Moghalu plans N1trn fund for creative, start-ups industry

PRESIDENTIAL candidate of Young Progressive Party (YPP), Prof. Kingsley Moghalu, has in Lagos unveiled N1 trillion venture capital fund for the creative industry and start-up business in Nigeria, promising to implement the programme if elected as the next president of Nigeria.

Moghalu, while declaring that Nigeria remained a capitalist economy, with no attempt yet to figure “out how to run a successful capitalist economy,” said he was poised to move for the abolition of the Land Use Act in the country through a constitutional amendment.

Moghalu unveiled the programme at an interactive session with the small business owners, creative industry practitioners and media at the Freedom Park in Lagos, saying that this public-private sector-led initiative would see his government contributing N500million and private sector contributing N500million.

According to the former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the fund will not be managed by the government but the private sector to ensure effective and efficient disbursement to Nigerians, assuring that the approach would solve the unemployment challenge currently plaguing the country.

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“If elected, my government would introduce capital into the economy so that entrepreneurs won’t rely so much on bank loans. The fund interest will exceed one digit unlike the bank loans with 30% interest,” Moghalu said.

He said the fund would target creative industry and small businesses which had proven to be the driver of any economy in the world.

“The venture capital fund would be part owner in the business it is giving you capital to establish. All you need is a bright business idea that is marketable.

“It would be managed by the private sector part of the partnership to create wealth,” he explained.

The former CBN deputy governor also disclosed plan to set up skills training centres in each of the 774 local government areas in the country if elected next February, pointing out that one of the major advantages of his presidency for Nigeria and the ordinary Nigerians would be that for the first time, the country would have a president who understands how to manage a national economy.

“There is too much poverty in Nigeria. The way you wedge a successful war against poverty is by tackling the factors that create poverty. Those factors include unemployment and unproductive workforce, low wages, lack of skills in the labour force and absence of capital for new businesses,” he said.

Speaking further, Moghalu also said that his government had developed a strategy to curb piracy of the intellectual property, promising to put in place a very tight intellectual property regime.

“How do we protect the intellectual property of Nigerians? If you write a book, you are going on the streets and you are seeing copies of that same book pirated and produced so cheaply, that means intellectual property rights are not enforced in our country.

“The musicians, the entertainers, the creative industry in this country, are all suffering from all these. We need to have a very tight intellectual property regime.

“The second requirement for successful capitalism is innovation. Innovation comes from intellectual property as well. People have ideas about how to invent new things that can solve problems for society.

“I want to drive an innovation-driven economy in this country because it is an economy that is driven by new ideas that are sustainable in the 21st Century. What we would do is that we would encourage inventors and innovators,” he said.

Declaring that Nigeria is a capitalist economy, but with no effort yet to figure out how to run a successful capitalist economy, Moghalu lamented that while there few people were making a lot of money in the country, a lot of others were getting poorer.

“This is wrong and I am going to fix it. The secret to a successful capitalist economy is in three factors present. Those factors are property right, innovation and capital.

“You can’t have capitalism without capital. Property rights in Nigeria don’t exist to the extent they should. Let’s start with the land.

“The states by Nigeria’s constitution own all the land. This is a fundamental contraction of any capitalist economy. That is because the states owing all the land, limits access to a very important aspect of economic production and land are one of those factors,” he said.

He, therefore, promised to move for the abolition the Land Use Act through a constitutional amendment, saying this would make individuals own land in perpetuity.

“So, we would move for the abolition of the Land Use Act through a constitutional amendment, so that individuals can own land in perpetuity.

“That way, you abolish the bureaucracy around the Certificate of Occupancy, which is a whole industry in itself as it creates a lot of logjams in the smooth functioning of economic transactions,” the former CBN chief said.