Expert charges Nigerian professionals on innovation

The Co-Founder and Executive Partner at LoftInc Capital Allied Partners, Mr. Michael Oluwagbemi, has    called on professionals in  Nigeria to innovate to enable the nation’s economy witness the much-needed turn-around.

Making this charge in Lagos,  at the 35th Annual General Assembly of the Association of Professional Bodies of Nigeria (APBN), held recently,  Oluwagbemi  stated that  with  90 million of Nigeria’s almost 200 million people living in abject poverty, and  5million Nigerians  joining the labour force, annually, the country’s economy, no doubt needed a revamp.

He however described innovation as the only strategy left for the country to create jobs and avoid penury, staring the nation in the face.

Oluwagbemi therefore called on the nation’s professionals to be fully involved in the task of reconstructing the nation’s economy, noting that countries, such as the United States of America, China, Western Europe, Japan, South Korea and Australia, that had experienced such crisis before, were able to survive such; due to the intervention of professionals in those countries.

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“A professional has an exceptional obligation in promoting public interest and in particular, advancing  nation building. The United States of America was built by dedicated professionals of lawyers, accountants and scientists. So was China, |Western Europe, Japan, South Korea and Australia.

“We can not imagine a United States rising without the dedication of the likes of Thomas Edison or the great contributions of Bessemer to the industrialization of Europe.

“Innovation is therefore the only few lunch for us to create jobs and avoid penury. Hence for professionals to truly have impact to drive innovation and these economic transformations, they must lead innovation,” he added.

Oluwagbemi  expressed the belief that for the nation’s  professionals to drive innovation, there is the need to ‘re-imagine’ the nation’s education and create national occupational standards  instead of ‘copycatting’.

In his address at the event, APBN’s president, Engineer Olumuyiwa Ajibola noted that  politics alone would not change the  nation’s ‘unpleasant narratives’ of poverty and inability to meet the infrastructure and economic needs of its teeming population.

He therefore called on government to engage the nation’s professionals, as experts in the different fields that drive the nation’s economy, to enable them infuse quality knowledge-based ideas and advice into its policies.

“Our country clearly needs a truly professional-based Economic and Developmental Team to support the government in raising the quality of decisions on the economy, and the APBN is a veritable source of such weather –tested professionals who can stand their own in any clime,” the APBN boss added.