Acting President Yemi Osinbajo on Monday persuaded Nigerians in Diaspora to take advantage of the numerous opportunities available in Nigeria to invest in the country, arguing that any investor who fails to invest in Nigeria in the next 10 years would be queried by his organisation.
Osinbajo made this remark while delivering a speech at an event organised for Nigerians in Diaspora under the aegis of “Nigeria Initiative for Economic Development,” who want to return to Nigeria to invest in the country at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential, Abuja.
At the event which was attended by Diasporans in the United States, Osinbajo described Nigeria as fruitful investment destination, citing the huge breakthrough which MTN has recorded within a short period of its investment in the country as an attestation.
“I like the idea of investors knowing that the reason why you are coming to Nigeria is not to help Nigeria. You will ultimately end up helping Nigeria, but the reason why you are coming here is because this is a good place to do business,” he said.
He echoed the Director-General of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC), Mr. Segun Awolowo, that any investor who does not take advantage of Nigeria’s fertile ground would have lost out.
“The world is a much, much smaller place and gets smaller by the day. So I think that there is very little today and I like the point that was made by the DG of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission, NIPC that anyone who doesn’t invest in Africa or Nigeria in 10 years’ time, they would be queried by their establishment, by their businesses that you just missed out on the best possible opportunity’ and you know that it is easy to miss out on the best possible business opportunity,” he added.
Osinbajo disclosed that the biggest refinery in the world with 650,000 barrel per day capacity was under construction in Nigeria adding that the largest single fertilizer plant was also being cited in the country as he compared Nigeria with another African country, saying the opportunities in Nigeria were enormous.
“But we have private sector investments that challenge that size. For example, the largest single line refinery in the world is a private sector investment and it’s going to be doing 650,000 barrels of oil every day. That refinery is purely private sector driven. Also, the largest single line fertilizer plant in the world is being set up here. All of these will be ready by the end of 2018, some early 2019. They are huge private sector investments that completely belie the size of the federal budget and belie everything else.
“So, really what we intend to do is to push private sector and that’s why we are doing everything that we are doing to ensure that the private sector can come in and invest. Look at the power sector for example; the power sector is almost completely privatized. But we have had difficulties because of tariffs, for example. Many times you look at our power sector, we have an installed capacity of about 12,000 megawatts today but we are only able to put on the grid under 5,000, a little above 4,000 megawatts. But we know that the potential is way beyond that maybe four or five times that,” he said.
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