The Nation Newspaper

Tag: scheme

  • N600m conditional grant scheme

    The Oyo State government has released N600 million for the implementation of the Conditional Grant Scheme (CGS).

    The Chairman, State Implementation Committee on the Conditional Grants Scheme, (CGS-SIC), Abimbola Adekanmbi, said this at the distribution of medical equipment to primary health care/maternity centres and state owned health institutions.

    Adekanmbi, who is also  Commissioner for Finance, said accessibility of the fund would allow the state to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

    He added that the CGS transformed Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to SDGs and fast-tracked improvement of quality of life in agricultural, educational, infrastructural provision, environment and most importantly health care sectors in the last couple of years.

  • 200 for BoI’s N140b micro-credit scheme

    200 for BoI’s N140b micro-credit scheme

    The Bank of Industry (BoI) has shortlisted 200 persons in Kano to benefit from the N140billion Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP).

    GEEP is a Federal Government inituiative aimed at empowering vulnerable groups in the country.

    Vice President Prof Yemi Osinbajo who spoke during a town hall meeting in Kano said GEEP implementation by BoI was designed to provide micro-credit to artisans, farmers, market women and entrepreneurs engaging in productive enterprise.

    The meeting afforded the Vice President the opportunity to interact with traders, market men and women, artisans, food vendors and small business owners on the social intervention programmes of government.

  • BoI unveils N10b agro-equipment loan scheme

    BoI unveils N10b agro-equipment loan scheme

    The Bank of Industry (BoI), in collaboration with its development partners, has unveiled a-N10billion agro-equipment loan for agricultural service providers and farmers.

    The bank said with better access to credit to fund the acquisition of agro equipment, there would be improved efficiency and production output in the sector.

    Its Acting Managing Director/CEO, Waheed Olagunju said applicants under  the scheme are categorised into micro, small and medium schemes.

    Olagunju, who spoke yesterday in Abuja at the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the bank and its development partners on the agro mechanisation product programme, said: “Recognising the catalytic role that agro mechanisation plays in boosting food production, BoI in collaboration with the Development Partners, has designed a product programme to provide finance for agro equipment service providers and well established farmers as well,” adding thatThere will be improved efficiency and production output in the agricultural sector.

    “It is a N10billion fund earmarked exclusively for the acquisition of agro-equipment by either agricultural service providers or well established farmers. N10billion is the largest amount of money that the bank has earmarked for any programme and this is testimony to the importance of agro mechanisation in economic development of Nigeria.”

  • Rethinking the NYSC scheme

    Over its 40-year-plus of existence, the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme has proved the most enduring legacy project of governance in Nigeria. In our peculiar clime where the wheel is perpetually being reinvented as every new government habitually dumps whatever idea is linked with its predecessor, only to start its own thing from scratch, the youth service scheme has been a lasting baton handed down across dispensations – military as well as civilian. It won’t beyond the pale if former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, harbours especial pride about this persisting imprint of his on our national life.

    The scheme’s undying relevance derives obviously from its singular effectiveness in bonding Nigerian youths across primordial fault lines of tribe, ethnicity, culture and religion, weaning them from a nativistic to nationalistic worldview, and instilling in them the spirit of selfless service to community and fatherland.

    The icing is its affording freshly graduating youths a modestly provisioned transitional year between the school and the marketplace, during which they also get paramilitary orientation for personal physical and mental fitness. And in the course of the service year, fortunate (or do we say smart?) ones are inaugurated in the job market and set off on the path of lifelong careers: their labour comes quite cheap for employers in that year, but they are as well afforded a good career starting point. By all accounts, it’s a win-win tangle.

    It is moot whether the youth service scheme is as potent today in achieving its founding objectives as it was in the early years. But whatever may be the shortfalls even now, there is simply no programme or feature of our national life – well, maybe other than the armed services – that gets even close to replicating the unity vibes of the NYSC.

    And that is not mentioning how the scheme comes uniquely handy in providing critical manpower for Nigeria’s nascent democracy. It is widely known that the NYSC has for some years now provided the bulk of temporary staff deployed on election duties by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). And with all the attendant hazards of our notoriously rudimentary political culture in this country, the scheme’s members on election duties have repeatedly proven – naturally, with very few exceptions – to be disciplined, patriotic, energetic and dispassionate in their comportment, thereby imbuing the electoral process with needed credibility.

