Nigeria’s manufacturing, productive, and extractive industries are sleeping. Factories under lock. Mines unopened. Talent unemployed. They are not dead. They are only asleep. And they will grow weak if we do not act. What will wake them? Access to credit.
Credit is the blood, the life wire of every industrial revolution. It wires power into machines. It wires salaries into homes. It wires raw materials into finished goods. Without credit, industries sleep. When credit flows, industries rise. And when industries rise, jobs are created, wealth is built, poverty is defeated, and disorder leaves our streets.
This is not theory. It is law. The National Institute of Credit Administration, chartered by Act No. 26 of 2022, is the statutory body mandated to make credit safe, disciplined, and accessible. Nigeria, do not let your industries grow weak. Give them credit. Wake them up. Because a nation without credit is a nation without a pulse.
Look across the nation: textile mills in Kaduna run at 10% capacity. Solid mineral deposits in Zamfara remain unmapped and unfinanced. Agro-processors in Benue cannot buy machines to turn cassava into starch. These are not failures of talent. They are failures of capital. Only one instrument can wake them: access to credit
Credit is the life wire of the 21st-century economy. It is the current that powers dormant factories, the capital that extracts buried wealth, the confidence that turns a business plan into 500 jobs. A people-centred economy cannot run on cash alone. Cash maintains, Credit multiplies. If we do not wire credit into the bloodstream of our industries now, they will not just sleep—they will grow too weak to stand when the world’s next industrial revolution arrives. The consequences are stark: continued poverty, youth unemployment, and disorder in our social system. The solution is statutory. The National Institute of Credit Administration, established by Act No. 26 of 2022, is chartered to professionalize credit, enforce discipline, and expand access.
To policymakers: Stop treating credit as a banking product. Treat it as national infrastructure. To banks: Lend to production, not just to government. To Nigerians: Demand a credit-denominated economy, because that is the economy that will put you to work. When credit wakes our industries, Nigeria’s wealth will rise. And when Nigeria’s wealth rises, every citizen rises with it.
I am Professor Chris Onalo, Registrar/CEO, NICA, chartered. Email me: registrar@icanigeria.net, website- www.icanigeria.net
*If only you can picture the direction NICA is going: It’s wise to become a “Life Member” of NICA…. Use your tongue to count your teeth, the future is super bright for the NICA membership community.
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