The outgoing MAN President urges the incoming President to protect interest of our members

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Interview with Dr Frank Jacobs the MAN outgoing President during his send off event in Lagos

 

Your tenure as president of The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN); today you are been send off. We like you to dig depth into some of your activities as to area of regrets, achievement and what you want as a body or association continues to do.

Let begging with some of the things you wanted to do that you never do or you were unable to do  

I think I have six points’ agenda, when I was elected as President of MAN four years ago. We have achieved 95 percent of the agenda. I think if anything left to be done, I think is quite minimal.

We have set the right direction and we have achieved a lot. And the incoming president of MAN administration is to works assiduously to ensure continuity. So I do not have any regret. I can only says that they should works hard to ensure interest of our members are protected and that MAN members have senses of belonging whether small, big or large. So I don’t have regret.

You have a lots of achievement, we can counts them but there are two keys thing you actually championed, the battles for foreign exchange regime seriously at extends that a regulator seemly seconded to the pressure you manned on them and others thing is Africa Free Continent Trade Agreement (AFCTA) which is still left on at the moment: what is your assessment on this two keys driver of your tenure?      

I think, I quest, Iam very lucky or we are very lucky with the regulator, especially, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) because we are lucky in the senses that we are approached them when issues was very tense and when members were complaining, we approached them, and luckily they were able to listening to us. May be because of the way we approached them. I think we scored a lots of success because may be we approached them correctly and what we were saying was interest of economy generally that may be why we were able to work with them and successfully attends to the interest of our members within that period especially as at concern our foreign exchange.

As for the AFCTA, is a work in progress. Though policies like the Africa Continent Free Trade Area (AFCTA) are critical to our economic development especially its ability to boost private sector multinational business within the framework of public-private partnership in a free movement of goods, services and people. Much as the benefits are huge, it is important that we do not rush into taking decisions that will not have the buy-in from all critical stakeholders who drive business growth in Africa. Our countries share common values but there are country-specific issues that we need to critically integrate into our intra-Africa trade policy-initiatives so that we all will be comfortable with what we ascribe to. Our focus in all trade policy development should be a win-win approach.   We made the nation to know that that is not the way to go, signing AFCTA is not the way to go not at this time until we have improved on our operating environment in this country. So that the products made in this country can then become competitive when compare them with global counterpart so without that there is no way Nigeria should allow AFCTA to sign.

Do you think that the level of awareness campaign that has been carried out so far by the Office of Trade Negotiation (NOTN) has gone a long way to do some things enough to achieve a bit implementation of that agreement?

I do not think NOTN has done some things substantially to continence us on the desirability to signing the afcta.  When they trying to sing through back door, of course, we reported them to the federal government, the president and it was stopped. And when they trying to back to the drawing board go back and consult with the stakeholders. That consultation has not been very successful. They trying to consult but we have not been convinces. There are six issues that need to be address, those issues have not been address and without those issues be address it can be a bad mistake if Nigeria go ahead to sign to the agreement.

So some operators, professionals from different sectors have looked at the document all keys as it and they have said that it favour some sub sectors of the economy, services sub sector for example said it favour them. Do you think based on that federal government should go ahead and signed the document in bit and piece, leaving out the manufacturing sector or sign what favour services sector?  

It is not possible to sign on bit and piece, either signed or you do not sign. And beside if government what to go ahead and sign because of services sector at expenses of the manufacturing sector. I think we made bad mistake because the manufacturing sector is the productive sector, is the sector Nigeria rest in case of employment. Manufacturing is the key to economy. If you go ahead and sign without considering the effect of the manufacturing sector, am afraid it is bad decision, a decision that country stands to regret in the future.

What are your expectations from the new leadership of MAN? 

The new leadership of MAN is going to continue from where we stopped. I have no doubt they are going to give up.


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