    All the foregoing positive factors regardless, it would seem that the enduring relevance of the youth service scheme has railroaded its implementation into a fossilized mode, such that the scheme now appears out of joint with modern-day realities of our nationhood. At the last count, mobilisation of eligible participants for the scheme has turned an excruciating obstacle race that leaves throngs of fresh graduates in uncertain pendency after school, and in gruelling suspense about the titanic struggle for space in the marketplace that yet lay ahead.

    Anyone who knows jack about the youth service scheme these days knows that call-up and mobilisation of eligible graduates are anything but seamless. Actually, you could say the conventional joy that these youths should savour upon completing their studies gets readily muted in the furlough of uncertainty where they hang in for God-knows-how-long, until they get mobilised for the service scheme. Parents and guardians, of course, aren’t spared the agonizing suspense.

    If you asked their opinion, not a few of these young ones would tell you they preferred being excused from the scheme, and in effect the gruelling wait, so they could save the time and go do whatever else they could with their lives. But they would find they really couldn’t cut out, because the extant provisions of the scheme’s enabling law make completion and formal discharge from the scheme mandatory for proceeding to the marketplace. In other words, they are haplessly stuck with the scheme.

    It is only fair to mention here that the challenge is not entirely new. The NYSC directorate needs government funding, which is never in abundant supply, to mobilise eligible graduates to the scheme; and this is compounded by the fact of a swelling rank of potential participants who often outstrip the directorate’s projections. Besides, with increasing proliferation of tertiary institutions and perpetual disruption of academic calendar by all manners of emergencies, not the least of which is perennial industrial action by lecturers, it is only to be expected that the NYSC directorate can’t sustain a rigid scheduling of the scheme.

    Apparently to get a handle on those intervening factors, the directorate has for many years now broken its mobilisation of eligible graduates into batches. One practical consequence of this, though, is that youths with differing years of graduation overlap in batches that obliterate whatever advantage of a head start there could have been for those who left school in the earlier years.

    Now, the harsh effects of the recession Nigeria is currently undergoing expectedly make matters worse, and the NYSC directorate hasn’t really made off with a bid to downplay its difficulties. Reports last week cited the NYSC Director-General, Brigadier-General Sulaiman Kazaure, as pouring cold water on a widely harboured fear that the directorate would not mobilise all eligible graduates for the 2016 service year. But he as well confirmed the directorate’s funding and logistical challenges, which have compelled its splitting up the 2016 Batch B orientation and scheduling mobilisation of the second stream to early next year.

    Speaking with journalists in Abuja, the NYSC boss is reported to have said: “The NYSC is prepared as always to mobilise qualified graduates for the next service year batch. However, it must be emphasised that as a budget-dependent organisation, the scope of our activities is facing financial constraints, just like every other government agency in the present recession.

    “In the 2016 budget, provision was made for mobilisation of 210,000 corps members. However, the figure for 2016 Batch A and Batch B more than doubled the original projection. As we did before the 2016 Batch A orientation, we have appealed to government for special intervention grant to mop up the excess of this figure. So far, we have received the green light from relevant government agencies to prepare for the mobilisation of all qualified prospective corps members.

    “However, the limited cumulative capacity of the orientation camps nationwide necessitates a second stream orientation course for the 2016 Batch B, which is being planned for January 2017.”

    Two issues came out clearly in General Kazaure’s statement: (i) There are severe funding constraints necessitating an appeal for government’s special intervention grant, and (ii) There are capacity limitations in the scheme’s orientation camps nationwide. But it seems curious to me that the NYSC boss insists, as reported, that there is no plan to amend the enabling Act making mobilisation compulsory for all graduates.

    My view is that we need a rethink of the NYSC scheme in this country by taking another look at the enabling Act. Perhaps we need to consider what Nigeria stands to lose by making the scheme voluntary, because if you asked me, the country would lose nothing. Actually, we would harvest operational efficiency of the scheme along with keener commitment of voluntary corps members. Willing fresh graduates would yet have opportunity to enlist in the laudable scheme, while those that may have ready options of other life pursuits would be unbound to pursue their dreams. And the consequent impact would be salutary on the scheme because the logistical burden would be considerably relieved. If I must restate my view pointedly: I think it is about time the NYSC scheme was made voluntary for graduating students.

