PRESIDENT of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, has said that his adventure into petrochemical and agricultural industrial sub-sectors was part of his own contribution to reduce unemployment in the country, saying if more Nigerians are economically empowered through gainful employment, poverty will be reduced to a minimal level.
Dangote, who has ventured into the construction of refinery and estabilishment of fertiliser plants in parts of the country, said at the weekend that the task of reinvigorating the nation’ s economy rested more on the shoulders of the private sector, and urged other investors to lend the goverment a helping hand in this direction.
According to him, the task of the government was more of providing the enabling environment for the private sector to thrive through the right policies and infrastructural provision.
He stated that he was optmistic that the present Federal Government was already focusing on those issues that would help the private sector to perform optimally, as enshrined in the transformation agenda of President Goodluck Jonathan.
Speaking while adressing members of a business group who paid him a visit in his office at the weekend, Dangote said no government anywhere had ever succeeded without the imput of the private sector.
He commended the Federal Government for listening to the private sector and intervening in the critical areas of attention such as the backward integration policy, which started with the cement sector and now being extended to agriculture as found in the ingredient substitution in the making of bread, sugar and in some other subsectors of the economy.
Dangote still urged the governmnet not to relent in helping the organised private sector by intervening in other areas of their operations in which the inclement climate under which they operated had hampered them from attaining installed capacities.
“Good enough,” Dangote said, “Nigeria has the resources and the market for any company to survive. Only in few other areas government should intensify efforts to make the sector attractive to investors.
“I have always said it that Nigeria is a good place to invest. We have all in abundance. God has blessed this country. What we have naturally in abundance is what other countries are looking for to buy,” he stated.
Dangote said he was optimitic about the economic revival through the private sector, noting that the current challenges facing the country would soon be a thing of the past.
He appealed to Nigerians to contribute their quotas by always doing what is right and adequately paying their taxes as part of their own contributions to the growth and development of the country, while urging the citizenry not to be discouraged by various challenges facing the nation.
[Tribune]