Senate Committee on Industry, on Wednesday, expressed disappointment over the present state of the 23 Industrial Development Centres (IDCs) across the country.
According to the committee, nothing tangible has been going on at the centres to justify the name by which they were conceptualised.
The Chairman of the committee, Sen. Sam Egwu, made its position known on Wednesday when he led members on an oversight function to the IDC in Port Harcourt.
He held the view that successive administrations had truncated the vision that informed the establishment of the IDCs.
“For any nation to develop industrially, middle-skill manpower is needed, and this is the idea of establishing the IDCs.
“But what we have seen here is nothing to write home about. We have seen obsolete and non-existent workshops.
“From what we are told, most of the equipment were installed over 20 years ago but never commissioned because of lack of electricity or power,” he said.
According to Egwu, the non-usage of the equipment resulted in most of them being cannibalised and becoming obsolete.
“There is nothing actually on the ground and yet we talk about industrialisation.
“It’s unfortunate, we’ve made our observations and as a committee, we’ll report and ensure that appropriate steps are taking to preserve the IDCs because they are veritable centres for development”, he said.
Egwu emphasised the need for Public Private Partnership (PPP) framework so as to get the funds needed to revive the IDCs and achieve the set objectives.
Dr. Dikko Umaru, Director-General, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), said the main objective of setting up the IDCs was to develop middle-level skill manpower for growth the nation’s economy.
“In fact, the IDCs are meant to be a place where there is common facilities , thereby reducing the cost of production for the entrepreneurs.
“IDCs are designed to be the springboard for industrialisation of the nation through the training of middle-level manpower”, he said.
Umaru pointed out that only seven out 23 IDCs across the country were partially working saying SMEDAN took over their running from the Federal Ministry of Trade and Investment in 2010.
He said the IDCs had not been funded for capital projects and overhead since 2011.
“Staff salaries have not been paid up to date apart from the salaries of the security men and this is due to overhead that is not available,” he said.
The DG appealed to the senate committee to help recover the land belonging to the IDCs that have been encroached upon by trespassers due to a long period of inactivity at most of the centres.