  • Osun School feeding scheme ‘boost to food security, jobs’

    The Osun State School Feeding scheme has been praised as an important strategy for food and nutrition security.

    Special Adviser, Zone A Affairs, Niger State, Alhaji Aliyu Takuma, stated this during a visit  to the state   andTUNS Farms Nigeria Limited, a poultry firm.

    He said the Osun Elementary School Feeding and Health Programme (O-MEALS), formerly Home Grown School Feeding Programme (HGSFP), had  brought  the much-needed change to youth/child empowerment.

    According to him, the programme offers guidance on how to design and implement large-scale sustainable school feeding that meets standards.

    Takuma said: “We thought that the programme is just the feeding of school children but today we have been exposed to the reality that the home-grown school feeding programme is a right step towards the change needed in youth empowerment which Osun State has been able to identify.”

    Takuma said if the programme was implemented across the country, it would transform the poultry industry and enable it to achieve its potential as a major source of revenue and employment creator.

    The Assistant General Manager, Admin, Research and Development, Mr. Taofeek Badmus, expressed gratitude to  Governor Rauf Aregbesola, for implementing the programme,  calling  on other governors to adopt it to enhance  their pupils’ nutrition  and  cognitive skills  while improving their academic performance.

    He reiterated the determination of TUNS Farm to make the programme a success and to assist other states interested in starting similar programmes.

    The Programme Officer, School Feeding Programme, Mrs. Ayoola Olubunmi, described the relationship with TUNS Farms as pleasant. She lauded the impact of the programme on the state, which include pupils’enrolment, job creation and women empowerment.

    “The programme, O-MEALS, was conceived with the major aim of feeding school children; however, it has helped increase school enrolment by a minimum of 25 per cent  since its commencement while also creating new jobs for the teeming youths in the state and boosting the local economy,” she said.

  • ‘Why employers should embrace compensation scheme’

    The commencement of the Employees Compensation Scheme (ECS) by the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) is influenced by the need to ensure that injured workers are not abandoned to their fate, its Acting Managing Director, Ismail Agaka, has said.

    He said safety at workplace was for employers and employees, saying employers thought it was for the benefit of the workers alone, hence their reluctance to enrol their workforce on the scheme.

    The NSITF boss stressed that it was erroneous for employers to think that the scheme was for the benefit of employees alone, saying that everybody is exposed to one form of occupational hazards or the other in the workplace.

    He argued that joining a scheme that promised treatment and rehabilitation of injured workers in the course of work was a huge incentive for higher productivity.

    “Joining this kind of scheme boosts the morale of the employees without shouting it. Boosting the morale of employees is more than just increasing the salaries and allowances,” he said.

    The NSITF boss also pointed out that higher productivity in the workplace always showed in the bottom-line of organisations.

    His words: “Higher bottom-line means more money coming into the company. It will also lead to better industrial climate in the workplace. A harmonious industrial relation in the country would lead to national cohesion.

    “The burden of care is transferred to the NSITF for an employer should there be any workplace accident, injury, disability or occupational disease. The scheme helps employers overcome unanticipated expenditure, especially if such comes when the organisation is not financially strong enough for such expenses.

    “How do organisations address this kind of development during cash flow challenge? Such development could lead to employees seeing their employers as wicked and uncaring, regardless of challenges such employer may be going through.”

    On the benefits of the scheme, Agaka said compensation also applied to victims of plane crashes who lose their lives in the course of work.

    ”First, if the employer of such a victim of plane crash was registered, the survivor of such a person would be compensated.

    “Secondly, the journey must be in the course of carrying out official duty. If it is confirm that it was an official trip in the course of work, then the next of kin or the dependent of the deceased employee is covered. Indeed, many such claims have been processed by the NSITF,” he said.

    Explaining that the NSITF did not operate hospitals where injured workers are treated, he said medical bills incurred by organisations on the treatment of injured workers would be settled and that NSITF would take over the treatment if it is long term.

  • Kano, French Embassy float PG scholarship scheme

    Kano State government and the Embassy of France in Nigeria, have initiated a joint scholarship scheme to sponsor postgraduate training of 12 indigenes of the state in reputable French universities in the next three years.

    Under the arrangement, Kano government would provide accommodation, upkeep and travel expenses, while the French Embassy would take care of beneficiaries’ registration, tuition and health insurance, according to Deputy Governor Prof Hafiz Abubakar.

