Nigeria can enhance exportation with indigenous solutions – Ezeiruaku

Collins Ezeiruaku, a Nigeria-born of Imo State origin, who is currently the Trade Ambassador to the International Trade Facilitation Association (ITFA), was in the North West city of Kano, recently, as part of the ongoing regional workshop programme under the Small Grant Programme of Global Environment Facility on the implementation of UNDP in Nigeria. In this interview, with ADEOLA AJAKAIYE, he provided insights on how Potential and Established Nature-Positive MSMEs in Nigeria can access the grant. Excerpts:

Can you speak to the training workshop which your organisation just concluded here in Kano?

The programme that we organised was designed to achieve some defined purposes. The main objective was that the programme itself is targeted at potential MSMEs, it is targeted on two groups of people. The first group are Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), because one of the things that we notice over the years was that NGOs played vital role in national development They played nationally determined contribution in term of climate related matters , yet their work goes on almost 100 percent noticed, that they depend solely on the benevolence of the grant makers, and this work hit the grassroot, if this grants are not there, their works stopped, and not many programmes and businesses does the kind of work they are doing at that level of the society. So, our first task is to see how we can help them to be sustainable, so that once they started, they can continue run beyond the grant givers. That is the first thing. The second thing that we also noticed that businesses in Nigeria once they start, they hardly transit beyond the life time of their original owners, so we thought about how to see that these businesses continue to run beyond their owners, and to be sustainable to the next generation, so how can we help change the paradigm, so that businesses to run sustainably, if it runs sustainably it impact livelihood, it also impact the nation, as you know Nigerian`s GDP is spotted mainly by the rise of many small businesses, that is how we benefit. Then we approached the Small Grant Programme of Global Environment Facility being implemented by the UNDP in Nigeria, we shared this idea with them targeting organizations are involved in activities related to climatic, and biodiversity, and fundamental things that are causing flood, imagine some places in Niger state having flood, it has never been the case in the past, Then they bought into the idea and said that you know what we have the programme called Small Grant Programme, and that programme support Civil Society, Community -Based Organisations directly, have several programmes, but this one support communities directly, you can go for this kind of programme and reach many communities, as much as possible. So that is the origin of the programme. One is to create sustainable beyond one grant to NGOs, and Civil Society Groups, and the other is to create sustainability thinking in the minds of the small businesses, is not that I sold Masa, and my children do not want to sell Masa, they can come and create a Masa Company, and make sure that Masa is exported.

What do you think is the socio-economic benefit of this programme to the owners of the targeted NGOs, and Civil Society Groups?

The programme is designed to have direct socio-economic benefits of Nigerians directly, directly, there is no two ways about it, let us look at from two perspectives, the rural -urban migration that cause cross -border migration, stem from one single fact that people are not getting fundamental or basic satisfaction from their communities. Yet the communities or those villages are the source of most of the things that we use in the cities, suppose everybody migrate all the way from the villages to the cities, what do you think will happened, Now in those places, for example, one of the GEF projects in Nassarawa State where they are cutting down economic trees for two reasons, leading to massive deforestation, which is energy poverty, and economic poverty, becoming the Charcoal net seller or exporter, when you have devasted the environment by cutting down the trees, changing biodiversity, you will have changing rain pattern, you will have reduced crop yield, vegetation that is exposed to elements, and a lot of things will go wrong, if the cutting down of economic trees should continue overtime, you are going to have people move from the area into the cities, because the agricultural practices that usually happened will no longer happened because we have allowed the primary food security network of the people to be disrupted, because nothing happened in isolation, nothing is isolated. That is economic poverty, that is also energy poverty, so where do they source fire from they have to source it from firewood, GEFTD provide funding for one of the civil society organizations, catalytic funding they called it. SLIF, and the organisation did one thing, they went into the community and mapped out the trees in the community, and came out with one of the trees that could be of economic benefit to the community, and to told the people, look you have this tree that can be of economic benefit to you, let us train you how it can be of benefit to you. If you plant this tree, you can cut it down for sell and earned N5000, and the other hand you can leave this tree, and continue to earn N5000 every year, and leave it, and continue to earn the N5000 throughout the life time of the tree, which could be 20, 50, and even 100 years. So what do they do about their energy need, so they helped them identified how they can get alternative source of meeting their energy need, so they provided them with small LPG Cylinders, and so because they have really sought out their source of economic poverty of the people, the people can afford the N5000 that is required to buy the small Cylinder, so this is one of the indigenous solution that people creates, it is not something that someone from far away created, this was an indigenous solution created by the people, that is the beauty of working with Small Facility Global Environment Programme, we create our own solution. So, the impact is direct to livelihood. So, we are talking about scaling, national awareness about what is available in this country, and how it can be useful. Directly we are stopping rural -urban migration, and stopping cross-border migration. It is not an isolated thing, whatever we do impact other eco-system. ITFA will always say ‘We do Glocal’, while GEFSDG ‘We say Local Action, Global Impact’

