By Ahmed Idris
The federal government of Nigeria is partnering with neighbouring countries to ensure that the country’s porous borders are better policed to tackle smuggling and the influx of counterfeit products into the country, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, has said.
Osinbajo disclosed this on Thursday when he received a delegation of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.
The Vice President said doing this would further promote the patronage of made-in-Nigeria products and boost the country’s manufacturing sector.
He said certain sections of the laws should be amended to attract stringent monetary penalties for defaulters in order to serve as deterrents and to protect the quality of goods in the country.
“More importantly, the whole issue is that we are able to police the borders. Last week we had discussions with all the agencies connected; including the Customs, the Minister of Internal Affairs, NPA, and we were looking at how we can work with our neighbours, especially the Benin Republic, and our neighbours also in the North, to police our borders as much as we can,” he said
The Vice President reiterated that the major focus of the present administration’s Ease of Doing Business reforms was to increase patronage for locally manufactured goods, as well as to create an enabling environment for the private sector and businesses in the country to thrive.
“The whole point of the Executive Order on promoting “Made-in-Nigeria” products was to set the ball rolling, to create an environment for this sort of initiative, and I am extremely grateful to MAN for the work that it has done in bringing this to the fore,” he said.
In his remarks, president of MAN, Dr. Frank Udemba Jacobs, said the association’s advocacy campaign was not only aimed at improving the patronage of locally manufactured products, but to also help create more jobs for Nigerians in the local manufacturing sector by reducing imports.