    The government, which disclosed this at a ceremony at the Kano Government House, said the government had settled its part of the deal for one year.

    Giving highlights of the programme, Abubakar explained that Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje ‘’decided that the offer should be dedicated to lecturers of the state tertiary institutions’’, adding that beneficiaries were drawn from Kano University of Technology, Northwest University and the state polytechnic.

    “The aim is to build the capacity of lecturers, and the initiative clearly demonstrates the Ganduje administration’s commitment towards promoting learning and attaining higher education levels for citizens of the state,” Abubakar said.

    Abubakar who is the state Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, said candidates were meticulously selected and interviewed by a committee of the French Embassy, which  sourced the universities that offered the admissions.

    Abubakar, described the scholarship as first of its kind in Kano and a demonstration of the cordiality between the government and French Embassy, charged beneficiaries to be good ambassadors by exhibiting excellence in character and learning.

    At the event, Abubakar presented 15 partial scholarships offered to indigenes of the state by Near East University, Cyprus, to study Engineering and Nursing at undergraduate, masters and doctorate levels.

    Under the deal, the university would provide tuition and Value Added Tax for each student, while the government would provide living and travelling expenses.

    Mr. Denys Gauer said:  “Nigeria and France have in recent times increased their level of political cooperation, with exchange visits by our presidents.”

    Gauer said while both countries were working to address the security challenges facing Nigeria, his country, through the French Development Agency, was determined to execute more projects for Nigerians.

     

  • 129 benefit from foundation’s empowerment scheme

    The lawmaker representing Epe Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives, Wale Raji, has said the zeal to render service to humanity attracted him to politics. The lawmaker, a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), added that after a fulfilled career in the civil service, the issue of how to make his fellow humankind better became his preoccupation.

    Hon. Raji revealed this at Epe, a Lagos suburb during the maiden graduation ceremony of his youth empowerment scheme. The event served as a platform for the presentation of empowerment equipment and tools to the first batch of 129 graduates of the foundation.

    The lawmaker further explained that his Youth Empowering Scheme, in partnership with the Lagos State Technical and Vocational Education Board (LASTVEB) had trained about 129 youths in various skill acquisition and empowerment programmes that will make them be self-reliant. He also said the beneficiaries cut across his constituency.

    In his welcome address, Raji noted that the foundation was conceived in order to make a sustained impact through quality service delivery to the people of his constituency. He added that the youth in the area have been neglected for too long which has given room for many of them to take to hooliganism and other anti-social vices.

    He explained that the Youth Empowerment Scheme was essentially a youth-focused skill acquisition and empowerment initiative which is implemented in collaboration with the Lagos State Technical and Vocational Board (LASTVEB)

    He said: “Nobody can make you rich but an opportunity can be created for you to acquire a vocational skill that will always put food on your table and make you financially independent.

    “Everybody gathered here today look forward to the success of your new vocation. You cannot afford to disappoint them by betraying the confidence reposted in your abilities, competencies and skill to succeed and make something out of your life,” he said.

    In his message to the graduates, Governor Akinwumi Ambode, who was represented by the Commissioner for Wealth Creation, Mr. Babatunde Durotimi-Eti said the Raji initiative couldn’t have come at a better time than now. He also noted that the initiative was in line with the state’s empowerment programme which aims at taking the youth away from the street and assist them to be wealth creators.

    He challenged the participants to be focused and look beyond the immediate so as to be part of the revolution going on in the state in terms of wealth creation among the youth, adding that the future of the nation is in their hands.

    In his comment, the Chairman of the occasion, Justice Adesola Oguntade said there was no other way to give back to the society than empowerment of the youth in order to make them self-reliant as Hon. Raji was doing. He noted that the gesture would go a long way in discouraging them from taking to crime.

    Oguntade, who was represented by Mr. Ayodele Aina regretted that, over the years, the youth which constitute leaders of tomorrow were short-changed in the scheme of things; thereby exposed them to uncertainty and bleak future.

    He said the giant step taken by Hon. Raji Foundation by empowering the youth from his constituency, there is a ray of hope for those who can grab the opportunity offered them and launch themselves into economic independence.

    “What we are doing today is to bridge the gap that has existed for so long. It is very sad to read from the dailies every day about the huge number of youths who are in various prisons all over the world. These are the youth who were supposed to be engaged in productive enterprise that will give them economic survival like we are doing today,” he said.

