That America and Britain feel threatened with the influx of Chinese to African economies, including Nigeria should be expected. My great grandmother who sold akara at the roadside in her days, naturally, would have felt threatened if another akara seller came to the street to sell.

This is why the United States and the European countries feel threatened because of the business presence of the Chinese in Africa. They had about 100 years to do all these things the Chinese are doing but they didn't do it. We have to be careful so that the same things that happened to us with the West would not happen now that we are having a relationship with the Chinese. We must have a strategy and a will to handle the influx of the Chinese into our economy. Our nightmare would begin if they do worse.

Our collective responsibility is to make sure the Chinese do not come to do to us the same thing the West has done. We must develop the strategy, so that we can maximise our benefit from our relationship with the Chinese. I do no think that a strategy to deal with the Chinese is available today. So, as Nigerians, we have to put our heads together, form a team so that we can maximize our benefits from the Chinese.

Malawi has problem with the Chinese now. Malawi is having problem with the Chinese because they did not put in place a strategy for relating with them. The contract Malawi signed with China did not specify that the companies being established in their country with the Chinese must have certain percentage of Malawians at the upper segment of the company's work-force; that Malawian employees could not just be cleaners, because at the level of a cleaner, they cannot influence decisions in the organisation. They could have specified for instance that the Chinese should not have more than 30 percent of their people in the executive cadre of the organisation, while the rest must be Malawians. You can say at the middle level, for instance, it should be a 50-50 ratio or 30 - 70.

Malawians did not do this. Anyone dealing with the Chinese must make such demand on them; the Chinese are not going to be the ones to tell you to demand that your people are given key positions because they are business people too.

We intend to bring technologies into Nigeria, domesticate the technologies and the expertise and use them to produce high tech products for local consumption primarily, and for export, which is what we do for big corporations and some SMEs in different countries where we have clients.

We cannot just venture into technology and concentrate in one sector. How many automobile companies do we have? Just very few, some are moribund. So we are cutting across different sectors. There are engineers here who already have some education here and can be trained. Our focus is mainly large scale and medium size industries.

Of course, if a small company approaches us to domesticate a technology for them, we would. We already have clients in Nigeria, a couple of start-ups and we are revamping some companies.

Most of the small companies, however, do not have the money to pay. It costs so much to bring expatriate engineers, pay all their expenses, housing, and transportation, in addition to their salaries.

We already have engineers, many are Americans in-house, who are experienced in most of these technological areas and if we don't have, we go and recruit. We got established in this country in 1994, by 2001, we had shrunk our office to one office; some companies do not want to pay even when they have the money. We can deal with the government but as at today, we have no relationship with the government.

To attain technical development, you need to put together what in management parlance, is called Six ‘Ms’. The first M represents men and women, that is the workforce that you need to execute the development. The second is money, which is the capital required for funding the development. The third is machine- that is tools and equipment.

The fourth is material, whilst the sixth is management. Corruption can come in with particular reference to Nigeria.

If Nigeria can pull all these together, we will take the desired leap. By my estimation, 70 percent of those who attended NESG are capable people, capable men and women…We have enough Nigerian engineers today, though they may not know what to do. But they are engineers that can make high tech products such as a tape recorder; they have the foundation to build on. The Chinese engineers also had a similar problem at a point.

It was very easy for us to teach them, and it was easy for them to comprehend the advanced technology that we brought. We need people with technical background to transform for technological growth, people well rounded in engineering, science, technology. Even those just coming out of school were able to comprehend the technology. When we explained it to them, figuratively overnight, they comprehended it. In the same manner, if here in Nigeria, we recruit graduates from the University of Lagos, and University of Nigeria, for instance, we can train them to realise our Vision 2020. We have enough money in this country to get to that level; I know that for a fact.

We are not really going to invent anything, the technology is already available. We will use this to produce what we want, even produce the machine that will produce products like printers. We can actually set up companies here to produce printers. All we need do is just buy the technology, produce these printers, and export to other African countries such as Ghana. The technology is already available, not only in China but all over European such as Germany.

Unlike the Chinese, we do not have the problem of raw materials in Africa.

The Chinese are currently buying raw materials all across Africa, because they want to boost their productive sector. So, it is raw materials demand in their country that is driving them into Africa. They need raw materials for manufacturing finished products. They don't have most of these raw materials. In Nigeria, we have most of these raw materials in abundance, in commercial quantities.

