Better infrastructure, education will stop agitations –Dafinone

A Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, (APC), and chairman, Nigerian Conservation Foundation, as well as chairman, Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Export Group, Ede Dafinone who contested the by-election for Delta Central Senatorial District in 2013 on the platform of the Democratic Peoples Party (DPP), in this interview explained how Buhari’s

squeezing of the foreign currency policy accidentally forced the big companies to veer into agriculture which in the long run positively impacted on export of agriculture produce.

He also said the development of the Niger Delta region as well as massive education of the people is the key to ending the agitations in the region.

As a member of APC I’m sure you can feel the pulse of Nigerians that they are not happy with your party, yet many are saying President Muhammadu Buhari should continue in 2019 despite his failing health. How do you react?

Well, the statement you made that the pulse of Nigerians is leaning towards the feeling that things are not going too well is very true. From the private sector the economy has been underperforming compared with the position we were, four or five years ago.

The feeling of Nigerians was that with the coming of the President Buhari-led government there would be an immediate change and of course this is not possible. Change does take time it is not immediate. More so with two overriding factors; one the economy was in bad shape, due to the crash in oil prices from $120 per barrel. In the first few months of this administration, we saw oil prices at the level of $30 to &40 per barrel and with your revenue cut by 60, 70 percent every government will have a hard time.

The second key factor is the past administration. With the ample resources at their disposal with the high oil prices, it was not able to put the country on a right footing. And I hear you say that here is another APC person blaming the PDP government but really it is a wider issue than that because the whole world stepped into recession at that same time not just Nigeria; so it takes a bit of time to restructure the economy. This administration has taken bold steps to restructure, I expect the dividends of that to show in the third and fourth years, in time for the Nigerian people to see that the APC- led government can perform and will perform in the next term also.

How has this restructuring you mentioned impacted on Nigerians?

I had said I should expect the impact to show through in the third and fourth years. In fact my personal estimate is that by fourth quarter of 2017 Nigerians should be able to see some difference in the economy and for me that stems significantly from the change in direction of the foreign exchange policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria. For about two months now they have made foreign exchange freely available which means that importers can have access to foreign exchange and therefore import the raw materials for their manufacturing or the goods for trade. Previously importers could not get their hands on foreign exchange and businesses were scrambling.

MAN recently expressed reservations with government pioneer’s status given to 27 industries; shouldn’t they be happy about it, why are they angry?

I cannot speak for MAN and so I wouldn’t know why they are upset. But from a neutral aspect, if government is giving out pioneer status to Nigerian companies it should encourage manufacturing and production and that should be a good thing.

Nigeria’s consumption is import driven majorly, how can we reverse that trend having been in the manufacturing sector?

Consumption is import driven because we do not manufacture a significant number of items we consume locally. So for us to reverse that trend we need to produce more of what we consume locally and the easiest thing to start with would be of course agriculture