Yemi Kale, Group Chief Economist & Managing Director, Afreximbank has said that despite being endowed with huge oil and gas reserves, vast agricultural land, and strategic minerals, among others, Nigeria was yet to make tangible progress.
Kale who delivered a keynote address at ‘The Platform’ on Wednesday, said that if Nigeria can just get a few fundamentals right, it possess a market of immense scale and opportunity, one that simply cannot be ignored.
According to him, the central question is not whether Nigeria has potential, but whether it can build and sustain the institutional, infrastructural, and human capacity to translate that potential into tangible progress.
He explained that meeting the challenges faced in Nigeria, demands more than incremental policy tweaks.
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“It requires intentional, economy-wide reforms including strengthening public institutions, investing in transformative infrastructure, and designing financial and industrial ecosystems that convert our raw endowments into jobs, innovation, and globally competitive industries.
“It require genuine inclusion, and an unwavering commitment to doing the right things for the right reasons—at the right time and in the right way.
“Only through such disciplined execution can Nigeria convert its exceptional promise into shared prosperity, ensuring that the country’s youthful population and natural wealth become engines of sustained growth rather than sources of unfulfilled aspiration,” he said.
Noting the recent series of ‘challenging and painful reforms’ introduced by Tinubu-led administration, Kale said that these reforms, if executed with consistency and integrity, represents the essential first steps in turning Nigeria’s long-acknowledged potential into real, broadly shared prosperity.
The challenge, he said is to ensure that the path of reform is as painless, humane and well-sequenced as possible.
He argued that well thought out and well-sequenced reforms are essential not only to stabilize Nigeria’s economy in the short term but also to future-proof it for generations to come.
“But too often in Nigeria, this has been overlooked or poorly implemented, resulting in avoidable hardship.
“So, the responsibility of government now is not to avoid these reforms but to sustain them while urgently cushioning their impact by improving social protections, so that the journey toward transformation is both economically sound and socially just.
“Reform, anywhere in the world is never easy. It demands vision, sacrifice, and disciplined execution. But, as I hope to show today, well thought out and steadfast reform is the surest path to a more stable, prosperous, and self-reliant Nigeria,” he added.