What is the job-value of the initiatives you are talking about?

Let use the local intelligence, in answering this question. An average Nigerian that is working is supporting let us say five (5) persons directly, and let us say including those we are staying in the local place of birth, in the villages, so if you give something to someone in the village that person is going to give to someone else, so in average, every Nigerian with a steady source of income is supporting about five other persons. Now, the GEFSDG have well over 200 grantees, they are all Civil Society Groups that are facing this sustainability crisis, let us say we are able to reach them, multiple that by five (5), you can imagine that. Not only that we also aligning ourself with National Programmes, we don’t just walk in isolation, we don’t walk into a country, we know that Nigeria has what we called One State, One Product, it was designed to increase the non-oil export of the country, study was done by the Federal Government, and State Committees, constituted in each state of the federation, to identify one product per state to can be developed to exportable level, and the states come together to say look if we are going to be given access to both local and international market these are the products that each of the states can offer to meet global standard. So, the states approach Nigerian Ministry of Trade through the Nigerian Export Promotion Council, and Each of the State Committee on Export Promotion, to see what each state has comparative advantage on, you can see every state governor basically are involved it, that is why you can see that states in the northwest geo-political zones of Nigeria, are represented here. As you can see, Jigawa state, Kano, and each state of the 36 states of the Federation. Imagine each state with 20 nominees, multiple this by 5, this is the number of people that are going to benefit. It just shows you the scale of the number of the beneficiaries. Remember, there is limited funding, we can’t provide all the monies for the programme, even government does not have all the money, now I will say this it is not stopping at this initial stage which is not just training, it is training and re-tooling them, giving each individual beneficiary the tools to create their own solutions, it doesn’t end there, over the next nine months every individuals that participated will be attached them to a coach who will follow them up, to ensure that whatever they mapped out are followed up. We often feel that one of our biggest challenges is money, in as much as this is true, but we often see that that is not absolute true, we also find out that we need to help them think and find solution to problems. Direct impact my math will fail me, but, in term of direct impact, we are talking of more than a 1000 people, even though we are targeting 470 for a start.

Can you shed light on the other programmes that your association has been involved in, apart from this very one?

