Following the launch of Nigeria Industrial Policy February this 12 months, a former Director General of UNIDO, has made a case for an power coverage if Nigeria is to attain its industrialisation ambition, writes Dike Onwuamaeze
Former Director General of United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), Dr. Kandeh Kolleh Yamkella, was on a well-recognized turf on Tuesday, October 6, 2026. The event was the 6th Adeola Odutola Lecture, which was organised by the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) as half of its 54th Annual General Meeting. The subject of his lecture was “Leveraging National Industrial Policy to Position Nigeria as Africa’s Industrial Hub.”
As he mounted the rostrum, his viewers was expectant. One, the distinguished visitor lecturer, Yamkella, has spent greater than 20 years, finding out, analysing, selling, packaging, delivering and advising authorities and companies on industrial insurance policies. Two, the federal authorities in February 2026 launched Nigeria Industrial Policy (NIP), the primary within the nation’s historical past.
The kernel of Yamkella’s message was clear and direct: the federal authorities ought to again its NIP with a clearly outlined power coverage for the nation, stating that power coverage have to be half of an efficient industrial coverage.
He stated: “Energy policy is industrial strategy. If we do not fix that, industry will die because no industrial strategy can succeed without reliable electricity.” This is already killing industries in Nigeria as power value is reported to represent between 30 and 40 per cent of producer’s manufacturing value. And for some producers, the power value is as excessive as 60 per cent.
“You know the story. It (energy) is killing your industry. Manufacturers spent an estimated N1.3 trillion on self-generated power in 2025, up from N781 billion in 2023, with energy now accounting for as much as 35 to 40 per cent of production costs. Here, some people even say 60 per cent of their operating costs. Whereas energy makes up roughly between 5.0 and 15 per cent manufacturing costs in countries such as India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Turkey, Mexico and South Africa.”
He remarked that the strategic level the place Asia is thrashing Nigeria and most of Africa, is power value which it subsidies for its producers. For Asia, power and water is subsidised however in factories need to generate their very own energy and have their very own boreholes. “So energy policy has to be part of industrial policy.”
Yamkella acknowledged that international locations don’t industrialise just by producing coverage paperwork. According to him, industrial coverage issues solely when it turns into productive capability, funding, know-how, competitiveness, pushes worth addition and creates jobs. Otherwise, it’s as good as a bit of paper.
He, due to this fact, tasked authorities on sensible, deliberate implementation of industrial coverage. Policy, he stated, is one facet of the coin. And authorities deciding that it’ll drive industrialisation one other.
That is how the Asians have performed it. Because the dangers and constraints are many though Nigeria has the important foundations for an industrial powerhouse. Yet, he reminded his viewers that potential just isn’t efficiency. Otherwise manufacturing contributions shouldn’t be between seven and eight per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as it’s at present in Nigeria. In addition, manufacturing exports generate solely 3.0 per cent of the nation’s export income, which, he stated, is way beneath a number of different African friends.
He identified that Nigeria’s largest financial paradox has been that the nation has a big market and considerable assets, but imports dominate on a regular basis consumption.
“I am aware of the government’s effort to change this narrative through the Nigerian industrial policy launched on February 17 this year. Nigeria’s industrial challenge is therefore not a shortage of ambition or enterprise. It is the need to convert scale into productivity, competitiveness, and exports. So we must ask ourselves what it will take to make this ambition a reality at a time that the world is changing,” he stated.
One of the methods to grasp Nigeria’s industrial ambition is for the federal government to make sure that its newly launched industrial coverage should change into industrial motion.
The former UNIDO chief stated, “Policy is simply the start line. The true take a look at of any industrial coverage lies not in its design alone, however within the execution. So there are key parameters that authorities should monitor intentionally to test if the coverage is working. These parameters are what number of new factories are being established as a result of of the brand new coverage? How many current factories are increasing? How a lot home worth is created? How a lot funding is mobilised?
“I say this because in my career at UNIDO, over 75 countries I went to, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the European countries, China, you name it, their governments are actually visiting factories to measures performance. If it is not going where they want it, the government will put public capital and change policy. The countries I know in Asia that made that break, like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and others who are catching up, Vietnam, Cambodia, their governments measure how many new factories did we create?”
Yamkella stated that reasonably than ready for MAN to complain, governments in Nigeria ought to be asking MAN: how will we assist your members develop? That’s how Indians develop.
He added, “That is why when the consultant came here to look at your textile sector, he looked at the cost of energy and water in Nigerian factories and said that even with cheap labour, you cannot compete because we find other ways to subsidise them by making electricity cheap. So government itself must want to measure and be a friend of MAN and the manufacturers on how to make them do better so that they can create jobs and wealth? It is deliberate policy. It is not just a paper. Government has to be deliberate. But there’s some hope.”
Apart from addressing the excessive value power, Yamkella stated that Nigeria should assume past its borders by change into world’s dominant gamers in cement. fertiliser and electrical automotive battery manufacturing. This, he acknowledged, would require a brand new provide chain that can hyperlink the nation with Togo and Congo.
“Now, fertilizer. Nigeria is producing urea. Togo has phosphate, and Congo has potash. Nigeria could be top five producer of fertilizer in five years. That is the aim, that is the dream. That is why Nigeria must think beyond its borders. You have the core already; your neighbours have the others. Morocco, Togo, Congo. It’s about you producing. But industrial policy should support that now to grow. How do we make that transform Nigeria into one of the leading fertilizer producers of the world? Because I tell you, from America to Europe, everybody’s struggling for fertilizer, ”he stated.
Yamkella additionally believed that Nigeria can lead Africa in vehicle manufacturing through the use of deliberate coverage actions to drive manufacturing.
He stated: “Nigeria’s industrial future cannot be defined by domestic market alone. Nigeria must manufacture for Nigeria, but also for West Africa, the rest of Africa, and in fact, the world. The opportunity before us is greater than the constraints. I know that, yes, Nigeria can be the powerhouse and the hub for West Africa, and in fact, for the rest of the continent as well.”
He recognised that Nigeria has one of Africa’s largest automotive markets and vital assembling capability. But remarked that there’s hole between license capability and precise manufacturing that reminds us that license usually are not factories. According to him, “installed capacity is not production and assembly without local value chains is not industrial transformation.”
Nevertheless, the chance, nevertheless, is substantial in Nigeria to compete in electrical bikes, battery swapping programs, buses, fleet automobiles, battery packs meeting, charging infrastructure, and different elements for the automotive business.
“But the biggest opportunity I see, and you are doing it already because your solid minerals policy on lithium that says if you want our lithium, you should process 30 per cent here,” he stated, including that Nigeria has “one coverage already that’s already attracting three, 4 corporations to course of your lithium. Put one other coverage to say now you make the batteries right here.
“You become the battery hub for the region. That is industrial policy in action. But it has to be backed now by other policies,”he stated.
Yamkella stated that it’s good that Nigeria has come again to embrace industrial coverage after a long time of deindustrialisation that was occasioned by wholesale embrace of the Washington Consensus that it’s all about market liberalisation on the premise that industrial coverage just isn’t mandatory anymore.
“And of course, Africa followed that doctrine. And a lot of industries died, especially here (Nigeria). UNIDO did studies here in Nigeria during my tenure to show the death of Nigerian industry. And we call it de-industrialisation because Nigeria suddenly opened its market. Well, when I went to Asia, it was the opposite. They were still supporting industry.” The Asians by no means listened. They continued to make use of public capital, public coverage to straight help the business,” he added.
