‘Buhari needs experts to drive economic agenda

Textile and Garment Workers Union has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to appoint capable hands if his agenda of growing the economy and creating over 100 million jobs is to be achieved.

The union praised the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for initiating creative monetary policies to finance businesses geared towards the creation of jobs.

At the interactive enlightenment session with stakeholders, organised by the Central Bank Nigeria (CBN) in Owerri, the Secretary-General of union, Comrade Issa Aremu, commended Buhari for setting the agenda.

“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,” he said.

The Labour leader commended the CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, for banning importers of about 43 items, which could be produced locally, from accessing foreign exchange.

“Items, such as rice, tomatoes and 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,” he said.

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

“At CBN, our emphasis is on growth by funding the cotton/textile value chain by providing cotton farmers the input, 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 /Southsouth . It is the same for the creative industry by providing finance to help creative arts by building of film academy, music production centres.”