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Economic experts have identified governments’ willful implementation of bad decision, disinterest in strategic economic planning, over-reliance on crude oil, stifling taxation and insecurity as among factors that have hindered Nigeria from optimising its resources to attain double digit economic growth.
They also expressed the view that the only areas where Nigerians have excelled globally were those outside the control and influence of Nigeria’s government.
These views were shared by former Statistician General of Nigeria Bureau of Statistics of Nigeria, Dr. Yemi Kale, who is currently partner and chief economist of KPMG Nigeria; the Financial Service Leader and Chief Economist of PwC West Africa, Dr. Andrew Nevin; an Economist and Founder of Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprises (CPPE), Dr. Muda Yusuf.
Others were Chief Economist and Head, Economic Research/Intelligence, Coronation Merchant Bank, Ms. Chinwe Egwim and Co-Founder/Chief Executive Officer, Cowrywise, Mr. Razaq Ahmed.
The experts shared these views during the Nairametrics Economic Outlook with the theme: “Fostering Economic Resilience: Harnessing Opportunities for Development,” which was held virtually.
Chief Analyst, Nairametrics, Mr. Ugo Obi-Chukwu, attributed Nigeria’s fiscal challenges to shortfall in public revenue.
Speaking further, Kale stated that, “almost every economic activity in Nigeria is underperforming and that is why we have not been able to grow anywhere close to our real potentials growth, which is double digit,” in spite of Nigeria’s advantageous entrepreneurial youthful population, diverse natural resources and geographical location that arguably no other African country possessed in greater quantity than Nigeria.
He added: “We are moving from start, stop and reset and that has limited Nigeria’s ability to realise that huge potential. Secondly is what I may like to call unforced errors because they the things that we did to ourselves like very bad policies, very bad strategies and when the government is told that these strategies are not working it intend to just continue doing them.
“The most obvious of all is over dependence on oil. Associated to these are our disinterest in proper planning, which is a major difference between Nigeria and many of the (Asians) countries that we are either better than or at the same level in the 1960s who has long left us behind.
“The main difference is that they kept faith with proper strategic planning and continued to be doing so while we abandoned it and relied on agenda decision making and relying on oil production that we kept consuming rather than building with our oil wealth.
“Currently there is a very weak link between data and policy design and implementation. That focus on oil earning for consuming and the presence of inadequate planning over the years has now lead to other issues that is making realising that vast potentials a challenge.
“We also failed by relying on subsistence farming and anything that we cannot grow by subsistence agriculture we just decided to use our oil revenue to import them.
“We will also take into consideration the refusal of the government over the years to move solid minerals from the exclusive list to concurrent legislative list and develop a proper mining framework that can unlock investments into developing solid minerals from supply chain to heavy industries.
‘But they are all tied to these three main issues of over dependence on oil, unforced errors and non-adherence to proper planning. These are the things that I think have prevented us from taking advantage of our huge potentials.”
He added that the first quarter of 2023 was, “the first time agriculture has contracted since 1982 but it is tied to the Naira redesign policy and the dominance of subsistence farming.”
According to Nervin, the sectors where Nigeria has been doing well on the global scale are sectors that government has not been involved in.
He said: “Let me list the things that we (Nigerians) are successful in: Nollywood is a success, Nigerian music is a success all over the world, financial services that are spread across Africa is a commendable success.
“The biggest global export that Nigeria ever had are Nigerians in diaspora that include soccer super stars, digital franchise, basketball, premier league. Nigerians already have large things that we are doing at the global stage that we are very successful at.
“And one thing that is very interesting is that the government has nothing to do with them. The sectors that have been doing well on the global scale are sectors that government has not been involved in.
“There is no large scale mining, no world class mining in Nigeria in spite of all these world class mineral deposits. Where Nigeria has succeeded in the world stage is where there is no government presence. Where we struggle is where the government brought complexities.”
In his own contribution, Yusuf, who was the immediate past director general of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce, noted that fighting insecurity would impact positively on Nigeria’s economic growth because the risk of investment is correlated to the risk that you have in the environment.
He said: “Insecurity has affected some major segments of the economy, including agriculture that accounts for 23 per cent of our GDP.
“We know the impact of insecurity on the agricultural sector that virtually crippled it. We know the implication for that on food inflation and the implications of inflation on poverty.
“Again, on the perception of the country as an investment destination, the news headlines about number of people killed by bandits and insurgents is enough to scare away any person watching Nigeria from afar.
“We have investors that have extremely high risk evasion appetite but those with average risk appetite will just run away. That is why we mostly have Asian investors whose risk appetite are extremely very high.
“If we have much better environment as far as security is concerned, we will be able to attract more investment from the West. It is good to have a very good defence budget but again we have deprived a number of sectors of very valuable resources.”
Egwuim, in her contribution, observed that Nigeria has not exploited its demographic dividend maximally and highlighted the need to keep the strengthening of the country’s educational system at all levels, including vocational training at the front burner.
Speaking on the same vein, Ahmed harped on the need to boost Nigeria’s human capital development, adding that emigration is draining the country’s pool of skill labour force.