Primarily, I personally have background in different sectors. One sectors that exposes me to many Nigerian sectors is the banking sector, for many years I worked in the bank, and interacted with many industries, different segment of the economy, from mass -market, to high -net area individuals, and it became clear to me that it seems to be a disconnection between from government programmes, sometime Government start a programme and the people that are supposed to benefit from it, do not even know about it. Sometime many of the people that are doing what Government`s support should be involved are not heard, and one thing that we know as a nation is that we have a huge food export potential, as at 2023 looking at the International Trade Centre record of Nigerian Export Potential, we have more than $3.3 billion export potential on the table which we have not access, this is formal report, you know that anytime you report something formally in Nigeria, you just have to multiple that figure by 10, the informal sector is not even really captured, so if you do that by 10 you are talking of more $33 billion in export potential, so the ITFA was design to promote trade, and in promoting trade we are targeting, how can we get the potential and existing exporters, so, we started an advocacy programme, we find out that one of the thing that people need is information, which a lot of them don’t really have, what do I sell, who need what I have, that alone is major, we have had several export clinics with Nigerian Export Promotion Council, I can conveniently say in the past three years (3) we have reached more than three thousand (3000) potential and existential exporters, some of them who have and those who don’t have export licenses, remember we say that we tried to align with national programmes, in these export clinics, we even design manuals, trained some of the people early this year to continue with this export thing. So, in term of advocacy we have been very keen on advocacy, this particular, advocacy, when we talk Nigerian businesses out of Nigeria, and we look for potential buyers for Nigerian goods and services, this we have been doing consistently, this year we have done one, and we hope to do one again before the end of year, we have been doing that in different sectors, we do them often not just in Agriculture, we also do them in the Tech where will talk people out for promotion, we are pushing some into Global Impact Investment Network, we have so much to export, when you think of export a lot of people think of commodities, but Nigerian is also huge services, we do a lot of advocacy, a lot of advisory services, again there are people who have capacity, but need structure, so we provide advisory, how they can do it, guides, export is one business that if you make a mistake, the school fees, is very expensive, rejection is one of it, you pay 50,000 for a container and they say bring it back 50,000 US Dollar is not a joke, so, advocacy worth what we do, training, advisory, trade mission that is all the major thing that we focused on. Right now, but for every one that we engage with is personally, right now one thing that is going to happen is that we have created online directory, if you are looking for people, you remember the days of the yellow papers, this will be like the yellow paper. Remember that it has even been scoped into financial reporting, it has been scoped into categories, scope one, scope two, we are going to focus on scope three, it is even the direct scope of businesses themselves. Is going to be there for Nigerian businesses. The directory is also going to be available for people who are unable to find local partners, it is also going to focus capacity building, capacity building is your ability do more, let us say for example you are doing cassava, you will find other people on the platform also that are doing cassava, then you find people on the platform then you can ask can we do cassava, then the issue of standard, we will then ensure that anyone that is on the platform are doing the same standard, so this is the kind of practical intervention that we are talking about.

How does this programme help address the issue of rejection of products that are being exported at the international market, as well as standardisation?

You see, the programme has three pillars, the programme is going to do three things, one apart from capacity -building, is going to create access for global competition, market access, you will not be talking about market access, if you cannot help the people meet what market want, so standard streaming is very important…, trying to find local institutions in Nigeria to focused on standard, and as we implement, remember that I said that we will be putting them on the online directory, we are going to create a check list, and during the training, we are going to say during the training, go and do this, and this, this is what you need to produce, you can be primary producer, these are what you need to do to meet the standard, which we give them access to the market.

Let us look at the Northwest in particular, the region seems to have some particularity in terms of business environment challenge, and we are looking at the sweet ability of the people to key into the programme, apart from the workshop, is there any other strategy you intend to adopt to get their buy in?

Our people say from handshake, you will know if hug should follow. For instance, those who have been with us in the past, and want to take us back to their states, we will follow them, when we see this kind of interaction, we will continue to engage with them, call it extension work, we will continue the extension work, there is phase that is beyond what we are currently doing, someone once say, that if you want a thing to fall do it all at once. So, we are not going to do everything at once, we need to find those who have done what we are saying and showcase them, it will be like train-the -trainer thing. The last thing I will like to say is that small actions have an evolving impact, wherever, one finds himself, he doesn’t need to be discouraged thing it doesn’t have impact, no it does, just keep on doing your own little where you are, not until you are big like Dangote before you can make impact, the masa down the road is having impact. Few years ago, it was when we learnt that a Chinese man was selling Akara on the Street of London, and they asked him where he got the idea from and he said that he got the idea from someone here in Nigeria, so, what we have might seems small, so do the little local, but, think global.