On the 17th of October, 2024, the federal legislative House sitting in Abuja captured in its publication a bill to ensure mandatory patronage of locally produced goods ably sponsored by Honorable Obi Aguocha, the member representing Ikwuano and Umuahia Federal Constituency and also a member of the Labour Party. This bill we’re told followed a consolidation of three House Bills, 85, 1007, and 1330 sponsored respectively by Honorable Obi Aguocha from Abia State, Honorable Nnamdi Ezechi representing Ndokwa, Ukwuani Constituency from Delta state, and Honorable Jesse Okey Onuakulusi representing Oshodi Isolo Federal Constituency and a native of Anambra State.

Recorded for the credit of these three gentlemen in the House legislative diary on the 17th of October, is a Bill for an Act for Mandatory Procurement (first option) of Locally Made Products, Goods, and Services by Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies to Encourage Local Manufacturers and Indigenous Companies. The Bill further seeks to prohibit any procurement process that excludes local content goods and services which are mandatorily obligated with the first offer of refusal as prescribed under the new procurement processes. This is truly a landmark legislation by all intent and purposes.

The Bill having scaled through the second reading is now referred to in legislative parlance for further legislative work before being passed as a House bill. Therefore this piece of important legislation is on the throes of its passage and may also be said to be on the verge of history. The lead proponent/exponent and Chief sponsor of the Bill, Hon. Obi Aguocha together with his co-sponsors have put their names in the historical apogee parliamentary titans of the 10th legislative House for exceptional advocacy in their fight for the ordinary Nigerian masses who are being suffocated by harsh economic policies of the present regime. They will be remembered as those House members that thought outside of the box in bringing about economic resuscitation for the suffering masses of this country being bedeviled by economic injustice. They will also be celebrated as heroes at this tipping time of socio-economic and political upheaval.

This Bill when eventually passed into law will have the capacity to totally reset our socioeconomic alchemy and bring avuncular revolutionary turnaround to the ordinary Nigerians. The essence of leadership being to lead so that the people will follow. The local content legislation is expected to mandate us into beginning to take our manufacturing sector seriously, locally made goods and services will now be emphasized under the law. Local expertise will be chosen where available instead of foreign expertise. Our raw materials will be used to manufacture goods locally and shipped abroad instead of the other way round of shipping both the raw materials and the manufacturing operation abroad. Innoson motors for instance and other car manufacturers in the country will be given the option of first refusal in supply requests before resorting to foreign importation of the same products where they exist in their local production lines. It will become more economically expedient and beneficial to import machineries, plants to upscale our local industries and create the jobs here than taking manufacturing abroad.

Ministries, Government Departments and Agencies will be committing crimes punishable under our laws if they import goods and services that can be sourced locally from abroad if there exists evidence that such goods and services can be sourced locally. Import bills will drastically reduce, by some emperical estimates put at 50% or even more. GDP of the country will rise astronomically due to increased volume of production. Foreign Exchange pressures will scale down drastically and possibly appreciate the naira to less than N1000 to the dollar. This landmark legislation will be our own equivalent of de-dollarization policy being pursued by the BRICS nations. The IMF/World Bank will tone down and be the ones begging us instead of we going to them with our caps in our hands.

Inflationary pressures will reduce to bring consequential values addition to the naira since the Bill if properly worked on and passed will flood the landscape with more goods and services and spiral new opportunities. Under this Bill, our often preferences and huge appetite for foreign goods consumption will be curtailed since we will through this legislation be made to be living within our means of production. What more will the crafter of such revolutionary Bill ever wish for in countenancing his people’s survival? The Bill will bring with it, an entire new economic landscape and lifestyle, a new mindset and an economic stimulus package that can only better be imagined. It will work for you and me, it will work for the entire nation without prejudice to the things that continually divide us. Do we really have a choice as a nation that is down already outside of this Bill? The answer to me is as always, an irrefutable no. This Bill’s proposition is just about the only choice available to us.

Make no mistake about it, China in the 1970s under Chairman Mao Tse Tung decreed foreign goods out of China and locked up its nation while transitioning from its cultural revolution to the free market economy. By the time it opened its doors to foreign competition about a decade later, the world could only just be reduced to watching as the Chinese dragon economic miracle began to drag the global economic space and became unstoppable. India did the same with its people, resorting only to local consumption by locking out foreign goods again during the 1980s. They were able to make an Indian, Tata Group the biggest conglomerate in the entire world at the time and produced the richest man in the 1990s. This was the direct outcome of local content economy which proliferated economic opportunities throughout India. Today IMF/World Bank are begging India to leverage the Western economy by lending them much needed investment money.

The list is inexhaustive, Indonesia, Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, all pushed their national economies to irreversible limits simply by introducing inward looking policies of local content as the Obi Aguocha Bill is pursuing for our country today.

By the time this time honored Bill is passed into law, measures will be introduced through reorientation of the citizens to mobilize Nigeria’s huge population resources from consumption economic template to production as it was done in the aforementioned economies that turned their various countries around in no time. Our huge youthful population will expectedly participate in productive economic activities with everyone having a piece of the action. The Impact or consequence of this Bill’s application will be a huge demand on the energy consumption resulting from increased volumes of economic activities which gap we expect should further demand for energy security. We expect the crafter and drafter of the Bill to deal with issues connected with energy guarantees in the concluding legislative works before the Bill’s final presentation and passage of the legislation.

This Bill supports the legislative agenda of Mr Speaker of the House of Representatives who promised economic transformation for the populace during his inaugural speech. The Bill is also consistent with Mr Peter Obi and Obidients manifesto which also promised driving a production economic agenda for the nation. The bill will also concur with new Tinubunomics policy models turning to local remedies, like transitioning to the use of gaseous energy to power our industrial machines, investment in local refineries, CNG investment, investments in LPG, etcetera in search of economic revival. It is an understatement to say that Obi Aguocha’s Bill will be an ultimate game changer. It is indeed one piece of legislation that brings a breathe of fresh air and offers a near revolutionary change of economic mindset and landscape.

Credit will go the present 10th House of Representatives for speedy passage of this life changing and economic revival Bill and also to President Tinubu for resting on our collective wisdom to assent to the Bill into a law. History is indeed beckoning for everybody.
Dr. Engr Odo Ijere.