The presidential candidate of the Young Progressive Party, Prof. Kingsley Moghalu, has revealed that, if elected as the Nigerian president, he will set up a N1tn venture capital fund for the creative industry and start-up businesses in the country.
Moghalu disclosed this during an interactive session with small business owners, creative industry practitioners and the media in Lagos. He explained that the fund would be public-private sector driven with his government contributing N500m and private sector contributing N500m.
He added that the fund would be managed by the the private sector to ensure effective and efficient disbursement to Nigerians to solve the unemployment challenge currently plaguing the country.
“If elected, our government would introduce capital into the economy so that entrepreneurs won’t rely so much on bank loans. The interest will not exceed one digit unlike the bank loans with 30 per cent interest.
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“There is too much poverty in Nigeria and the way out is to wage a successful war against poverty 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,” Moghalu said.
Moghalu said he has developed a strategy to curb piracy of intellectual property by having a 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, which 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,” Moghalu explained.
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