Jimoh Yinusa is the Group Managing Director of Dunlop Nigeria Plc, an outfit that specialises in manufacturing tyres. In this interview with TAIWO OGUNMOLA he spoke on certain salient business and socio-economic issues as they affect manufacturing in Nigeria. Excerpts:
Did your company at any time leave Lagos because of epileptic power supply?
Our company never left Nigeria we are still in our premises at Ikeja. We are however, still hopeful that government will resolve the problem soon.?????
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How is your company contributing to economic development?
We have been doing our best, but government needs to appreciate the need to ensure that manufacturing in general, particularly tyre manufacturing is not allowed to go into extinction. We have often cried to government that the economy is losing very major opportunity for job creation by not encouraging manufacturers.
We have two tyre manufacturing companies, one in Port Harcourt and Lagos, but the two are? no longer functioning. So, it means over 2,000 people have lost their jobs. Also, once our tariff is not encouraging local manufacturing, we are unconsciously helping other countries to create more jobs.
We believe government will do something in order for us to conserve jobs for Nigerians to be engaged and when Nigerians are engaged there would be less insecurity and this will attract foreigners to establish business in Nigeria.??
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In what specific way do you think government can assist manufacturing companies to fully realize their potentials?
What government can do is to realize that we have infrastructural deficiency in the area of power, and roads. There must be recognition that the only way we can assist people to manufacture today is that those that are importing are meant to pay heavy duty that would encourage them to come here and build factories and employ people.
Our belief is that when the Federal Government takes such step it would help businesses in the country. Whatever policy government puts in place, it must be stable. Policy somersault discourages people from engaging in long term projects because they would be thinking of what government will say.?
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One major worry for Nigerians is the proliferation of substandard tyres, what do you think is responsible for this?
Proliferation of substandard tyres is one of the consequences of not having a local manufacture based company because when the two companies manufacturing tyres were on ground, there were opportunities to test tyres that have been imported and almost 70 percent of them used in Nigeria then were manufactured locally.
So, we had a test centre here where Standard Organization of Nigeria (SON) approved. But as at today, that opportunity is not there.?
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What is the way forward for the nation’s economy?
First thing is to ensure welfare and security of the people and you cannot ensure the welfare of people if they don’t have jobs and our unemployment rate is close to 25 percent. What government should be doing is to focus on projects that will bring people out of unemployment and we have agreed that those things that can bring employment are those ignored sectors of economy that will create jobs for people.
The main ones are agriculture and manufacturing. I am not saying the oil sector is not important but it doesn’t create much jobs and that is the reason we are having a lot of money without development because if people are not working, there is a big problem. We hope government really understands that, and they drag policy in a direction that will ensure job creation.??
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What is responsible for epileptic power supply?
Let me be specific on power because it is the most serious issue that we have in manufacturing. Our government needs to move away from the mindset that electricity is government business. Government should go back to the model we used for telecom with privatization or deregulation. Allow people from all over the world who are experts in that industry to bring their resources and equipment where necessary to come and invest.
In the last 10 years, what has happened to telecommunication? We have had growth in telecom that is so phenomenal, 400,000 lines in 2001 and today, we have close to 90 million lines, this did not happen because government spent more money. If we see those models as effective then, let us replicate it into electricity.
The reason why past investments are not seen to work is because government is trying to do everything, rather than providing regulatory framework and allowing the private sector drive it.?
But government is trying to do everything by itself spending billions of naira. The new government is already working on deregulating environment and making sure that people who understand the business and have the capital will come and invest and I can assure you that in the next 10 years, things will be okay.??
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How will you rate the Standard Organization of Nigeria in tackling the issue of fake products?
Their primary duty is to create standards for all manner of products and to go out of their way to enforce those standards and I think they still have a lot of work to do and they need to continue to interact with all stakeholders to ensure that the real players in the particular segment of economy are being given the opportunity to be part and parcel of that enforcement approach.
We usually have a committee that is set up by SON that is supposed to work on standard tyres and we ensure that all tyres coming in to Nigeria are in conformity with the rules. The question is whether the enforcement is done religiously as it should.
They can still do better because if you say you are enforcing standard and there are still sub-standard goods in the market, that means no matter the effort you are putting in, there are more roads to cross.?
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What are your major challenges in manufacturing?
We have shut the factory in the last three years without manufacturing which is a major challenge. We have had to shut down our factory three years ago and our service system that used to be at 40 percent was reduced in 2006 to 10 percent. This means there is a lot of attractive items to import to manufacture in Nigeria.
Other countries don’t have problem with power but because of our own problem, we use more of generators in manufacturing our tyres which is never done anywhere but because of that kind of situation, we believe that the 40 per cent tariff should not be used to compensate us for that additional cost.
It is cheaper to manufacture tyres outside the country and bring them into Nigeria instead of manufacturing here and exposed to additional cost, these are the main reason why we had to shut down. In the last three years we have been discussing with government, they are saying we don’t want you to shut down the factory totally but to go back to manufacturing.
The discussion has been on and we are hoping and expecting that within few weeks this discussion will yield fruits.?
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What is your advice for youths who are hoping to become entrepreneurs?
They should be prepared and they should not follow any particular line rather than to be educated and engaged in one vocation or the other. Also, they need to be hard working and be patient because things don’t happen in a day. It takes time.