Regarding methods, that are strategies, this is where our problem is. We have to develop the strategies and procedures and ensure everybody is involved. Once the methods are developed, then we have an established system. As we improve on these strategies and procedures, we will transform what we have on paper into reality.

That is the first step that Nigeria needs.

Management has to do with the people who have the global picture, people who manage these resources, who effectively manage these resources to realize the goals. Whether it is at national or small scale manufacturing level (SMEs), once you realise these things, you are airborne.

Imagine that we are able to create 100 companies of every possible consumable - computers, phones, cameras pins in medium scale, each one hiring 1,000 people and producing few hundreds millions of units, you create a lot of job openings at all levels - from manager to chief technical officers. That is what is going on in China right now. China has so many job openings and recruits locals and brings home, all its nationals, who have contributed to other economies such as American’s economy. They are brought home and given the same salaries and benefits that they were earning in foreign countries. With such an arrangement, such experts have lost nothing because he can sustain his life in his own country without reducing the quality of his life- without reducing his standard of living.

He can afford to send his children to very good school. For example, in the telecom industry, GTE is a creation of the Chinese government. In 1984, they discovered they needed to be competitive in terms of global standards in respect of pillar industries such as telecom, electronics, and aerospace. At that time, a foreigner could not go to China to invest in any of these industries 100 per cent, except you partnered with a local Chinese to domesticate whatever technology you were bringing in.

This even applies now. If you partner with them, both of you will start work the same day, same time, everyday, and close same time, so you do exactly the same thing. For each level, there is a pair. So when an American is making those products, the Chinese is watching and both of them are engineers. So it is easy to learn and these Chinese are smart, just like Nigerians. So, by the time the foreign investor leaves three or five years later, the Chinese takes over. GTE that debuted in 1984, is now worth almost 3 billion dollars, operating in about 50 countries, including Nigeria. They went and recruited Chinese people in different advanced countries of the world, Chinese working in telecom industries.

That is the difference between us and them. If Nigeria had been involved in such a thing, we would have recruited Americans, Britons and other nationals.

These nationals would have come in, do the things they had been contracted to do secretly and then leave with our own people not being able to continue from where they left off. Today, GTE is now highly competitive; they are involved in our rural telephony network. These are the ways to develop a country technologically. And once those job opportunities are there, Nigerians in different parts of the world will come on their own to look for the job opportunities. It is the job issue that is keeping them away in other countries. If they can make the same amount of money ($200,000 or $300,000) they make in these foreign countries in Nigeria, most of them would prefer to be in their country. If the quality of life would not diminish, they will come. But the job opportunities must be created first.

Growth rate in China, the growth rate is an average of 9 per cent, some years it is about 13 per cent.

The first time I went to China was as a student in 1994. The economy experienced overheating then. This happens when your capacity can only take 8 per cent economic growth for example but you are growing at 14 percent.

That means expatriates will come looking for more Sheraton but we don't have more and they will not leave in Isolo or Ajegunle. The Chinese government is very smart. When the overheating surfaced, they cooled it down. When the economy gets overheated, there would be much more demand than supply and it can get out of hand. In that 1994, when we visited China as students, they were growing at about 13 per cent before then, but in 2000, they slowed it down. So it is growing now at about nine percent.

At the recent Nigerian Economic Summit (NESG), they have projected that if we grow at 13 to 15 percent annually over the next 10 to 12 years, we would achieve our 2020 vision, to be part of the Top 20 economies in the world by the year 2020.

I believe it is achievable. However, in addition to the six ‘Ms’, the 7th is zero tolerance for corruption or bringing corruption to a manageable level, if Nigeria is to achieve the 2020 vision. Our rule of law should be strengthened. Corruption is everywhere but corruption must be managed to such an insignificant level such that it would not impact negatively on the economy, or the resources mentioned above.

I believe it is possible. The first highway in China was built in 1990, whereas Nigeria already had highways in the 1970s. Where the Chinese differ from Nigeria is that they never slept since that 1990. They now have highways; expressways all over the country, six lanes, and eight lanes very smooth road network, etc. Recently a railway of about 35 thousand feet high was built. They are doing miraculous jobs.

People across the world believe that with self-employment, they have much more ability than the corporation would give to them.

MIT gets the best of the best from all over the world. Most of the electronics we see are done in MIT. This $100 computer is from MIT.

So they do not see why they should go to big corporations like GM, GE, and Microsoft for jobs when they can set up their own businesses and do what these big corporations do. And some of them succeed. Most companies in America were started by MIT graduates or the companies' products invented by MIT graduates.