Presidential candidate of the Young Progressive Party (YPP), Professor Kingsley Moghalu, has unveiled a N1 trillion venture capital funding for the creative industry and start-up businesses in Nigeria if elected President.

Moghalu, who stated this at the weekend in Lagos, said the fund was a joint public-private sector contribution to be instituted between his government and the private sector.

The former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), noted that the fund would not be managed by government but the private sector to ensure effective and efficient disbursement to resolve unemployment challenges currently plaguing the country.

“If elected, our government will introduce capital into the economy so that entrepreneurs won’t rely so much on bank loans. The fund interest will exceed one digit unlike the bank loans with 30 per cent interest,” he said.

He also explained that the fund will target mostly the creative industry and small businesses, which have proven to be the driver of any economy in the world, adding: “It will be managed by the private sector part of the partnership to create additional wealth.”

He also disclosed plans to set up skills training centres in each of the 774 local government areas of the country if elected President on February 16.

“There is so much poverty in the country. The way you wage a successful war against poverty is by tackling the factors that create poverty. Those factors include unemployment and unproductive workforce, low wages, lack of skills in the labour force and absence of capital for new businesses,” he said.

He also said that his government has developed a strategy to curb piracy and theft of intellectual property.

“How do we protect the intellectual property of Nigerians? If you write a book, you are going on the streets and you are seeing copies of that same book pirated and produced so cheaply, that means intellectual property rights are not enforced in our country.

“The musicians, the entertainers, the creative industry in this country, are all suffering from all these. We need to have a very tight intellectual property regime.

“The second requirement for successful capitalism is innovation. Innovation comes from intellectual property as well. People have ideas about how to invent new things that can solve problems for society,” he added.

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