Policy somersault, high interest rate on loans crippling manufacturing activities in Nigeria- MAN

By Ganiyu Kunle, Abuja 

The Chairman of Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Lady Ada Chukwudozie has revealed that policy somersault, poor infrastructures and high interest rates on loans are responsible for crippling the manufacturing industries in the country.

The Chairman made the revelation while speaking to newsmen at the 2025 Annual Directors’ Conference held in Abuja on Thursday.

Lady chukwuDozie who is the Chairman, Board of Directors at Keystone Bank Limited expressed concerns that drastic steps must be taken to revive the manufacturing sector from going into moribund. 

She said ” the factors that are hampering manufacturing activities in the country are First do you have access to funds, and not just funds, but cheap funds that can sustain businesses? 

“When you look at the manufacturing sector, you find that the kind of funds that are available for manufacturers are very expensive. Whereas our counterparts in other regions, in other countries, are getting support from their government with funds that are less than one digit interest rate.

“Whereas here in Nigeria, we are grappling with about 35% interest rate, and no business can thrive under such situation. But even more than that, you have us readily available for manufacturers short-term loans to fund long-term projects. And that also is another mismatch, which also is impacting negatively on businesses.

“Although you look at policy somersaults, where today a policy is introduced, and tomorrow that same policy is suspended. And then only for them to now go back to stakeholders to source for information, feedback, and so on. What we would have expected would have been that manufacturers or stakeholders should be co-creators.

The MAN Chairman appealed to government to ensure that stakeholders are carried along in policies formulation with legal framework to safeguard such policies.

She said “When you want to develop a policy, bring all the stakeholders together on the table and get their insights. And then, even when you articulate that policy, before implementation, bring everybody again on the table and make sure that everybody is involved. So that when you go to the next level of implementation, it becomes seamless.

“And outside that, those policies need to be well institutionalized in terms of giving it a legal framework, a legal backing. 

“So that if we go through this methodology, it becomes difficult for policymakers to suddenly come up with a policy and suddenly suspend it because it met some kind of resistances from various stakeholders whom they would have consulted. 

“And apart from funding, apart from policies, somersaults, that brings a lot of instability in the system because businesses will not be able to plan.

“Without stability, you can’t plan, you can’t hedge for the future. So this and also infrastructure, where we don’t have that infrastructure that supports and helps drive the manufacturing sector, which is the secondary sector and which is the main sector that drives the economy in terms of the multiplier effect that the manufacturing sector or the secondary sector has over all the other sectors as it supports, affects, and contributes directly to the GDP of the nation. So the basic infrastructure that we need to move from light industries.

“So here in Nigeria, we have a concentration of light industries, but it’s not so for all the other advanced nations. Here we are a frontier nation. We are just trying to evolve.

She suggested that to achieve the ambitious of President Ahmed Tinubu $1trillion economy by 2030 the government needs to urgently address the aforementioned lapses by building a strong infrastructures for business to drive.

“But for us to move to become advanced and hit the 2031 goal of our dear president, which is the $1 trillion economy, we need to expedite on so many fronts. That infrastructure should be there. 

“And when I’m talking about infrastructure, infrastructure with regards to energy, infrastructure with regards to good growth networks, infrastructure with regards to logistics completely, the roads, the sea, the air.

“We need that synergy. We need robust transportation networks. You see that our roads always cave in due to the load that it’s carrying.But if you have the rail line, you take a bit of those loads and make transportation seamless and make it easier for businesses to transact in Nigeria.