ABUJA – Dr Kabir Usman, Director-General, Centre for Management Development (CMD), has stressed the need for local content requirement in industries to be backed by legislation to ensure strict compliance.
Usman made the call during interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Saturday.
He said local content would help to tackle the problem of infrastructure deficit facing the nation’s institutions.
According to him, the promotion of local content training would also help in generating more revenue for Management Development Institutions (MDI).
“If local content is promoted, it simply means that there will be more activities in the organisations.
“There will be more income and more Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) which will enable organisations to spend, to maintain and to improve the quality of infrastructure.’’
He noted that Nigeria was one among few countries exporting jobs. “We should export products, not jobs. Ninety per cent of capacity building outside the country can be done in Nigeria.
“Why do we go outside the country and do it? If you are going there for train-the- trainer programme, I understand. If you are going there to learn, I understand.
“If you are going for study tour or inspection and collaboration for bilateral agreement and so on, I can understand.
“This local content has to have a regulatory kind of biting teeth. It must be anchored by legislation or regulation,’’ Usman said.
He said local content also needed some financial support to enable institutions to compete with the rest of the world in terms of resources and facilities.
“These include Information Communication Technology and infrastructure similar to those of United Kingdom, Dubai and other countries’’, he added.
He said there was also the need to raise the capacity of the trainers and facilitators.
“It does not matter if we will have to spend some monies at initial stage to train all the facilitators, lecturers, teachers, trainers so that they can acquire modern skills.
“We have to raise the capacity of our capacity builders to enable them to cope with the demand, level and kind of training done in other parts of the world’’, Usman said. (NAN)
