‘Foreign artisans send home N900bn from Nigeria’

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 […]

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.”
The C-STEmp board was inaugurated by the president of Real Estate Developers Association of Nigeria (REDAN) Rev Ugochukwu Chime.
Chime who described the 17 million housing shortage in Nigeria as human factor identified “lack of political will to do the right thing in our various areas of competence” as cause of the problem.
He stressed the importance of artisans’ training saying well trained artisans earn more than many who sit in public offices.
The president of the Nigerian Institute of Building (NIoB), Mr Tunde Lasabi while rendering a goodwill message attributed shortage of Nigerian artisans to unwillingness of parents to lead their children to the path of becoming artisans and craftsmen.
Arc. Bashir Haiba who is Managing Director of Abuja Property Development Company (APDC) charged developers to make it part of their corporate social responsibility to train artisans on site while developing their estates.
Nigerian graduates, Haiba said are prisoner of paper because they can hardly reduce their cognitive knowledge to practical task.