‘Regular Power Supply Crucial To Nigeria’s Rapid Industrial Growth’
The federal and state governments have been urged to channel more resources to provision of basic amenities like electricity, potable water and other incentives that will accelerate the growth of small and medium scale industries in the country.
The publisher of Pagepedia magazine, Mr. Abiodun Sowemimo who gave the charge in an interview with newsmen in Lagos yesterday, said such gesture apart from reducing the current high cost of doing business would help fight unemployment since hundreds of jobs would be created by thriving businesses.
He the federal government through the Bank for Industries should make more funds available as loans to assist industrialists establish new industries while existing ones should also benefit to expand their operations.
According to him, “Governments can help us fast internet access, stable power supply and funds because I realize that in 1977 Steve Jobs got over $250000 from the United States Government to start Apple and to the glory of God today Apple is worth over $450billion. But I found myself in an environment that you are the government of your own though we are not saying that we have to place everything on government. We will do what we have to do but if the government can support us to give us an edge over our competitors. I don’t think we have competitors for now”.
He said his company, due to the epileptic power supply across the country including Lagos had been generating its own electricity most of the time revealing that the area was without public power for seven months, a period in which they depended on generator.
Running on generator for weeks and months sometimes, at a time the cost of fuel and diesel was very high does not augur well for the nation’s socio-economic development and largely responsible for the high cost of doing business in Nigeria.
Sowemimo said his motivation into publishing was fired after he discovered that over 80percent of websites on the internet were not genuine and needed to check this anomaly.
“Over time, I realized that when you go online, 87percent of the websites are fake. Most of these blogs are not verified and when and we try to bring about third party verification and online identity platform that will showcase real original content.
“If you log in to Goggle to do any check, it will not give you original content it will refer you to other websites, other blogs so I said to myself I can go online and create original website for myself and Google will showcase it. And I said in our generation all these have to stop so we came up with PageOmni Technology with our first application.
“We started profiling people. When you search our platform you will find original content. For instance if I live in the United States and I need to do business in Nigeria and don’t know the people I want to partner with are genuine, all I need to do is to visit this website search for the company and read the promotional content description. If I see the approved seal on it I will be convinced that this is the company and I can go ahead to contact them to do business with them”.
He said the profiling and individual or corporate body cost N150000 each adding that subscribers are immortalized and their legacies kept including video and audio recording.
Answering a question, he said, “They are the ones who should be paying royalties to us because we immortalize their legacies. If you buy a magazine in 50 years it will die but we are keeping an archive of these people even long after they are no more. Information on them will live in the sands of time, it will be in our data base where people can search, people can learn from it and get information there. It will change the perspective of the younger generation on subscribers”.
On why he ventured into publishing magazine despite its high cost, Sowemimo said people would continue to read hard copy insisting that the internet cannot replace newspapers and magazines. “When you are inside an airline, market and hotel, you read the hard copy and not the internet. More importantly Pagepedia magazine is a life living magazine”, he said.
