Director General of the Nigeria Employers Consultative Association, Mr. Olusegun Osinowo, said the private sector should take ownership of entrepreneurial training seriously in order to liberate millions of unemployed Nigerians from joblessness. He spoke with NGOZI AMUCHE. Excerpts:
Casualisation of workforce in Nigeria is endemic; how do you think this problem can be solved?
There is a labour law on ground on casualization. What we need is a strong inspectorate system in Nigeria that will ensure compliance with the labour law. Casualisation on its own is not wrong. When you casualise an employee’s contract beyond three months, that is when you can start talking of legality.
The law allows casualisation for three months. The labour is clear on the fact that every employee must be given a written contract of employment after being employed for three months.
So where an employer has failed to do that, it will amount to casualisation. But at the same time, we must make a distinction between casualisation and fixed contract; this is because, fixed contract is recognised in our law. Our law is not against employer giving a fixed contract of six months, or one year to an employee. So we should not mix up casualisation with fixed contract. What we need in place is strong inspectorate machinery that will ensure that the employer did not employ manpower beyond the three months that is stated in the law as casual staff. Apart from this, the private sector should take ownership of entrepreneurial training seriously in order to liberate millions of unemployed Nigerian youths from joblessness.
What area of reforms will you advise the government to embark upon?
To me, reforms are important, but there is a bigger reform that is necessary, which will bring out the best from all other specified reforms. There is a nexus between a country’s political structure and economic growth of the country. A political structure could either be an asset or a liability. The current Nigeria political structure actually is a liability for a meaningful economic growth and development.
The implication of this is that, it will slow down meaningful economic growth and development if not well restructured. But to be able to achieve any meaningful reforms in Nigeria, the political system must be well restructured to allow for decentralisation. The political structure should be an important reform foundation for any other economic reform programme to add full potentials. If we fail to do that, we will not get the best out of any policy reforms.
We expect government to remain faithful to its diversification policy, so that we can reap the outcome of this in the medium term. Government has to demonstrate some boldness and courage…It’s a clear stance on the issue that will enable private investors to establish more refineries
What is the purpose of ease of doing business in Nigeria?
Everything we need to do must be anchored on objectives and meaningful outcomes. The ease of doing business is to increase the number of Nigerians that will be able to set up their own businesses and thrive. The whole idea is how to make the environment enabling, so that we can have more investors and more entrepreneurs.
There should be a way by which we can monitor that. It is important we talk in quantitative terms on the impact of ease of doing business; we shouldn’t be talking in qualitative terms so that we can say, since government initiated this policy of ease of doing business, this is the number of new businesses that have come on stream, this is the number that have been expanded, and this is the number of new businesses that moved on a new level of growth, because the whole idea of this is to create expansion and to promote entrepreneurship.
So if the ease of doing business has achieved its objectives, the micro-scale business should be on its way to becoming a small-scale business; a small-scale business should be on its way to becoming a medium-scale business; a medium-scale business should become a larger business, because the environment has been made clement for them to thrive. But all we hear in this case is, things are working, things are improving. Those are qualitative measures; we want quantitative measurement. There should be mechanism in place that will give us that quantitative measurement.
The power sector remains a big problem to the ease of doing business in Nigeria, what is your advice?
Nigeria as a country needs to start exploiting various sources of energy, apart from gas-fired and big hydro plants. This has become more imperative in the face of continuous vandalism of gas pipelines and power infrastructure across the country. We need to continue the move towards alternative power generation as the country pursues a new energy mix, which encourages construction of solar farms, coal -plants, renewable resources and investment in gas/gas pipeline infrastructure.
It is not late for us to determine and adopt the energy mix templates of countries that have succeeded like Germany, Brazil, South Africa, Poland, the United Kingdom, Russia, etc. To make the needed progress, the country needs a departure from the current way of thinking about resolving power problems. Wherever the current system demonstrates duplication and inefficiency, the government will need to be strong to incentivise the introduction of viable alternatives to fill the gaps in service delivery and resolve the problems endemic to the current system.
What are the incentives you would want the government to grant to the private sector to enhance productivity?
The Federal Government has put in place a number of investment incentives for the stimulation of private sector investment from within and outside the country. While some of these incentives cover all sectors, others are limited to some specific sectors.
The nature and application of these incentives have been considerably simplified. For instance, over the past few years, the private sector and other investors expressed concern about the lack of action to fix the current issues with the principal power production methods and create a solution to the issue of power. What we need as a country, is for the public sector to incentivise the private sector investment in energy, by creating an environment that is more conducive to bringing foreign investment into the country and promoting the development of localised solutions. Frameworks for the development of alternatives such as off-grid and mini-grid solutions have to be put in place for the desired improvements to occur. We need to look at the embedded power approach where people can generate power and supply directly to the grid.
There is a general consensus that last year was very difficult for businesses in Nigeria, arising from government policies, among others. Has there been any improvement?
The issue of policy faithfulness is very important, since government has enunciated its policies, the focus of which is to diversify this economy from dependence on crude oil to the development of the agricultural sector. We expect government to remain faithful to that, so that we can reap the outcome of this in the medium term. Government has to demonstrate some boldness and courage in being very explicit in respect to some of its policies. It’s a clear stance on the issue that will enable private investors to establish more refineries in the country, and also enable market
forces to determine the pump prices of petroleum products. On the issue of provision on capital expenditure in the budget, if the provision is actually used for the right purpose, it would improve the enabling environment for business and support more wealth creation and equally support employment
opportunities.
