The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, on Tuesday, urged Nigerians to embrace maintenance economy to create jobs for youths and professionals in the country.
Fashola, made the call during a panel discussion at the Facility Management (FM) Day with the theme “Tackling the Poor Maintenance Culture in Nigeria,” organised by Klinserv Solutions Ltd., in Lagos.
Fashola, while delivering a speech on behalf of Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, said the nation needed to build a maintenance economy that would create more jobs.
Maintenance economy is the conservation of materials by every individual involved with maintenance to ensure the proper use of parts and labour, leading to durability of assets.
Fashola said the nation’s infrastructure had the potential to create several jobs for professionals, artisans and skilled youths.
“Until we create a maintenance economy, it will be difficult for those young ones to find jobs and we have already started,” the minister noted.
According to him, the Federal Government was developing a strategic plan to guide the overall maintenance activities in the nation.
He said the plan would be designed based on international infrastructure management manual.
“The goal would be to establish a worldwide acceptable asset management framework from there to create employment for SMEs,’’ he said.
He explained that the approach would ensure documentation of assets, their valuation, define service level, determine risk levels, and make plans for maintenance or replacement.
Fashola added that his ministry had picked some buildings to use as models for facility management.
Some of the buildings, he said, included the Power House Building, Ministry of Works Headquarters, National Hospital, Federal Medical Centre in Jabi and some TCN sub stations and transmission lines among others.
He said the models would be taken to the Federal Executive Council for approval and execution.
He added that this would ensure growth in the economy and create business for small operators that provide maintenance products.
“The financial benefit to government is the quality of its stock of assets and as Nigeria moves compellingly to the international public sector accounting standards.
“This is something that must become a way of life; really, in not only identifying, enumerating and assessing the quality of assets that we own but also probably inventorising it,’’ Fashola said.
He added that maintenance of infrastructure related jobs was able to drive the nation’s largest workforce by about 75 per cent.
“Maintenance economy is a very strong commitment of the Buhari administration,’’ the minister said.
The Managing Director, Klinserv Solutions Ltd., Dr Olatunde Ayeye, said dilapidated facilities doted the entire nation due to poor maintenance culture, hence the need for a policy framework to correct the anomaly.
Mr Brent Omdahl, Commercial Counselor, U.S. Mission to Nigeria, during the panel discussions, said Nigeria, being an oil based economy, developed a ‘lackadaisical attitude’ towards maintenance.
He stressed the need to increase the tax drive to fund investment in maintenance of facilities by adopting new technologies from U.S.
