Ayo Akinfe
(1) Boat and ship making
(2) Aircraft parts manufacturing
(3) Armament production
(4) Agricultural equipment like tractors
(5) Medical equipment like ventilators
(6) Electrical equipment like transformers
(7) Motorcycles and bicycles
(8) Consumer electronic goods like fridges, freezers and washing machines
(9) Railway carriages and engines
(10) Communication equipment like mobile phones, laptops, iPads and desktop computers
Industrially, Nigeria is currently where the West was at the outbreak of World War Two. With the conflict, in virtually every country, it was no more than four companies that manufactured all their industrial goods and armaments:
Italy – Fiat
Japan – Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Yasuda and Mitsui
Britain – Vauxhall, Vickers and Rolls Royce
US – General Motors, Ford and Chrysler
Germany – Krupp, Mercedes, Siemens and BMW
France – Citroen
One great thing about Nigeria is that we have a lot of innovative youth who always come up with designs. I have seen ventilators, irrigation pumps, drones, generator sets, etc all put together by our youth but alas, there is a huge gulf between a prototype and a mass-produced finished product.
As Nigeria stands today, we simply do not have the capacity to mass-produce industrial goods, which is why Innoson is by far the most important company in the country. Just imagine what our industrial output would be if we could replace every church and mosque in Nigeria with an Innoson manufacturing plant.
Innoson has got to take over from the NNPC as the bell weather of the Nigerian economy if we are serious about industrialising. Without the capacity to mass-produce industrial goods, we are going nowhere!
