EVEN in the face of many other negative stories all over the world, educated
Nigerians are doing well and making the nation proud.
Vice President Prof
Yemi Osinbajo and cross sections of Ministers and Permanent Secretary during an
emergency Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting looking into the submitted
2016 budget at the State House in Abuja.. APR 8 2016.
The
Imafidon twins – Paula and Peter – broke the world record in mathematics by
passing the Cambridge exams at age eight, being the youngest ever to do so. Dr.
Victor Olalusi who scored 5.0 GPA in the Faculty of Clinical Sciences at the
Russian National Medical University in 2013 is arguably the first in the world
to do so. There are numbers of Americans of Nigerian descent such as Emeka
Echeruo founder of hopstop.com purchased by apple at a price of US$1 billion,
who are doing the nation proud in the ICT world. Young Nigerians at home and
abroad are proving their exceptional brilliance; 24-year-old Oluwatobi
Olasukanmi won the Williams Charleny prize for the best first class law at the
University of Cambridge. Nigerian youths are not just strong and energetic,
they are bright and brilliant and they compete well anywhere in the world.
The
crisis of Nigeria’s underdevelopment as we have highlighted above, can only be
confronted and resolved with a bold agenda and plan aimed at changing the
present economic structure of dependence, it must be revolutionary, massive and
contain the following elements: i). It must aim within 10 to 15 years to expand
the GDP by seven- fold in order to be able to provide the needed resources to
end poverty and underdevelopment on a sustainable basis. ii). The New Nigeria
Economic Development Plan must aim to encourage domestic capital formation as a
source of financing development rather than dependent on revenue from primary
products such as oil and solid minerals. Given present structure of
international trade, the more developing countries export primary products, the
less value they get. The revenue from exports proceed is usually so little that
sometimes, they compete with revenue of just one corporation from advanced
countries of Europe and America. Sample for all the fuss about the high oil
receipts in 2013 in Nigeria, about US$50 billion, it compares only with the
revenue of Disney World, which was US$47billion. Even if no cent was stolen
from the oil receipts, it will still be inadequate to finance any meaningful
development that a country of 180 million population requires. iii). The new
Nigeria Economic Development Plan must prioritize investment both from public
and private investment in foundation industries that will imbue the economy
with the technical capacity for industrialisation and manufacturing. These
include immediate priority investment through joint venture financing in iron
and steel, machine tools, chemicals, aluminum, glass, plastics and
petrochemicals. These industries will help accelerate the process of ‘Domestic
Capital Formation’ as they are industries directly connected with the
production of capital goods. iv). The new Nigeria Economic Plan must sustain
Nigeria as an open economy that encourages private entrepreneurship for both
foreign and local investments side by side with State investments in projects
linked to the production of capital goods and infrastructure. In order to
sustain these essential features of the Nigerian economy as an open society,
the current relapse to the regime of impunity must be rolled back to the more
positive administrative practice that respects the sanctity of contacts, a
practice which encouraged private sector investment in the economy at the dawn
of democracy in 1999 and the succeeding 15 years after. This is important
because, whereas business can handle corruption, business cannot cohabit with
impunity. Impunity and political blackmail of business hurts economy more than
corruption. iv). The new Nigeria Economic Plan must promote innovation, secured
property and copyright in order to make burgeoning ICT sector witness rapid
expansion. Protection of copyright will also promote increase in scientific
research and its commercialisation; it will spur innovation in science and
arts. v). Agriculture must be linked to manufacturing and industry. Currently,
over 70 per cent of employed hands in Nigeria are engaged in one form of
agriculture or the other compared to about two per cent of Americans. But the
total productivity of these 70 per cent engaged hands in Nigeria’s agricultural
sector is less than that of two per cent of Americans. It must, therefore, be a
central objective of the new Nigeria agricultural policy not only to increase
productivity through state support such as provision of extension services to
small holders, finance at low interest rate on individual and cooperative
basis; but also to link agricultural sector directly to industry and
manufacturing in specifically designated zones and economic clusters, where
agriculture is integrated with industry. Increased agricultural productivity
will have meaning within the economy and that agriculture will cease to be a
business just to produce for the stomach but to produce vital raw materials for
industries and the manufacturing sector; the most effective way to create
employment. vii) The new Nigeria Economic Plan must seek to transform the
Nigerian economy to a manufacturing economy from agrarian economy and change it
from an economy that is based on production of primary products. Currently,
according to FBS record, manufacturing accounts for 9.43 per cent of Nigeria’s
GDP while it provides as low as 0.3 per cent of employment. Transferring the
economy to manufacturing will entail a number of policy incentives, such as
creating a fiscal environment and collaborative monetary policy that will allow
promoters of manufacturing concerns to access finance at single digit rate,
ensuring available power to reduce manufacturers’ energy costs. Ultimately,
Nigeria needs to grow the manufacturing sector in such a way that it will
account for 30-40 per cent of her GDP and be a major employer of labour. China
is already an example of how an agrarian economy can be transformed into a
manufacturing economy. As at 2015, manufacturing accounted for 40 per cent of
GDP of China.
