Artisans Hold Key To Nigeria’s Industrial Revolution – Barr Natasha Akpoti

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Barrister Natasha Hadiza Akpoti, is a lawyer and a Masters in Business Administration MBA holder in oil and gas. She quit her job in the oil and gas industry to pursue her passion for business development with a penchant for aiding organisations maximise performance. In this interview with NSE ANTHONY-UKO, she bares her mind on her project, the Builders Hub Impact Investment Program which focuses a lot on Nigerian made goods and how this can help in kickstarting the much needed industrial revolution in the country from the grassroots.

How would you assess the housing sector in Nigeria today?

On the one hand, there are lot of houses and estates being built but they are mostly empty. On the other hand, the populace are homeless. The major problem with this is the prices of the houses. They are too expensive for the average person to afford. Why won’t something be expensive when you are using everything foreign? The high price of mortgages remain the biggest challenge to affordable housing in the country.

Your project, ‘the Builders Hub Impact Investment Program’, what is it about?

Builders Hub’s business concept is targeted towards creating a one-stop shop for affordable building, construction and home improvement materials ranging from raw materials, semi-finished and finished products. Our patronage advantage is to offer Nigerians sourced good quality products with low prices and fast delivery.

Nigeria has a lot of highly talented and creative people especially in the grassroots. We just want to educate the people on the different possibilities that they can explore, stir up their creativity to make a difference and empower themselves financially.

The world knows what Nigeria has, but the fear is that if they educate us too much, they are going to lose their market. All they tell is “we want to come and help out” and then we sign these bilateral agreements on trade. We keep buying from them even though we have everything we want. Most of them now come for our resources, take it back to their country, add value and bring back to sell to us at very expensive prices.

The spirit of Builder’s Hubs Impact Investment Program (BHIIP) reflects the character of our ancestors’ legacies. Those blacksmiths, carpenters and wood carvers, cloth weavers and others, who centuries ago without electricity and technology created works that presently adorn museums worldwide.

I am at a loss to think that blacksmiths in my ancestors generation made metal hunting tools but now we struggle to make worthy furniture hinges.

Nigeria is being announced as Africa’s largest economy. Therefore, it is time for Nigerians to seize this extraordinary opportunity by participating in BHIIP to turn around our economic status quo from an importing to an exporting nation.

Although I agree that a number of factors such as a reorientation of our educational system (which is presently focused on producing more employees rather than employers of labour) and awareness of socially responsible investment structures etc, ought to work in harmony for there to be an effective paradigm shift in achieving a sustainable wealthy economy, we as a people must empathically intend to start where we are, use what we have and do what we can!!!

Over the next few months, the BHIIP team shall reach rural communities in hunt for talented and industrious local enterprises capable of producing indigenous crafts and tools made from locally sourced materials like wood, metal, clay, to name a few. These crafts, whether in semi finished or finished form will complement the local and international building industry.

BHIIP will then carefully bridge investors with the sourced local enterprises. The investors shall support the entrepreneurs’ creativity and endorse that socially responsible investments can generate an impact, and equally meet their financial return requirements.

What is Impact investment?

Impact investment is a strategy to align the power of private markets to the social and environmental development needs of society at-large.distinguished form traditional investments by a deliberate intention to generate specific positive impact towards a society. In other words, to conscientiously invest in people and businesses to drive a social change to improve living standards.

In your assessment, what impact would the Builders Hub have on the Nigerian Building sector?

Almost every house in Nigeria is built with a number of imported products. This means a builder is paying 3 to 5 times the cost of a product imported against a Nigerian version of it. That means a house built with foreign products is most likely to cost 3 to 5 times more than a house built with Nigerian materials.

One can argue that Nigerian made goods are of low quality, but i bet my heart that Nigerian made goods for the building and construction market is a whole lot better in quality than imported ones. There are fundamental principles of sustainable architectural and civil engineering Nigerians tend to overlook in construction –

  1. Use local materials: It helps a house adapt easily to the environment its built in. A house made up of pure mud blocks or of mud and cement mix blocks would energy efficient and would not need as much cooling systems in place, offer security as mud walls are bullet proof and are cheaper.
  2. Use of natural products : They are healthy and not toxic. Do you know that for every ton of portland cement that is manufactured, an equal amount of carbon dioxide is released into the air, and a little keeps being release into your living spaces as the house is built? Why not use wooden floors instead of ceramic tiles? Don’t you know that the most exotic of homes in Europe are adorned with Mahogany and Teak floors, stair rail handles, floor to wall cladding? We must erase the misconception that Nigerian products are not good enough. We have the finest natural resources for the construction industry in the whole world, our granite, limescale, silica sand, wood, metals etc are the best. Builders Hub will through its Impact Investment program ensure there is a perfect synergy between our local and western technologies and that every product listed on the website would have passed through rigorous quality controls and certified by the Standards Organisations of Nigeria (SON).

What are the likely benefits of this project is to the Nigerian economy?

The impact for one is that Nigeria in the nearest future would be classified as a largely exporting country, not just importing.

We’ve talking about diversification but the only one I have seen is in the agriculture sector, we need to expand it to many other sectors.

The are two major benefits from which other subs emerge:

  1. Our 1000 from 1000 initiative ( we are touring Nigeria to source for 1000 local enterprises from 1000 underserved communities to be empowered and sell their products on the e-commerce platform for building and construction materials – Builders Hub) will make Nigeria an exporting nation and thus contribute significantly to the Nigeria’s GDP and in turn improve the economy
  2. Our grass root approach shall offer Nigeria a healthy and sustainable wealthy economy growth. This organic approach will only help drastically improve the Nigerian economy.
  3. Our “Do what you can with what you have wherever you are” much beloved Theodore Roosevelt quote is the foundation of our orientation program which kicks off in Okene Kogis state on the 27th of June 2015. This aims to educate Nigerians of the several self employment opportunities available to them if only they develop a positive intention and follow with affirmative actions. In no time, there would be a lot of entrepreneurs all around creating all sorts of made in Nigeria products.

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