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Chairman of Artisans and Craftsmen Training Board, Mr. Musa Mshalgaya has revealed that foreign artisans and craftsmen working in Nigeria repatriate as much as N900 billion from Nigeria every year.
Mshalgaya who spoke shortly after his inauguration as chairman of advisory board of Construction Skills Training and Empowerment Programme (C-STEmp) in Abuja last week lamented that foreign artisans and craftsmen from West African countries like Benin Republic, Chad, Niger and Ghana have a combined number of nationals that are not less than 1 million operating in Nigeria. These artisans are into various aspects of operative housing works in Nigeria like carpentry, iron bending, welding, PoP and some of the areas that they have monopoly like brick work.
“They’ve virtually taken over that area of trade because our own trained artisans are aging out and new ones haven’t been trained to replace them. Plus the fact that many Nigerians feel they have other forms of work outside artisanship and craftsman,” Mshalgaya explained.
He said “In the country, [pay for] average skilled labour is about N3,000. When you multiply N3,000 by 1 million, you’re talking of N3 billion every day. When you have N3 billion by 365 days, you’re talking about average of N900 billion going outside this country as capital flight.”
I can hardly remember patronising foreign craftsmen or anyone doing that. But it really reflects our orientation in this country. Imagine how much 900 billion would affect our economy and GDP as a nation if only we made sure that money was kept in Nigeria and not in foreign pockets. Long live Nigeria.
This is what you get when you prefer to patronize foreign people and neglect what is made in Nigeria.
Ewo! See money. How do we pay them so much money?