Full employment as a policy of
achieving growth and development:
As earlier observed, unemployment is at an all time high in Nigeria, at
national level, stood at 18.6 per cent, this is a recipe for an unending chaos.
Full employment through value creating jobs is not just a social policy to help
the needy but an economic policy to continuously sustain economic growth for a
strong population with disposable income, is a key driver to attract investment
into new ventures, industries and infrastructure. Economists such as Lord
Maynard Keynes, who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer in England understood
clearly the role of creating employment in bailing out a depressed economy in
order to stimulate growth. It must be a policy of the new Nigerian economy to
stimulate employment in agro-allied industry, ICT, manufacturing,
infrastructure, solid minerals extraction, not just for exports but linked to
the needs of local industries.
Restructuring public finance, and the
financial sector for a growth-led strategy:
To direct available finance in the country for key task of industrialisation;
the country must prioritise available finance for modernising the country’s
infrastructure. The trend in which 80 per cent of revenue in the nation’s
budget has been disproportionately consistently applied to recurrent
expenditure; whilst capital expenditure takes the back seat at 20 per cent,
must be discounted.
Budgeting system
To
begin with, it must be the goal of public finance to allocate 50 per cent of
revenue to capital expenditure. Secondly, there must be a complete change in
the budgeting system from the current envelope system where annual budgets are
merely a repeat of previous year sectorial allocation with variations,
accounting for inflation. Budgeting must become needs-based, driven by national
economic priority, based on a new plan to build modern infrastructure, make the
needed social investment for the country and industrialise Nigeria. Thirdly,
another element of financial reform that Nigeria needs to undertake is to
ensure banking and financial sectors make capital available to the real sector
of the economy. Whereas, monetary policy formulation is within the competence
of the central bank which has autonomy over these matters, the necessary
coordination between the fiscal and monetary authorities must be generated to
allow the new reform, which must also include bringing down the present
unsustainable lending rate to a single digit. At 17.5 per cent – 25 per cent
lending rate in the Nigeria financial market, no meaningful industrialisation
can take place as industrialists and manufacturers from other countries take
money for business for as low as four per cent. In Malaysia, prevailing lending
rate is 4.9 per cent; China is 4.35 per cent; India is 9.45 per cent; South
Africa is 10 per cent. Nigeria must move within the single digit band.
Removing bottlenecks to promote
investments in the economy: As previously
observed, the high interest rate of return that investment posts in Nigeria
plus the size of the market should naturally recommend the country as a perfect
investment destination. But the ability to attract massive private sector
investments both from Nigerian and foreign investors has been limited by
unnecessary hurdles investors face in trying to obtain permits, licences,
approvals etc. Paper works in Nigeria take more time than even the time
developer spend in building infrastructure that the nation desperately needs.
While it was the good intention of the drafters of the Constitution and various
legislations to provide autonomy to many regulatory agencies to protect them
from unnecessary interventions, the autonomy granted have in most cases been
turned to protection for administrative incompetence, which has continuously
impeded the ability of the country to net needed investments. While some
progress has been made through the initiative of the office of the Vice
President of Nigeria between 2016 and 2017, the progress made in the ease of
doing business needs to be more rapid.
