Kick Starting An Ailing Economy

Nigeria's economy is sliding down and only a miracle will redeem the population. With heightened interest rates, the nation is unable to attract foreign investments and more people are willing to leave the country for "greener pastures"

The Government has only 9 months on its way out and may not have much cards in its wallet to create any significant change, coupled with the huge debts on ground. The way forward may not be as easy as it is seen, but every challenge has a solution and it may require divine intervention.

Nigeria as a State must look inward and attract self actualization. The incoming Government may have much to inherit in terms of debt and a poor economy, but it must not look the other way. It must develop active and wisdom driven ideas, that can help the nation navigate its way out of this mess.

Nigeria needs to do several things but some of the first steps will have to be radical, decisive and non-sentimental. First, we will have to cut on our imports and bring in only assets that drive towards investments. This means that machinery import and high priority non substitutionary raw material imports will be of high priority; to build new factories and enhance production. No more dollar money for rice and food imports which can be locally sourced. If you cannot buy rice then eat other carbohydrates meals available in our food market. Let's not forget that at a time we were importing rice for around $900 Million per annum. That's enough to make Nigerian farmers N630Billion rich, if we were producing it locally.

Nigeria needs to encourage import substitution investments starting with agriculture. Plant what you import. Maize, Soyabean, Cotton etc. for short term income, Oil palm , Rubber and Cocoa for long-term returns and local processing for value chain export. For example Indonesia is off the international Oil-Palm market, leaving a $5.7Billion dollar market gap. Nigeria can cultivate 200,000Hectares of land of Oil-Palm and close at least 40% of that gap making at least $2billion from export in the first 4 years after first harvest. We can revamp tyre manufacturing plants again and export them. We can make our own chocolates and beverages from our Cocoa and export them as finished products.

Nigeria needs to ensure that technical education is revived. We need it more than ever as university education does not run factory lines, build houses, fix equipment, or support the process lines. What we have now is the large turnout of graduates whereas what we need is the development of middle level skills to support management personnel, where the university graduates actually fits in. Nigerians are actually unemployable primarily because the skills needed on desk processes is application driven. So to solve that the academic curriculum of Nigerian universities need to be changed. This is beyond equipping the universities alone, but the development of students through overhauling the courses we offer. For example, students should have software courses used in the business world , taught in the university. Also certain courses, which are irrelevant to a career should be scrapped from all Levels. Examinations, assignments, and final year projects must be application driven and not theoretical. Lecturers must also have working industry experience before been accepted as faculty in the University. This is what makes a school like LBS different in their business courses and MBA approaches.

Nigeria will learn to accept that its people are its greatest resource, so as we train and graduate people, we can hire them in a more structured system, so that foreign earnings will come into Nigeria, by hiring out personnel as expatriates. Cuba and India does this. Cuba is a poor country but they export Doctors and make foreign earnings from it. India makes Billions of dollars from IT experts who work abroad.

Nigeria should build more refineries and gas LNG trains and export gas and petroleum product to African countries. This is still an untapped business and the PIA has opened the door for this.

Nigeria should import gas generators and install them with LNG tanks per local Government. A 1megawatt gas generator is around N350 Million naira which is less than the cost of a Rolls Royce or 2 G-Wagon Mercedes Benzes which Nigerian drive around. Distributed energy of this sort will stop the power mirage. the AKK project when completed, will solve the gas supply challenge to Northern Nigeria for this project. These generator will be owned by private investors and build their network. This may not work for all communities but when it becomes progressive for some, others who see the benefits will comply.

Nigeria should stop subsidizing petrol, Electric bills, Road Taxation and Tertiary education. Petrol subsidy takes a whopping N6Trillion which is half of our national budget or close to. University tuition should be able to pay for the expenses of the University. Build more technical schools and part-time programs and short term diplomas, which are FREE to attend. With this there will multiple qualification opportunities and specialization will occur faster. For example some of our IT expert do not have university degrees. You can attend IT courses with a High School basics or a diploma. So primary, secondary, technical schools and short course institutes should be FREE, while University tuition should be reviewed gradually.

We hope for the best in the coming days for Nigeria.