Book summa

Despite the huge human and material resources that Nigeria is blessed with, Nigeria continues to falter in her bid to develop her economy and ensure a better quality of life for her citizens. Worse still, at a time when other countries are developing and pulling their citizens out of poverty, Nigeria retrogressed to become the poverty capital of the world in 2018 with the report further indicating that poverty rate in the country was on the increase and over three million Nigerians are falling into poverty every year. 

Just ten years earlier, Nigeria was still the fastest growing economy in Africa and the second fastest growing in the world. This led to the country emerging as the biggest economy in Africa when the economy was rebased in 2013 and it resulted in the whole world looking up to Nigeria to lead the African renaissance.

What went wrong? How could a future that looked so bright become dim in such a short time? How could a country go from being the fastest growing on the continent into recession so suddenly? How could the biggest economy on the continent become the poverty capital of the world overnight? How do we salvage the situation and reverse it? How can we consolidate on the gains of the past? What lessons have we learnt? How do we build the country of our dreams?

‘Project Nigeria: Building the country of our dreams’ takes a holistic view at the Nigerian economy with a radically new approach to proffering solutions to the country’s economic problems. Starting with a National re-orientation program to positively change the mindset and attitude of Nigerians. As the Nigerian mindset which encouraged corruption, nepotism/tribalism, ineptitude and mediocrity was identified as the key issue holding back the progress and development of the country.

Investment in education was also identified as the most strategic investment that the country must make to ensure that the economic growth is sustainable. In this regard, the book makes the audacious recommendation that Nigeria sells off her assets and investments in the oil industry and invest the proceeds in overhauling the educational sector to ensure improved quality of education for all her citizens and develop her human capital resources to prepare the country for the coming era in which oil will lose its relevance as the primary source of energy and human capital will become the new gold.

In all, “Project Nigeria: Building the country of our dreams” presents itself as a practical roadmap to rapidly grow the country’s economy at the rate of 15% per annum into a $2.5 trillion economy within the next ten years while at the same time focus on improving Nigeria’s Human Development Index (HDI) ratings. It’s a must read for anyone that is interested in the socio-political and economic development of Nigeria. Let’s join hands together to build the country of our dreams.