Dr. Obiora Madu

An international networking body and learning centre for logistics and supply chain professionals across Africa, African Centre for Supply Chain, has called on the Federal Government to increase its funding for the country’s logistics industry, to enable it contribute significantly to Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The Director-General of the centre, Dr. Obiora Madu, who made this appeal at a breakfast meeting on combating the challenges of humanitarian logistics held in Lagos, added that proper funding of agencies like National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), would make them to be more proactive.

Madu noted that the logistic industry has the capacity to contribute to the nation’s economic progress, adding that the sector was the driver of some developed countries around the globe.

According to him, investing in the country’s physical infrastructure could contribute to economic growth, improve human welfare and had considerable potential to reduce poverty.

Madu said Nigeria must, as a matter of urgency, brace up particularly in the light of its quest to be one of the world’s 20 biggest economies by the 2020.

He listed the challenges in humanitarian logistics to include the increasingly number of people vulnerable to disaster, limited resources and infrastructure, high uncertainty and urgency of response efforts, multiple stakeholders, often with differing objectives, lack of professionals, lack of institutional learning, inability among professional logistics community, lack of metrics and performance measurement among others.