November 7, 2017

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has called for collaboration of the three arms of government to resolve issues of arbitration to further advance ease of doing business in Nigeria.

Osinbajo made the call during the Abuja Stakeholders Engagement Forum on the Ease of Doing Business which held in Abuja on Tuesday.

According to him, businesses face legal constraints which delay their progress in advancing their investments.

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“We have a real problem with the adjudicatory process and we have to resolve it by gaining collaboration between the legislature, executive and the judiciary.

“The good thing is that there is a recent decision on arbitration and how you can question arbitration processes, but we need to advance that.

“At the end of the day, if you do not have a system that can resolve disputes efficiently why should anybody worry about bringing in anything at all.

“It is something that we need to work on and must just keep our focus on it.’’

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The Vice President also criticised the lack of understanding of business processes by officials and agencies thus creating problems for investors.

He specifically listed customs and immigrations as the agencies that attention should be focused on to tackle the issue.

“We have to look at our agencies carefully.

“We have been looking at Customs and Immigration especially at the airports and the different ports and I think that we really need to ramp up that particular aspect of our work.”

Osinbajo, who also pointed out that bureaucracies and negative attitude by personnel should be dealt with, said that no sector should do things without active collaboration with other stakeholders.

He, however, noted that there was also the need to get more people that would make suggestions and criticise when necessary for the improvement of the business environment.

In his remarks, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr Okechukwu Enelamah, acknowledged that the new business indices in Nigeria was encouraging.

Enelamah said that engagement, communication as well as political will were needed to consolidate on the gains.

The Controller-General of Nigeria Immigration Service, Mr Mohammed Babandede, said between July and September alone the service issued 11,000 visas on arrival which was more than what was done in the past two years.

Acting Registrar-General of the Corporate Affairs Commission, Lady Azuka Azinge, in a good will message restated the commission’s resolve to make business registration easy and fast.