A United Kingdom-based human resource Consultant, Mr Akimasa Kurimoto, last Wednesday said that people were the driving force of industries, but that infrastructure was the foundation on which industries could develop.

Kurimoto, the Managing Director of Kurimoto Associates, stated in Abuja that no matter how developed Nigerian’s human capital was, businesses would not grow without improved infrastructure.

“Infrastructure such as power, roads and transportation must be developed along with the capacity of the people, then you can have real development,” he said.

According to him, for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to flow into Nigeria, both infrastructure and human capital development are critical.

It was gathered that Kurimoto is in the country to train staff of some ministries and private sector organisations. And that the programme is jointly organised by the National Productivity Centre (NPC) and UNIDO.

Kurimoto said that Nigeria had the prospect of developing both its infrastructure and its human capital.

“The government need to go into partnerships with international organisations to develop its infrastructure and build the capacity of the work force,” he said.

Kurimoto decried the fact that the government was concentrating

all its infrastructural development in cities rather than in the rural areas to discourage rural-urban drift.

He said that because of the lack of access roads in the rural communities, it was difficult for Small and Medium Entrepreneurs (SMEs) to move their goods to the urban centres.

According to him, 70 per cent of the economy should depend on the SMEs, but without the infrastructure for local farmers to move their goods to the cities, the sector cannot grow.

On the human capacity building, Kurimoto urged the Federal Government to use the NPC as the apex agency for such training to give it a structural approach.

“The agency can be empowered to train both government and private sector workforce on techniques of productivity management,’’ he said.