The Managing Director of Sterling Bank Plc, Mr. Abubakar Suleiman, has outlined ways through which the economy in northern Nigeria can experience rapid growth and development.
Suleiman who was speaking as a panelist on the theme, ‘Obstacles to Economic Opportunities in Northern Nigeria’ at the closing ceremony of the Kaduna Book and Arts Festival (KABAFEST), outlined three key indices needed to jumpstart economic growth in the region in his contribution.
According to him, the first key ingredient required for a successful transformation of the economy of northern Nigeria is to ensure an environment that is safe and secure enough to give investors the needed confidence to come in and operate.
Secondly, the people must be equipped with relevant skills that can make them competitive, he said, adding that the kind of education that can achieve this objective must be one that inculcates the right kind of skills that can take advantage of available job opportunities.
Finally, the MD said efforts must be made to ensure that the capital required by those that are ready to do business and take the risk needed for a successful operation is readily available.
Explaining why Sterling Bank decided to sponsor the festival, Suleiman said “I believe that the value this event has created goes beyond the arts and books. I think it is fundamentally trying to help the society to improve.
“The work we do here is useful not just in view of supporting the arts, but of helping the society to become sustainable.
“If, for example, Nigeria wants to be self-sufficient in food, Kaduna would be central to that. Clearly, Kaduna remains one of the largest producers of major crops such as ginger, maize and tomato and we will continue to support them.”
He said the bank is prepared to support the state government in its efforts to creatively improve agricultural productivity and reduce the conflict between herders and farmers. “We also think Kaduna State as an investment destination is increasingly moving from just food production to processing and to manufacturing. We want to support that process as well.
“If you bring in a lot of food processing capacities, it would impact on the quality of life of even the farmers and that is something we want to continue to support,” he said.
According to him, “Sterling Bank was the first bank to use the Anchor Borrowers Scheme as a model to work with clusters of farmers and an anchor to create essentially a system that improves the productivity of the farmer and ensure that they have access to right quality inputs.
“The system also guarantees that there is a buyer for the farmers’ products and that allows the anchor to have the input that they need for processing. So, working with Labana rice out of Kebbi State, we were able to demonstrate the value of that programme and that was how it became widely accepted by banks and states across the country to improve productivity.”
Also contributing to the panel discussion, Kaduna State Commissioner for Budget and Planning, Muhammad Sani Abdullahi, said even though the north has the highest population among the zones of the country, it contributes the least to the economic development of the country.
He explained that one of the issues militating against the concerted plan for economic development of the region is the inability of the north and the rest of Nigeria to agree on the way forward.
Abdullahi said most of the working population in the north are employed by the government to the detriment of the private sector, adding that the working population is so small compared to the unemployed.
The way out, he said, is for panelists to come up with something akin to the Marshall Plan that was used by the United States to rebuild Europe after the Second World War in 1945.