But if the people exporting services hear you talking about it, they’re not going to be happy because they would think you want to create a space where the government can impose tax on them…
Yeah, but the issue is this: if we are serious and you see this area as very, very important to grow our GDP, then you provide incentives. And part of the incentives is to give a tax holiday, and other incentives like an export development fund. Let’s say that I’m pursuing the East African market, I need to travel and do other things related to the goal. An export development fund is supposed to help me do those things and break into that market. If you provide those kinds of things to people, then of course you can tax them. Who says that it should not be taxed? Then of course, the other thing is not only that they will impose tax, they will want to control your foreign exchange. That’s another thing. So, these are all the dynamics of things that need to be looked at for you to get acceptability because it’s not even talking about statistics that we need.
The people that you want to get the statistics from, are they willing to do that? So, there must be a balance somewhere. National interest should overrule on both sides for it to happen. In Lagos, right there in Ikeja, young men who are in software engineering are getting some jobs outsourced from other countries just like India has been exporting software services to American and other companies. Not to talk about freelancers everywhere.
The Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) will expire next year. Do you think we have done enough to take full advantage of the provisions of that law?
We have not done anything, because about 90 percent of figures reported against Nigeria’s name under AGOA is oil. So, we’ve not done anything. We got a license for textiles. We celebrated it and we did nothing. Everything you see there are individual efforts by ordinary Nigerians who are shipping processed food to people in the Diaspora. So, we’ve not made any deliberate efforts to gain from AGOA. The law listed 6,400 specific items that could be exported, duty-free and quota-free, to the massive American market within these past 24 years.
How can we grow the shipping of processed foods from Nigeria?
If you set up a facility today in Nigeria, you invite the United States Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) to inspect your facility just like NAFDAC does in Nigeria. Once they approve, they give you a paper certifying the facility. Your items go into the United States, duty-free and quota-free. Some Nigerians are already doing it. The point is that you need to establish a record with the FDA and do the proper processing.
What critical role can Multimix play now to help deepen this knowledge?
We offer training in international trade and logistics which leads to certification. We have been doing this for 22 years. We run a course under the aegis of the Chartered Institute of Trade Logistics and Supplies, to prepare candidates for the certification.
In fact, we set up initially as an export house, operating as a consulting firm that assisted companies from procurement to the management of the foreign exchange when it comes in. We guided them through the intricacies of the domiciliary account regime, helping with the documentation, technicalities and practically everything. We were the first private firm that introduced logistics and supply chain education in Nigeria.
To deepen this knowledge we are partnering with the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigerian Institute of Transport Technology and Malaysia University of Science and Technology, for the Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree in Supply Chain Management in Nigeria. Nigeria’s higher education system is faulty, it’s too rigid. One of the things we wanted to do was to set up a one-course university, but unfortunately Nigeria is not a country that permits that level of tertiary education. Such university will not do anything else but focus on Global Trade, Logistics and Supply Chain Management. It took me 10 years of begging Nigerian universities to run the MBA course in supply chain management. None of them showed interest. But during just one visit to Malaysia to do a programme, I ran into a Vice Chancellor who is an ex-supply chain person. Immediately, I sold the idea to him and he understood it. Two months after we had that discussion, the course started running, and we have turned out more than 150 to 200 people. Malaysia University of Science and Technology was set up by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, USA, and so it has the MIT heritage. The same MBA has been recognised by the National Universities Commission.
Given your expert knowledge in this, do you think that members of the National Assembly should undergo training in supply chain management to enable them to make better laws for the growth of the economy?
Just so I do not oversell supply chain management, I would rather say they need to go through reorientation with an infusion of Logistics and Supply Chain Management. And another thing that is very important is that they need training in soft skills, which are those behavioural skills that enable you to relate with other people. Things like empathy, communication, working as a team, emotional intelligence, and the rest of the things. I am the chairman of the Institute of Soft Skills and Vocational Development. Even in supply chain management, you can’t function very well without soft skills. Nigeria still has huge deficit of soft skills in the whole country. We need a total reorientation infused with knowledge of logistics and supply chain management.
