PAPDAN tasks govt on phone assembly plants

The Phones and Allied Dealers Association of Nigeria (PAPDAN) has urged the Federal Government to formulate policies that will encourage building of cell phones assembly and packaging plants in the country. Mr Godfrey Nwosu, President of PAPDAN made the plea in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Lagos on Thursday.

He said that the assembly plants would create employment opportunities and generate income for the economy. Nwosu said that such policies if well implemented would benefit the country immensely and reduce crime and insecurity. According to him, Nigeria has provided one of the best rooms for new Mobile phones in Africa. He noted that no other country had been able to compete with what Nigeria had done with the introduction of the ‘alternative brands’.

Nwosu said that `alternative brands’ were those brands that were not the usual brands people were familiar with, saying that most of those brands having entered Nigerian markets, found a fertile ground to grow. The PAPDAN boss said that it was because Nigeria had a tech savvy population that could buy and a tech savvy people always wishful of the new techs in the country. “I don’t want to see Nigeria as a consuming economy. “The government can start somewhere from assembly or making sure that some of the components or packaging are done in Nigeria.

That is the way to grow an economy. “If all the mobile phones that come into the country come in without the packaging and all the companies producing the phones should outsource their packaging to Nigerian companies; you can image the number of jobs it will create. “Most of the time, people do not care about the packaging no matter how beautiful they are; it is only the substance that people are interested in.

“We cannot just sit down and let other countries finish the products and take advantage of where we are supposed to create employment,’’ Nwosu said. He noted that the foreign companies took advantage of the profits they were making from the country. Nwosu said that setting up an assembly plants should not be a big deal. According to him, some of the Mobile phones’ companies have chosen to build their plants in other African countries not providing them with the market.

“You can imagine that Nigerians are the ones consuming and other countries enjoying the dividends through the setting up of assembly plants, creating more employment and generating more income,’’ he said. Nwosu advised government to look inwards and sometime engage people in the sector. He said that the government sometime categorised the dealers in mobile phones industry as informal, whereas there were lots of formality in what they do.

The Information and Technology (IT) expert suggested that there should be more engagement. Nwosu said that government should talk to the players that understood the industry for advice on how the boom in IT sector could help the country. He, however, advised that government should reserve some areas for manufacturing companies and ensure that there is adequate power supply.