Nigeria’s economic potential is well known. The country’s considerable resource endowment and coastal location ordinarily should allow the emergence of a strong growth pole for Sub-Saharan Africa. Over the years Nigeria has realised very little of this potential. Instead, its history has been marked by economic stagnation and associated with declining welfare and social instability.
Over the last few years however policy makers have said that Nigeria has been experiencing a growth turnaround and conditions seem right for launching onto a path of sustained and rapid growth. President Goodluck Jonathan had attempted to seize this opportunity to build a diversified economy able to provide jobs and improved welfare for Nigerians. Although the economy is said to be the largest in Africa, it has not been translated into putting food on the table of many Nigerians. It was a growth without development. Yes it is time for Mr. President elect to think economy, speak economy, dream economy and act on the economy.
Re-known Professor of Economics, Professor Jeffrey Sachs has long identified rural integration, urban integration, infrastructure and family planning as the critical factors to the transformation of the nation’s economy and its emergence as one of the top twenty economies in the world. The problem that needed to be tackled is the duality of the nation’s economy. The duality between the formal and informal sectors is an important factor in the lack of competitiveness of the non-oil sector. Addressing the duality of the economy is therefore vital for strengthening and sustaining job creation.
Buhari will do himself and the nation a lot of good by embarking a nation wide consultation. He should consult with the organized private sector leaders, leaders of the informal sector, the old, young, community leaders, ethnic nationality leaders of the various ethnic groups in the country, market women, traders, professionals and student leaders.
The consultation should focus if you were the President of Nigeria what you would do differently in the economy. It should solicit for ideas and means to move Nigeria economy forward. By so doing the President elect will under stand the dreams and aspirations of the ordinary Nigerian. It would give him an idea of what the average Nigeria craves for.
Buhari must avoid the mistake of past leaders who felt they knew it all and thus bungle the opportunity to mobilize the ordinary Nigeria for productive end and purposes that would have made the nation great. The President elect must avoid power hangers on that abound in the party and Presidency structure that could hold him captive and deprive him of the knowledge of happenings within the country.
Consulting widely will afford the President elect the real opportunity to heal the wounds of the vicious campaigns undertaken by both parties and politicians during the electioneering. It will reunite the various warring sections of the Nigerian fractionalized regions to come together as one to face a common purpose of building a virile economy.
This effort also has the advantage of reconciling those who are hurting and feeling marginalized within the Nigerian polity and could forge the much needed unity in the country and the buying in into his Presidency programme. What has been lacking in previous administration in Nigeria is that the populace has not been sufficiently mobilized and the federal government has not gotten the support of the ordinary Nigerian to buy into government programme and projects. This has been the bane of the economy as those who felt alienated look for ways to sabotage the system.
This government needs the support and buy in of every Nigeria for this administration to embark on economic revival. Across the globe, knowledge economy has put nations in higher pedestal than natural resources endowment.
Buhari must set measurable economic goals and target. He must come out with a clear economic blue print and formulate achievable policy and strategy to bring about a truly diversified economy. He should state in clear terms when he expects the nation to achieve at least 40 per cent dependence on oil. He should come out with a target date when receipts from oil will no longer be shared but must be kept aside for the rainy day as is done in Norway. This is the only way by which Nigeria can be cured of the Dutch disease.
Behari should as a matter of urgency state when he expects Nigeria to stop the madness of importation of refined products. He should not allow the endemic importation of petroleum products longer than necessary. He should call managers at NNPC and in unequivocal terms tell them that the refineries must work within a specified time frame. He should go further to ensure that all the abandoned NNPC facilities for the distribution of petroleum products across the country are rehabilitated and put into immediate use. He should equally call those who milk Nigerians through the importation of generators to a round table talk and get an undertaking from them that they will no longer stand in the way of power generation and distribution in the country.
Finally Buhari should appoint minister based on integrity and capacity to perform. He should ditch the ethnic arithmetic of appointing minister base on state representation. If he must appoint ministers from states, they must be men and women who can perform, who can mobilize Nigerians. It must not be based on patronage. Then he would have started the change mantra that swept him to power.