Ease of doing business
At
the moment, Nigeria is ranked 145th out of 190 countries in the World Bank ease
of doing business report in 2018. The time has come to dismantle the
bottlenecks through a coordinated reform prowess that will be collaborative
between both the executive and the legislature.
Prioritising investment in electricity
generation, distribution and transmission:
Building an industrialised and modern economy will be impossible without
simultaneously directing national energy to rapidly increasing electricity
generation, distribution and transmission. The current national electricity
generation capacity of about 6,000megawatts is too little a capacity for any
meaningful development compared to South Africa’s generation capacity of more
than 40,000megawatts capacity. Nigeria needs to aim for over 160,000MW capacity
within 10 years to be at par with South Africa per capita generation. The
country also needs to eliminate current inefficiency in electricity
distribution and establish a fair and consumer-friendly electricity tariff that
will as well be cost recoverable to attract an estimated US$200billion
investments from both private and public sectors for the next 10 years.
Conclusion: The task before patriotic Nigerians who have assigned to
themselves the role to see a new, modern, economically developed Nigeria with a
prosperous population living in peace and security is daunting but achievable!
This great nation, Nigeria, has seen many national challenges in the past
resolved by the determination of her people. Our forbears overcame colonial
rule by the sheer power of their determination, organisation and faith in the
future. Our generation paid the price to rescue the established Nigerian
democracy after independence from the jaws of military autocracy. The task at
hand is to ensure a prosperous democratic Nigeria for all, where the country’s
resources and talents will be applied for all, regardless of ethnicity and
religion.
Making social investments the soul of
our development agenda
Nigeria
as a country has been pulling apart because of rising incidence of poverty,
squalor and unemployment. Inequality and the attendant misery have been rising,
occasioning massive social instability and insecurity. An agenda for
development cannot just concern itself with expanding GDP and raising
infrastructure expenditures alone. But must focus on pin-point targeted
expenditure on health, education, the youth population and investment in social
services. The reason why Nigeria is experiencing massive social upheavals is
not just because it has low income per capital but due also to the fact that
available income is not being applied averagely for the welfare of all. Various
African countries with half Nigeria’s income per capital post better
development indicators. As we have observed elsewhere, “The social problems are
not going to abate except Nigeria invests immediately in the welfare of the
people. According to a recent study by the African Development Information
Centre, by 2030, Nigeria’s population will grow to about 210 million; 70
million of this forecast population will be living in North-Eastern Nigeria
where there is currently an extremist insurgency; 35 million of which will be
under the age of fifteen and would not have received any form of formal
education. This is alarming! We must invest now to bridge the social divide by
making primary and secondary education completely free of all cost with feeding
and welfare support at primary school levels. This must be a federally financed
program worked out with local authorities for effective implementation. Free
education must be entirely free indeed without hidden cost such as examination
fees and cost of uniforms. The quality of educational and health institutions
must be upgraded through the recruitment of qualified professionals, training
and retraining of existing hands making available needed equipment and
infrastructure and improving productivity and output through a scientific audit
system that ties reward and emoluments to performance. Nigeria must quickly
introduce a comprehensive program of accessible, cost-free and qualitative
health service coverage for all Nigerians. Nigeria can afford these programs
right now as we are already spending billions of dollars managing the social
upheavals that are caused by decades of ignoring the welfare of the people
especially the young and the vulnerable”.
Conclusion: The task before patriotic Nigerians who have assigned to
themselves the role to see a new, modern, economical developed Nigeria with a
prosperous population living in peace and security is daunting but achievable!
This great nation Nigeria has seen many national challenges in the past
resolved by the determination of her people. Our forbears overcame colonial
rule by the sheer power of their determination, organisation and faith in the
future. Our generation paid the price to rescue the established Nigerian
democracy after independence from the jaws of military autocracy. The task at
hand is to ensure a prosperous democratic Nigeria for all, where the country
resources and talents will be applied for all, regardless of ethnicity and
religion.
Source: Vanguardngr