    Speaking in the same manner, a community leader, Mr. T. J. Abass, noted that the initiative which was the first in the community was monumental; adding that it is a recipe for economic survival for the youth who thought that all hopes were lost.

    Abass challenged the participants to make use of the opportunity. “The race of your life has just begun through the benevolence of Hon. Raji. Try and make success of what you were given today. Opportunity comes but once in a life time,” he said.

    Speaking to Southwest Report about the empowerment programme, one of the beneficiaries Suleiman Natiq, who graduated as aluminium expert, said the three month-intensive training he received is a life time fortune.

     

  • 41,161 benefit from Fed Govt’s graduate internship scheme

    The Project Director of the Federal Ministry of Finance’s Graduate Internship Scheme (GIS), Mr Dennis Chukwu, has said 41,161 graduates have so far benefited from the scheme since it started in 2013.

    The scheme trains graduates on job creation and employ-ability skills over a period of 12 months during which they are attached to various firms and are paid some stipends.

    Speaking during a Career Development and Entrepreneurship Skills training facilitated by Faziya Global Resources for interns and firms’ representatives that just concluded their training in Cross River, he said 68 per cent of them are male, 31 per cent female and one per cent vulnerable.

    Chukwu who was represented by Project Director, GIS, Mr Dare Odunlade, said, “Over 35,000 have exited the scheme, with thousands of them having secured jobs. Many have secured credit facilities and grants (including YouWiN! Grant) to expand businesses they set up using GIS stipends and many have set up cooperative associations, some of which have transformed into SMEs. Rather than seeking for work, they are now becoming employers.

    ”As government, we can boldly say that the purpose of setting up the GIS, which is for unemployed graduates to acquire employable skills, is being achieved. It is also my hope that some years down the line, the GIS interns will galvanize different sectors, especially the non-oil sectors, which are the new focus of the Nigerian economy.”

    Also at another GIS orientation training for new intakes into the programme, facilitated by Econometrica Consultants Limited in Calabar, Head of Operations, GIS, Akubo Adegbe, explained, “They run for 12 months and exit the scheme. For those that have finished the programme, a lot of them have been employed by the organization where they are working. Others employed by other organizations based on the skills, which they have learnt. Some of them have set up their own businesses. This is an orientation and employability skills training. Our message to the graduates is that they have an opportunity that other Nigerian graduates do not have, to be an intern for 12 months and earn N30, 000 per month. They should make use of that opportunity and not abuse it.”

    Dr Mahmoud Muktar Saidu, Econometrica Consultants Limited said the aim of the programme is to prepare graduates to be self-reliant to equip them with the necessary skills of setting up their own businesses.

    ”It is for them to understand their environment, especially the economic environment of Nigeria. So we make sure this graduates understand it is not the sole responsibility of the government to provide every single employment that the Nigerian economy requires. These graduates have various skills that are untapped in them. The aim is tap such kinds of skills. Make them aware of it. The programme is intended to make them employers,” Saidu said.

    A beneficiary of the programme from Obubra local government area, Mr Igot Enama Enama, expressed gratitude foe the programme and urged the government to continue and make it better. He called for support of all Nigerians for the present administration in the country to succeed.

  • Whither Nigeria’s Free Trade Zone scheme?

    For many years, Nigerian leaders have paid lip-service to the diversification of the economy; instead, there has been a near-total reliance on oil to finance the country’s development needs. Some have argued for more consistent investment in the agricultural sector, which is achievable because of the country’s agricultural potentials. In the years before and immediately after independence, the three regions relied heavily on agriculture to finance their development projects. The famous groundnut pyramids in the North, the cocoa plantations in the West and the oil palm plantations in the East provided the necessary funds for giant strides recorded by the leaders of the three regions in various sectors.

    But oil came and everybody went berserk. The impact of Nigeria’s near-total reliance on the black gold was tremendous and catastrophic for the economy. The farms were no longer lucrative because oil money came easy. It was not long before every other productive sector, including manufacturing, was abandoned in favour of oil wells and the unimaginable wealth that came with them. Successive governments behaved as if oil and its enormous wealth would be there forever, and that other needs of Nigerians, including food and manufactured goods would continue to be imported from countries that ordinarily are less endowed in natural resources.

