Emir of Kano, Alhaji Muhammad Sanusi on Saturday urged Nigerians to stop patronizing foreign goods in order to safeguard Nigerias economy.
According to him, the country cannot forge ahead without addressing the problem.
Emir of Kano who spoke why commissioning the secretariat of the Kaduna Chamber of Commerce, Industry Mines and Agriculture (KADCCIMA), at the Kaduna International Trade Fair Complex said, the major problem of Nigeria was that the country imports what it has and export what it does not have.
He said Nigeria will develop only when it decides to refine its crude, produce clothes from its cotton and generate electricity from its gas.
Emir Sanusi lamented that despite Nigerias crude oil its still imports refined petroleum products for its consumption, as well as it gas but could not generate electricity from it, except to import generator.
I have always said it, the problem of this country is that, we are in a country where we import what what we have and we export what we dont have. It is only in Nigeria we do that. We have cotton, but we will not process it to make cloth, except we go to China to buy clothes.
We have crude oil, but you cannot go to filling station and get fuel refined in Nigeria, except we take our crude to England and go their to buy refined products. We have refinery here in Kaduna, but the fuel you will buy is not refined here.
We have gas in Nigeria, but we are always burning it, it is flaring into the air. Instead of us to generate electricity with it, we rather go abroad to import generator to get power and we have gas that can generate electricity for us, we have coal and we have water to generate electricity.
We plant tomatoes in Nigeria, but we eat it up and go to China and import Tin Tomatoes. Shoes, bags and other leather materials that we are supposed to produce here, because we always slaughter cows and rams, but instead of using their skin to produce leather products, we make pepper soup and eat, he said.
Emir Sanusi further attributed the recent insecurity and religious crisis witnessed in the country years back to bad economy in the country.
Source: Peoples Daily
