The Director General of National Council For Arts and Culture, NCAC, Otunba Oluwasegun Runsewe, has called on Nigerians to desist from taking pride in patronising imported items. Instead, he said they should make gainful habit of patronising made in Nigeria products.
Lamenting the low rate at which Nigerians were patronising local products,the culture expert said the development had killed Nigerian economy.
Runsewe made this call in Abuja at the weekend, during the opening ceremony of Khaera Country Club, an outdoor relaxation spot that doubles as a tourist attraction constructed with locally produced materials by local artisans to give the village feel in the city.
He lauded Khaera Global CEO, Kachi Ibe, for helping the government to create employment and also for using locally produced materials for the building of the project.
He said “This is the time for every Nigerian to rise and contribute their quota, so what this country club has done is to remove the burden of government trying to set up everything. By the way, this sector is private sector driven so, i’m extremely excited that Nigerians have started to see vision in the country and it is a local content.
” One thing that impressed me is that everything that is being used here is locally produced, so I am happy that we are promoting our own and she is getting some young people out of the street by putting them into gainful employment.
“I see over 20 to 30 Nigerians having a place to now feed, it’s a place to go. That is to tell you now that the issue of criminality, unemployment, and more will now reduce.
“If you go to Egypt, Egypt has this type of facility they call medical tourism and that medical tourism as at today, the people there, Nigerians have over 47 percent of the people there patronising and we continue saying it that our country is not getting it right. Mr President alone cannot do all of this, every Nigerian must contribute their quota for us to get to where we are going. Today, the propietress has just added,not in the way we have professors speaking English on television on the 6 digits of capital development.
“Nigeria is the only country in the world that we are very proud to say that my kids school uniform is imported. That alone has killed our economy. The amount off suits pastors wear are too much, it’s like God will not answer their prayers if they were traditional wear.
” Let’s start wearing traditional dresses to move Nigeria to the next level. We have one of the best dresses in the world.
“The second people are the bankers, everybody will wears suit in the bank as if their money will not balance if they don’t wear suits. If you go to Dubai ,they wear the thawb. Let’s support the tailors today, the tailors will in turn support the meat seller and so on.”
Runsewe called on Nigerians and foreigners alike to invest in Nigeria, saying Nigeria is “the best place to invest in the word right now but we don’t understand.”
“Everything in our country is money even our sand is money but we don’t know it,”he said.
Continuing,he said:“There is a lion in Kenya, almost all the white men and women fly to Kenya to see this lion because it is something to see but that Lion is a child’s play compared to the lion in Jos but because we have not marketed our brand, we have not packaged it well, somebody will come and tell us something is better somewhere.
“I recall with nostalgia when president Olusegun Obasanjo said every retreat should go to Cross River state, Obudu Cattle Ranch. Today, it’s been abandoned. All the cable cars are wasted and we tell us that somebody is against us? We are against ourselves. Something must be done. If a private individual could start this, I think that person deserves the best encouragement in fact in other part of the world, this lady will get tax rebate for 45%”.
“I just got back from China. I was in China for 2 days I couldn’t sleep why? Because I want to know what we have done to God, how we have offended him because the issue is serious but God has to save us. In China right now, you can produce a lift in 10 days and I didn’t waste time”,he said.
Runsewe disclosed that his visit to China which was for business has yielded a positive result as he has been given an approval to take one Nigerian youth from each state of the federation to china to learn production which is the only way the country can be saved.
He said “Everyone of us have an ATM card, you see this card has a chip. We import those chips but we can produce those chips in one state in this country. What I have come up with is a new strategy. One state one product. There are too many youths taking drugs in Nigeria today, they have nothing to do. If we don’t address these things, very soon, I am telling you, it will consume us.
“When Boko Haram started ,we thought it was a joke, kidnapping started, they’ve become an industry.
