Prominent leaders from the North-Central zone have mobilised support to transform the zone into an industrial powerhouse, calling for an immediate end to the direct export of unprocessed raw materials.

They made the call at the Stakeholders’ Development Summit in Abuja on Monday. Leading the call, former Minister of Women Affairs, Pauline Tallen, pointed out that the geopolitical zone has all the critical inputs needed to build a massive manufacturing and mineral-processing economy.

Ms Tallen noted that the North Central zone, comprising Benue, Kogi, Kwara, Nasarawa, Niger, Plateau and Abuja, was strategic.

“It is the heart of Nigeria, and the region’s vast natural wealth provides the foundational baseline for rapid industrial expansion,” she said.

She argued that political fragmentation has been the main barrier to turning raw resources into manufactured goods, urging leaders to build a unified economic front.

“What we only lack is the cohesion, the unity, the patriotism, the love to work together,” she added.

Commending President Bola Tinubu for establishing the North-Central Development Commission (NCDC), the former minister said that the commission must be utilised specifically to drive factory setup and infrastructure deployment.

Ms Tallen insisted that state governors and federal ministers must align their policies directly with the NCDC to create a seamless environment for heavy industry and processing plants.

Warning against purely political talk shops, Tallen urged immediate industrial execution, pointing to the region’s high-value mineral deposits as untapped industrial fuel.

Pointing to value-addition as the pathway, Ms Tallen said, “We are sitting on gold, diamonds, and lithium. What we need to do is unite and implement.”

She further tasked the NCDC to ensure that the human capital for this industrial transformation includes marginalised groups, explicitly calling for women, youth, and persons with disabilities to be integrated into new industrial programmes.

Delivering the keynote address, former deputy foreign affairs minister Iyorwuese Hagher laid out a stark critique of the region’s current economic model, which relies on exporting raw items rather than manufacturing finished products.

Mr Hagher noted that despite sitting at the geographic centre of trade corridors, the region functions merely as an extractor of raw wealth for other entities to refine.

To execute this industrial pivot, Mr Hagher demanded the immediate construction of agro-processing factories, cold-chain storage logistics, and specialised industrial parks across Benue, Nasarawa, Niger, Kogi, and Kwara.

Addressing operational bottlenecks, Hagher emphasised that ongoing rural insecurity directly halts industrial supply chains, framing peace as a non-negotiable prerequisite for factory operations.

(NAN)