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By Merit Ibe
The Regional Coordinator for South-South, Nigeria Export Promotions Council (NEPC), Ganiyu Ahmed, has said Nigeria can survive without oil.
Ahmed, who made the remark at a workshop on packaging and labelling in export business, said NEPC has realised that it is possible for Nigeria to survive without oil and has moved to mobilise almost all Nigerians to join non-export business, which remains a viable project.
He said the realisation has led to the fact that wherever NEPC is carrying out any programme, they push the slogan, ‘Export4Survival’, saying they want all hands to be on export deck to create an export-based non-oil economy.
On what the NEPC and the Federal Government want to achieve with the slogan, Ahmed said: “When we talk of Export4Survival, we do so realising that we all know that in Nigeria today, everything is about oil. It is like without oil, we cannot survive. But, it should not be so. Yes, we must keep doing what w are doing in oil and even more, but time has come to join non-oil exporting countries to fight for Nigeria’s share of the market.
“I want to tell you that without oil, we will survive. In fact, the in-thing in the world today is non-oil export because you find that apart from some four countries in the top bracket, 20 others are basically dependent on non-oil oil export. If you look around, you will see that they are doing very well.”
He said that that was the reason the NEPC launched the ‘Export4Survival’ scheme last year April (2022) so that Nigerians can key into this philosophy.”
He noted that the core of the scheme is for NEPC to look at states where they have comparative advantage in some products which they can be encouraged to develop and export.
“That is why NEPC is promoting Export4Survival so people will know and contribute their quota to the GDP of the country. As at last year ending, Nigeria recorded $4.8Bn export value.”
On this, the expert wants the thinking of Nigerians to tilt toward non-oil because he believes that without oil Nigeria can survive.
