How I rebuffed Buharis invitation thinking it was 419 FEPSAN President
News & Trends •
by ifeanyi nwoko15 so what did we achieve with that we had 6 plants working at 10 per cent capacity. now with this initiative in the first phase we had 11 plants. and today there are 18 plants out of the 32 that are in this programme he said1 in an interview with the news agency of nigeria nan etuh narrated the funny conversation that ensued between him and the chief of staff to the president alhaji abba kyari who had called him to come for a meeting1 etuh said that when the call came from kyari inviting him he thought it was fraudsters and he vehemently told him off1 he explained that he rebuffed the call many times and advised the caller to go and get a job not knowing that the call was genuine and was going to change the lot of farmers and fertiliser producers as well as suppliers1 one weekend i got a call from the chief of staff to the president alhaji abba kyari that they wanted to see me. i thought it was a joke. so i said i wasnt interested in looking for any appointment and i dropped the phone1 a couple of minutes later he called back and asked if i was thomas etuh i said yes i am1 well like to see you he said. i said please i have told you i am not looking for any appointment and i can hear your voice sounding like a very elderly person. so i think you should go and get a job to do and stop this 419 then i banged the phone1 so while sitting with friends we put the number on truecaller and behold his name came up but i never bothered1 about an hour or two later he put a call through again i picked it and naturally i apologized. he kept laughing on the phone and saying that he understands and if i can come because they want to have a meeting with me1 the president of fertiliser producers and suppliers association of nigeria fepsan mr thomas etuh has narrated how he rebuffed an invitation by president muhammadu buhari to discuss the advancement of fertiliser value chain in nigeria1 and that discussion translated into the president setting up this committee of presidential fertiliser initiative pfi which fepsan which i lead as a body was tasked to come back with a proposal and all hands were on deck he said1 he said that government had been a very dominant player in the fertiliser market and everybody was selling to the government1 etuh explained that upon taking over about 10 years ago he worked hard to create his own market away from government and sell to farmers directly1 when this government came in you all heard the problem of fertiliser all over the country and that was why i was called in for the meeting1 because this programme was in the heart of president buhari he domiciled it in his office which was coordinated by the chief of staff himself1 we had the governor of jigawa as chairman of the committee we had the nnpc md we had the central bank governor we have the nsa himself we had the sovereign wealth fund in that committee and we had fepsan all serving in the committee which we work to coordinate this programme1 now what did we do in fepsan. we spoke to our members and said this is a win-win thing. reduce your profit margin and work on volume. whatever you are losing here you gain it from the volume1 the cbn governor brought a cost saving in terms of low cost of funds in single digits. instead of us getting money at double digits here we have money at single digits1 that cost reduction in finance was also transferred to the farmer. so because our cost of running is low the farmer also benefits in that. so everybody plays their own role1 eventually i made the appointment for the meeting and the presidency was concerned about the price of fertiliser going up and what we can do to reduce the price1