The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, has called on the Federal Government to patronize local manufacturers of cars.
He made the appeal when the Chief of Defense Staff, Gen Gabriel Olonisakin, appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Defense in Abuja.
Gbajabiamila, who was on an assessment tour of the budget defence sessions between the standing committees and ministries, departments and agencies, said the country must support locally produced products.
He said, “As I listened to you (Olonisakin), I heard you talking about indigenous manufacturers.
For us, that is very key and important. Either by way of legislation or budgeting, we encourage indigenous manufacturers.
The issues of local content that we all hear about, many people think it is restricted to the petroleum industry that is the cash cow.
But I think that if we don’t have a country, we cannot have a petroleum ministry.
“So, the issue of local content must spread, even to security matters.
And we have men and women who are capable of delivering the goods, as you have stated here.
There is Innoson, there are so many of them. There is a Proforce.
There are so many of them, we just need to encourage and fund them.
I am glad that you are doing that and we are on the same page when it comes to that.”
Gbajabiamila stressed that the House of Representative is ready to support the armed forces and other security agencies.
