Not less than 40,000 Nigerians can be directly employed through completion of industrial parks for the construction sector in each state of the federation, an industry expert has said.
Any such facility when fully operational can significantly deplete the population in the unemployment market in Nigeria, Managing Director, Zeberced Group, Adil Kurt, told journalists on a tour of the Abuja industrial park among others.
He said indirect employment opportunities from a single industrial park could gainfully engage over 120,000 people as they carried out their various related businesses in the built industry.
He argued that, where each state developed a park of such immense benefit with 120,000 persons gainfully employed in the industry, the 36 states would absorb over a million persons.
He said partnership between the federal and state governments would be important and they should be deliberate to invest in industrial parks across the country so that it could take millions of Nigerians off the unemployment market.
He said the desire of the federal government under President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the respective governors to urgently boost the Nigerian economy could be achieved by developing the construction-sector-industrial-parks, in each state to spiral economic boom.
According to him, the federal and state governments should not be scared to invest in developing industrial parks as it could generate employment and boost the economy of such a state at a sustainable level.
Kurt said that the Abuja Industrial park being built by Zeberced group would host 120 shops that would readily be available to service the built industry and galvanize value addition to built materials that could boost the economy.
“For the industrial park, when we complete the entire structure the direct employment would be about 40,000 but here in Nigeria, I believe, it would need more.
“Indirect jobs can be easily calculated, if for example and conservatively, each of these business concerns generates three or four persons, it would translate to over 200,000 population of gainfully employed persons.
“This is just one, imagine where each state government established one in their states the impact would be huge”, the managing director stated.
He said Nigeria was blessed with all the materials it needs for construction of any kind but can only be realized through value addition and offers investment opportunities to government and private entities to develop.
Mr. Kurt said Nigeria could not grow when it relied on other countries for about 95% import of finished products which it could produce, process and create the needed employment for its citizens and improve the quality of life of its people.
Kurt who took journalists round the industrial park and quarry sites said Nigeria boasted of the largest quarry sites in Africa because its team of investors believed in the enormity of the country’s capacity to feed its built sector with all the materials it required to build its infrastructure to drive development and invested in this direction and the investment opportunity had remained huge.
He said the direction of the administration for concrete roads should provoke states and even local governments to establish various industrial parks to accelerate the desired development of the country.
“You know this will significantly improve the population of gainfully employed persons in the economy and positively impact on those lives.
“We are craving the indulgence of the federal and the state governments to ensure that at least each state should have one such industrial park. It is important to diversify industry all over the country, not only in selected areas like Abuja or Lagos, no it should be all over the country.
The Managing Director of Zeberced said he was aware that there could be challenges in setting up a park, but the determination of the government and other private initiatives to boost the economy as large as Nigeria required very deliberate efforts for sustainable development.
“Of course, we have challenges, but the government must push. It is about sustainable development. It will serve the construction sector covering cement and stones which are the critical materials for construction from here we make blocks of all kinds, erect houses, build roads, etc.
“There is a huge potential in Nigeria’s construction sector which we have seen. This is a developing country and we need a lot of infrastructure to be put in place for the growth of the raw materials to accelerate development of quarry business which requires the production of aggregates for various structural designs in Nigeria.
“The two materials in the construction sector are cement and the other one is stone, so we chose stone and we are processing this by adding value to the raw hill. For instance, in our country, you cannot even see”.
