Buhari needs experts to drive economic  agenda –Isa Aremu

George Onyejiuwa, Owerri

The Secretary-General of Textile and Garment Workers Union, Comrade Isa Aremu, has called on president Muhammadu Buhari, to appoint capable and tested hands if his ambitious agenda of growing the nation’s economy and create  over 100 million jobs is to be achieved.

This is even as he has commended the Central Bank of Nigeria under Mr. Godwin Emefiele, for initiating creative monetary policies for the financing of business geared towards the creation of jobs.

Aremu who stated this at the weekend at a One- Day Interactive Enlightenment session with stakeholders organised Central Bank Nigeria held in Owerri, commended  president Buhari for setting an ambitious agenda for the creation of 100 million jobs.

“President Buhari has made a commitment that he will work towards the creation of 100 million jobs and what it means for us is to compliment his effort in achieving that objective. But he must ensure that he appoints capable and tested hands into his cabinet if he is to achieve this ambitious agenda”.

The Labour leader commended the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, who had  said that importers of about 43 items which can  be produced locally do not need to be  allocated scarce foreign exchange to finance their importation,  stressing that the CBN is walking the talk by target financing to ensure that these items could be produced locally.

“Items like rice, tomatoes, textile fabrics are things we can produce locally and with the creative intervention of target financing by the CBN we have already seen the impact on our economy. Today we talk about Anchor Borrower for rice production and through it a lot jobs have been created.  CBN has also been engaging critical stakeholders on this  vision  and they are doing it both vertically and horizontally and we need other agencies to do same”.

Responding, Director of Corporate Communication of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Isaac Okoroafor, said that besides its core mandate, the apex bank‘s  new emphasis was on growth to unlock the creative energy of Nigerians.

“At CBN today our emphasis is on growth by funding the  cotton/textile value chain by providing cotton farmers the inputs including high yielding seedlings. We have given loans to textile manufacturers to enable them to re-start production which will  create Jobs.

“We are also doing the same with the Palm Oil value chain across the Eastern Nigeria /South South . It is the same for the Creative Industry by Providing finance to help creative arts by building of film Academy , Music Production centres.”