… Says doing business in Nigeria very difficult
By Chukwudi Nweje
President of Kingsway International Christian Centre (KICC), Pastor Matthew Ashimolowo, the convener of Christ Compassion for Rural World (CCRW) has charged the Federal Government to create short, medium and long term measures to address the chronic poverty in Nigeria.
He also advised that the Federal Government adopt ‘Keynesian economics’ to boost production.
He disagreed that Nigeria has a favourable ease of doing business, and noted that Nigerian business owners are harassed by federal and state revenue collection agencies.
He said, “In the short-term government should apply ‘Keynesian economics”, which argues that government should encourage industries to overproduce and then buy the excess that way there will be production, when government buys off the excesses and gives to the poor.
“In the medium term the government should take away the power of over-empowering few very rich men that we keep celebrating as multi billionaires meanwhile they cannot employ more than 100,000 people. Government should rather encourage small and medium enterprises, Nigerians are very entrepreneurial by nature, there is no house that does not have a shop in front of it, government calls them a setback but it is not a setback, those small shops should be empowered.
“In the long term the government must encourage industries to come up. They say it is easy to do business in Nigeria, it is a lie, I have businesses in Nigeria, it is not easy to do business, if you are doing business in Nigeria, you are harassed by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and the local inland revenue service.”
Ashimolowo, who spoke during an interview with journalists at the end of the six-day long Christ Compassion Crusade 2023 that held at the Igbogbo Stadium in Ikorodu, Lagos from November 6 to 11, said the crusade which gulped over N708 billion in material gifts donated by him and his friends to the needy was not about sharing palliative but for the purpose of blessing and showing compassion to the less privileged.
He further said, “Palliative is not the answer, I think palliative is short term, we don’t call out own palliative. The dictionary definition of palliative is something you give a man that is sick as temporary reprieve. Ours is not that, ours is to bless, we are here to touch people and show them compassion, we are not government.
“It cost me and my friends who donated gifts N708 billion. I know some governors who spend this amount on two cars, so just two cars of a governor can do this. There is poverty in the land and somebody is not getting it. If there were adequacy in the land, there wouldn’t have been any need for these people to come out here. The government must begin to do something”, Pastor Ashimolowo said.