allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Minding Our Businesses (Page 1 of 1)

These days any right-thinking person in Nigeria has the right to wonder just why some of those who call themselves our leaders are knowingly losing focus. Otherwise one could scarcely explain why anyone would propose that government agencies and public officers should stop buying brands like Peugeot cars, which are assembled by an indigenous firm, and buy Japanese products instead.

In the past, governments from the federal to the local level had made it a point of duty to purchase cars for their officials from Peugeot Automobile Nigeria (PAN) Plc. This was to ensure the survival and profitability of the company in which the federal government had controlling shares. The French made cars had served the nation well; they were rugged, comfortable and, for governments at least, affordable. But with the privatisation and monetisation policies of the Obasanjo administration, both of which were controversial, PAN's fortunes have been changing. A private company holds the controlling stake now, and government holds just 15 per cent. The two policies have gradually eroded the monopoly enjoyed by the company, with governments veering into purchasing different brands of cars.

Market forces are not the only determinants of PAN's disadavantaged trading. Some public officers have in recent times launched a secret onslaught on the company, a spectre that could undermine its operations. We have it on goood authority that whereas President Umaru Musa Yar'adua prefers that public officers in his government should continue to patronise PAN, some in the government want officials to be allowed to buy cars of their own choice. The latter option is a misplacement of priorities.

The move against PAN was spearheaded by a very senior member of the National Assembly who has been trying to convince legislators and government agencies to buy Japanese-made vehicles from the brand's main distributor, Elizade Nigeria Limited, who are his friends. Although the move may appear legal, it does

not make sense at all to push it at a time when most of the manufacturing industries in the country have either collapsed or are tottering on the brinks, due to the previous government's misguided policies. Buying cars manufactured abroad would lead to not only capital flight but also the crippling of the local industries. For example, the erosion of protectionist policies across the years in the name of privatisation has helped wipe out almost all the major industries in the North, with the United Nigeria Textiles Limited (UNTL) going down only a few weeks ago. The federal government under Obasanjo paid lip service to intervening actively to save the industries, and the result is what we are witnessing today - shutdowns and increasing the army of unemployeds. PAN, which remains the only major industry standing in the region, is unwittingly marked for liquidation through the miscalculation of such northern leaders as the big man in the National Assembly. And they are not doing so in order to help any section of the country but foreign interests.

Any country worth its name takes pride in its local brands or ones in which its citizens have controlling stakes. That is why foreign missions use cars from their own countries. We believe, sincerely too, that all public officers should buy cars assembled by indigenous companies like PAN. They should not calculate everything in terms of naira and kobo. There is morality attached to taking public office. It borders on committing a crime not to patronise our own industries. Embracing foreign industries at the expense of our own makes nonsense of the ongoing 'Buy Made-in-Nigeria' campaign.

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