Business and Economy
Industrialist decries gov’t preference for foreign products
By Ekuson Nw’Ogbunka
Abuja
The Chief Executive Officer/Managing Director (CEO/MD), Prince Furniture and Furnishing Company Limited, Ambassador Emeka Egwuekwe has decried the continuous government’s preference to preference to foreign products to their locally made manufactured ones.
Egwuekwe addressed journalists recently, while examining the performance of President Ahmed Bola Tinubu’s one year in office.
Responding to a question put to him as their group went to the senate recently, demanding patronage by the government and addressing high cost of production, Amb.
“National Assembly and other government agencies are still buying and using foreign furnitures. Last time, I heard Mr President ordering that the Ministries, Agencies and Departments (MDAs) should be buying and using made – in – Nigeria goods. This is a good one and if it is done, you will see the economy growing, but if it didn’t, some of us may close up, because I can’t continue to manufacture what I can’t sell.
Many roads has been commissioned within and outside Abuja in Mr President’s one year in office, and when he was asked to make a comment, having been decrying bad roads, he had this to say: “In area of roads, I give kudos to Tinubu and and the FCT Minister Nyesom Wike, because most of the roads, including the one from Asokoro to this area of our business has been completed and commissioned. However, I urge them to extend such services to satellite towns, for them to feel the impact of Abuja too.”
Responding to the accusations that manufacturers use any opportunity against Nigerians, and when asked the area they have been helping the government, he responded thus: “We are assisting the government in the area of employment. I have more than 70 staff and if there is no improvement, we shall sack some of them, because I know what it is to pay salaries.
“We heard that the organised labour was demanding N494 thousand as minimum wage and if it is taken, those of us in the informal sector will collapse, because we can’t pay that. Mr President is sincerely trying all he can to address the economy, but it isn’t easy. To me minimum wage shouldn’t be above N70 thousand or N80 thousand. Anything above that will do good to no one.”
While speaking on the need for the public office holders to go into their duties with selflessness and the need for their remunerations to be reduced, he said: “This is where we need citizen’s empathy. A public office holder, like in the judiciary, where a judge is said to be collecting about N6 million monthly, how will a staff who receives about N80 thousand or N90 thousand monthly as the case may be will be looking at him. Under this condition, the criminals in the streets and even workers may be targeting him; likewise the legislators and even the president. The president of a particular country said he didn’t need salary; that his salary should be kept back.”
To this, he called for the reduction of the remunerations of the public office holders, including that of Mr President, who, according to him was stinkingly rich before becoming a president, adding that he didn’t come to steal money, but to address the economy.
Stating that Chief Godswil Akpabio has already made it before becoming senate president, he urged him and others to reduce their remunerations to the barest minimum, so that others would follow suit, he said that as the M/D of Prince Interior, he doesn’t receive salary, and if he does, it won’t be less than a million Naira, and his staff, according to him will not be paid. “So labour should come down, because if they don’t, it will affect informal sector and their staff who outnumber the employees of the government,” he stated.
Amb. Egwuekwe