By Emameh Gabriel
The problem is right there in the dirt. Nigeria has some of the richest mineral and agricultural land in Africa, but walk into a factory in Nnewi or Aba and you will hear the same thing: we can’t get what we need. The lead for batteries, the clay for tiles, the starch for glue, it is either shipped out of the country raw, or it is too hard to process locally. So manufacturers spend a fortune importing it all back.
That was the quiet frustration in the room at a recent gathering of factory owners in Enugu. These are practical people. They deal in production lines and profit margins, not politics. The theme of their meeting was a technical one: “Exploring Opportunities for Backward Integration and Local Sourcing of Raw Materials.” But the subtext was survival.
The man walking up to the podium understood the contradiction better than most. His name is Professor Nnanyelugo Ike-Muonso, and his job title is a mouthful: Director-General of the Raw Materials Research and Development Council, or RMRDC. For years, his agency has catalogued the minerals under Nigeria’s soil and the crops in its fields. He knows exactly what is there.
But that day in Enugu, he didn’t begin by listing potentials or painting a grand vision of industrial glory. He didn’t talk more about potentials. He started, instead, with a single, stunning figure. A bill.
“In the first half of this year alone,” he told his audience, “Nigeria spent N3.53 trillion to import raw materials.” That is a frightening figure for any economy, especially one like ours.
Three and a half trillion Naira. On its own, it is just a figure. A big, abstract statistic. But Ike-Muonso did not let it stay that way. He broke it down into what it truly meant. That money, he explained, does not simply disappear. It goes overseas. It pays wages abroad. It builds factories on other continents—factories that are ultimately powered by rocks and plants dug from Nigerian soil. We were, in essence, funding someone else’s prosperity with our own inheritance.
“It is an existential threat. We export poverty and import unemployment,” he lamented.
Ike Muonso’s proposed solution is a piece of legislation called the RMRDC 30% Value Addition Bill. The idea is straightforward: if you want to export certain key raw materials—like lead, zinc, or sesame—you must first add at least 30% of its value here in Nigeria. Process it. Refine it. Turn it into something more than dirt in a shipping container.
“This is not about restriction,” he explained, anticipating the criticism. “It is about protection. It is about guaranteeing that our own industries have first access to what comes out of our own ground.”
The potential is staggering. His council projects the bill could pull $7.5 billion into the economy, create a quarter of a million jobs, and save billions more in import costs. It is a plan to turn Nigeria from a global supplier of raw ingredients into a regional hub for finished goods.
But in the audience, the manufacturers listened with a mix of hope and deep scepticism. They have heard big plans before. The Deputy Governor of Enugu State, Barr. Ifeanyi Ossai, voiced the critical hurdle. “Access to credit at single digit interest rates remains a major challenge,” he stated bluntly. A brilliant policy means nothing if a factory owner in Onitsha can’t get a loan to buy the machine needed to process local clay.
What made Ike Muonso’s pitch different was its specificity. This wasn’t just a national policy; it was a local map. He pointed to the geography of the room itself.
“Look around you,” he seemed to say. “Ebonyi is sitting on lead and zinc. Anambra can produce all the starch we need from cassava. Enugu has the clay for ceramics. The raw materials aren’t a thousand miles away. They are right here.”
He calls these “raw material corridors,” and his council has been quietly mapping them across the country. The idea is to create local ecosystems where a mine, a processing plant, and a factory are neighbours, not continents apart.
The Chairman of the manufacturers’ branch, Dr. Adaora Chukwudozie, put it plainly: “With over 65% of our production costs tied to imported inputs, this model is bankrupt.” For her and others on the factory floor, backward integration is not a policy choice. It is the only way forward.
As the meeting ended, Ike Muonso was given an award. It felt less like a trophy and more like a mandate. The path he is charting is brutally difficult. It requires fighting decades of export-focused habit, building infrastructure from the ground up, and convincing financial institutions to bet on Nigerian soil.
But the alternative is written in that N3.53 trillion invoice. It is the story of a nation that keeps selling its future by the shipload. Ike-Muonso’s job is to convince everyone, from the policy-makers in Abuja to the banker in Lagos to the welder in a Port Harcourt workshop, to finally start building with what they already have.
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