services”.

Emerging markets are broadly defined as nations in the process of rapid growth and industrialization. The terms was coined in the 1980s, by Antoine van Agtmael, to dignify (as it were!) the so called “less economically developed country”, or LEDC.

As of July 16, 2012, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) listed 24 countries as “emerging economies”. South Africa is the only African country in a list that included Argentina, Brazil Bulgaria, Chile, China, Estonia, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela and even Bangladesh.

Africa has been observing this day in the past 22 years. Yet according to UNTACD report of 2011, Africa continues to be marginalized in global industrial production and trade. The statistics pass for figures for thought! The share of African region in global manufacturing value added fell from 1.2 per cent in 2000 to 1.1 per cent while that of developing Asia rose from 13 per cent to 25 per cent in the same period. While Africa is talking about industrialization, China is working itself into global economic hierarchy. The word MADE IN CHINA is on parts for Boeing 757, as it is on clothes, shoes and leathers as well as DVD players and mobile phones. No country has recorded remarkable rapid economic ascendancy in the past 25 years like China. With 1.5 billion population and consistent 12% average growth rate in the past two decades, China has shown that huge quality human resource is indeed an asset and not a liability. China shows that development process is NOT a zero-sum game in which growth is traded off for jobs and in which few are well-having and many lack basic well being. China shows that the issue is not extractive resources (China not an OPEC member) but value additions and manufacturing (China has more functioning oil refineries than Nigeria!). The country demonstrates that sustainable GDP growth rate rests with manufacturing in the real sector and not enclave service sectors like banking and telecom services in Nigeria. Here is one country that has creatively combined consistent aggressive industrialization drive with high growth rate side by side with relative full employment. It makes nonsense of neo-liberal/textbook received wisdom about jobless growth. We can indeed have job-led growth. China proves that Development is certainly ideologically driven. But pragmatic state/market policy mix is the rule not market or state dogma as policy polarised debate puts it in Nigeria. China has shown that addressing production issues is not mutually exclusive from confronting poverty and coming to terms with distributional issues. While many sub-Saharan African countries, including Nigeria have pushed millions into poverty due to IMF inspired “reform” process, (SAP) China is the only country that has recorded the largest reduction in poverty in history in recent time. Indeed it has lifted as many as 250 million people (twice the population of Nigeria!) out of poverty.

LET US EMULATE CHINA
Since we cannot beat or even compete with China, let Africa emulate China. With 160 million population (potential industrial consumers indeed) a quarter of Africa’s population and abundant minerals (being the primary raw materials for industrialisation for a wide range of industries) re-industrializing Nigeria means re-industrializing the great continent of Africa. With population and economic endowments, indeed Nigeria should be what China is to Asia. In fact raw materials we are more endowed than China. For instance, Iron ore and a host of other locally available metallurgical raw materials are globally utilized for the local iron and steel industry. Nigeria is endowed with these mineral resources in abundance.

INDUTRIALIZTION NOT DESPAIR
Nigeria is already notorious for corruption discourse. Either we pretend to be catching official thieves or discovering new ones. Sadly we have further degenerated into complete despair and hopelessness.

MRS EZEKWESILI IS WRONG
Two weeks ago, the immediate past World Bank’s Vice President for Africa, Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili, did a gross national disservice to Nigeria’s development and industrialization discourse. She was reported to have said that: “I am one of those Nigerians who are praying for Nigeria oil to dry up so that our government can quickly take immediate actions towards diversifying the nation’s source of revenue. Alternative to oil should emerge immediately to cure the oil politics in our nation.”

Mrs Oby could be rightly accused of being part of ruling elite perpetrating the resource curse tragedy. After all she had been given more than one chance to diversify the economy and clear the mono-economy mess as a former Minister, (the last portfolio being Mineral resources) and a member of high sounding economic team of Obasanjo’s administration. The truth is that Crude oil and natural gas are the basic for the petrochemical and fertilizer industries. There is inherently nothing bad with crude oil and gas or any other natural resources such as cotton. We should just see how the Chinese are in raw material global hunt to propel their industrialization. If China is buying oil fields and signing exclusive oil and gas deals with countries like Saudi Arabia and even Nigeria, how can a former member of Nigeria’s economic theme pray that our oil dries off?

OIL IS NOT A CURSE
With Nigeria’s proven oil reserves estimated at 35.5 billion barrels, as at March 2011, and proven gas reserves estimated at 187 trillion, Nigeria like Indonesia and Malaysia (oil producing nations too!) should be an industrialized country. UK is an oil producing nation, but oil revenue constitutes less than 2 per cent of its national income. UK does not pray that it’s oil dries up, rather it is delighted that it oils it’s economy with oil through value adding activities; i.e. Industrialization. Norway also has abundant oil yet it is industrialized.

We should not lazily pray that oil and gas dry up (more so after few of us must have fortunately “oiled” ourselves up stairs up to the World Bank).

What we must do is to ensure a developmentalist state led industrialization process that must urgently fix the existing four refineries (Port Harcourt I and II, Warri, and Kaduna), build more refineries, raise the existing intolerable zero-combined capacity utilization, produce refined products and create jobs for the army of Nigeria’s unemployed. Our prayer should be to halt the ongoing criminal wholesale products importation with all the attendant criminal corruption and job exports. What is good for oil and gas (I.e. Value addition) is also good for textile, automobile, agriculture, iron and steel sectors, chemical and construction etc.

ADVOCACY
In the last decades, our unions including (Textile Workers Union) have been consistent in the campaign for the revival of the Nigeria Textile Industry and other collapsed industries. The timely response of CBN under the activist leadership of CBN governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, which through Development Financing, (Bank of Industry BOI) had helped to stimulate the hitherto closed United Nigeria textile Plc in Kaduna to operation. Today UNTL has reengaged over 1500 workers on account of Bank of Industry’s intervention fund. 1500 direct jobs from one reopened factory are more significant and sustainable than the official so-called entrepreneurial/lottery approach to job creation by the Federal government WIN programme. You cannot be taken serious creating young entrepreneurs when the old tested enterprises are fast collapsing.

TIME TO RE-INDUSTRIALIZE NIGERIA AND AFRICA
Nigeria must just reindustrialize if it must be part of the 20 leading economies in 2020. The drivers of Nigeria’s growth should not necessarily be services (often of dubious value such as telecoms) but real goods through value adding activities that must create jobs. If America under President Obama jealously protects American industries with an eye on jobs, jobs and jobs, Nigeria with open unemployment of 50 per cent must wake up and industrialize and get Nigeria and Nigerians back to sustainable employment, income earnings and poverty eradication. Happy Industrialization Day!