Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has urged the relevant ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to support the “hustle” of Nigerians engaged in different enterprises by creating a conducive and enabling business environment.

In a statement on Monday in Abuja, Mr Osinbajo’s spokesman, Laolu Akande, said the vice president spoke at the Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Clinics Stakeholders’ Review Meeting at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

“Everybody knows that Nigerians are enterprising. Practically every Nigerian has some kind of business, as they say, some hustle or some other things that they are doing,” stated the vice president. “People need the right environment, and that is what our role is, to ensure that we understand that it is to facilitate and make it easier, not to become a stumbling block or a tollgate.”

The meeting was attended by heads and representatives of agencies, including Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), Bank of Industry (BOI) and Nigerian Export-Import Bank (NEXIM). Others were the heads of Bank of Agriculture (BOA), Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), among others.

“This is a country where people want and desire to work; the constraints are what we have to address; this would be dealt with by human beings and not spirits,” Mr Osinbajo added. “Our creativity and innovation must be first and foremost to remove the obstacles, that is what will solve Nigeria’s problems, implementation of the grand policies that we have and it depends on us.”

The vice president further said it had taken some young Nigerians three years to get registration numbers for their businesses.

He further explained that he was told that the same registration takes six weeks in some African nations.

“If you get food and drugs administration registration anywhere else, you can be in a Nigerian supermarket… and they come and compete with our own people here. This is happening in every respect, even with exports,” he said.

(NAN)