Our Correspondent, Bauchi

Mr Ibrahim Danusa, Centre Manager, Technology Incubation Centre (TIC), North-East Zone, Bauchi, says the Federal Government was turning incubation centres in the country into entrepreneurial safe havens.

Danusa, who stated this in an interview in Bauchi, on Sunday, said this was because the Federal Government had made available everything that would make their productions perfect and with ease at the centres.

According to him, one of the mandates of incubation centres was to identify entrepreneurs who were into production or fabrication with value addition and bring them in for further grooming and mentorship.

“By the time we bring them in, then there are a lot of benefits the Dederal Government had put in place for such an incoming entrepreneur.

“For example, there is a place we call an incubator unit here, supposing the person we bring in was outside doing his or her business, he must have been paying some people where he was doing the business but by the time we bring him here, it’s going to be free.

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“He would be free from tax collectors for that particular period he would be staying with us.

“When we bring him in, allocate him a unit, then his production process will be monitored by our staff everyday. What he is doing, where he is sourcing the raw materials and what his production process looks like, would all be monitored.

“This is what led the federal government to set up a mechanical workshop with a lot of machinery and equipment provided to ease the entrepreneurs’ activities, particularly, those that are into fabrication,” said Danusa.

He said this was because the Federal Government realised that many of these talented entrepreneurs had financial constraints and would not have been able to afford most of those machines on their own.

“The Federal Government decided to build this mechanical workshop here to install all those machines almost free of charge.

“It is almost free of charge in the sense that if any of our entrepreneurs wants to use it for a particular work where he would have been charged to pay N1,000 outside, we will charge him to pay N100 only here,” he said.

The Centre Manager explained that the Federal Government had set up an instrumental workshop at the centre for any of the entrepreneurs who wanted to test whatever he was producing.

He added that the federal government, out of its magnanimity, also provided packaging machines for the entrepreneurs to be used at a very subsidized rate, instead of going to Kano, Lagos and other states for packaging of their products.

“The Federal Government also makes sure that within the cluster of incubation, water was made available 24 hours, irrespective of whatever they are using the water for.

“This is because there are some entrepreneurs that need water in whatever they are producing and it was not ideal for them to go outside and bring polluted water for their productions.

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“If their water is polluted then of course, their end products would also be polluted,” said Danusa.”

INFO DAILY reports that some of the areas of specialisation of the entrepreneurs at the incubation centre were; production of organic fertilizers, production of acha and of different kinds of spices.

Others included; extraction of groundnut oil in large quantities, production of cosmetics as well as air and room fresheners, fabrication of agricultural machinery and equipment, rice processing and packaging, among others.