    From the experience of past years, Nigerians often clamor for diversification of the economy in times of economic downturn only for their voices to peter out at the first signs of bloom. That appears to be the fate of the Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority, NEPZA, which was established by the military government, November 19, 1992, with the aim of accelerating the pace of economic growth in the country. On March 29, 1996, the federal government also established the Oil and Gas Free Zone at Onne. Clay-footed from the onset, it took another nine years before the Calabar Export Processing Zone was commissioned in 2001.Thereafter, everybody, including policy makers and implementers of the scheme went to sleep.

    Is it not ridiculous that more than 23 years after the scheme was established, very little is known about its operations? There has been very little effort at producing enough literature to guide stakeholders, prospective investors, policy makers and implementers on the viability or otherwise of the scheme. I was therefore surprised to chance on a book, A Review of Nigeria’s Free Trade Zone Scheme, which was co-authored by Chidi Nzerem and Oche Obe. The book highlights the potential benefits of the free trade zone scheme and reviews the various efforts made by the federal government and other agencies to reform it.

    The free trade zone scheme was designed to attract foreign direct investment, generate employment, enhance trade and industrialization, promote exports, enhance foreign exchange earnings, encourage transfer of technical know-how to Nigerians and contribute to the economic growth and development of Nigeria. In their analysis of key data on the impact of Nigeria’s Free Trade Zone Scheme covering 1996 to 2012, the authors noted that the overall performance fell below expectations. On foreign direct investment, for instance, the book highlights conflicting figures: whereas the Ministerial Committee for the Reform of Free Trade/Export Processing Zones claims an annual average of $200 million foreign direct investment inflow into the country, the International Labour Organization, ILO, claims that only $1.2 million trickled into the country in 2007.

    The book also shows that domestic involvement in the scheme has been disappointing. Eleven out of the 30 free trade zones already licensed are still inactive. On the stated objective of promoting exports, the authors concluded that “the free trade zone programme is presently not contributing in any significant way to exports from the country”. The free trade zones earned a paltry $8.3 million in foreign exchange and contributed only N58.4 million annually to government coffers through fees charged by the Free Export Zones and the Nigeria Immigration Service. On job creation, the free trade zones accounted for only 40, 000 out of the 148, 363 jobs created in 2012, just as only 250 companies, at the rate of 10 in each zone, were operational in the free trade zones.

    It must be stressed that the story of the scheme is not all about under-performance. Despite the dearth of relevant data, the authors established the “existence of a substantial number of Nigerians in top management positions in Free Zone Developers, Free Zone Managers and Free Zone Enterprises”, just as host communities are tapping into the positive sides of the programme. The salutary elevation of Onne, host community of the Oil and Gas Free Zone, from a sleepy fishing village to a semi-urban centre is one of the success stories highlighted in the book.

    Among other recommendations for streamlining the free trade zones to stimulate the economy is the need to establish a commission, which the authors believe will be in a position to “supervise a large number of free trade zone enclaves”. The authors anchored the entire work on the conviction that the free trade zones scheme will “enhance the economic growth and development (of Nigeria) through the creation of jobs and …benefit from other spillovers of the scheme”.

    With the current economic woes facing the country, the government should treat the Nigerian free trade zones scheme with the seriousness it deserves so that it could consciously accelerate the pace of economic growth and the development of export-oriented manufacturing in the non-oil sector of the economy. Economic indices of the past decade should have told us that reliance on oil to finance the country’s development projects is becoming increasingly old-fashioned and suicidal just as reliance on foreign loans to fund development projects in Nigeria has become unrealistic. Rather than seek loans from a country like China to finance development projects, Nigeria should learn how to catch the proverbial free trade zones scheme fish from that country. Indeed, China’s romance with the free trade zones scheme has had salutary impacts on its phenomenal strides in the manufacturing sector. China’s elegant journey from an agriculture-driven economy to the world’s factory and second largest economy in the world within a period of 30 years is attributable to the creation of Special Economic Zones.

    The era of paying lip service to the diversification of the economy should be over. Now is the time for policy makers to insist on deliberate efforts aimed at repositioning other contributors to the national economy that have suffered neglect over the years because of ‘the curse of the black gold’. Current efforts to revitalize agriculture, mining of solid minerals and manufacturing would attract the attention they deserve if Nigeria’s Free Trade Zones Scheme is accorded its rightful position.