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For Nigeria to move forward in terms of overcoming poverty and creating wealth, it needs to establish a clear worldview, institution, economic complexity as well as focusing on science, technology and innovation as the driver of the economy.
This was the submission of Kingsley Moghalu, 2019 presidential aspirant/former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), who recommended the establishment and consistent application of a clear economic philosophy of entrepreneurial capitalism in the context of a developmental state, as the guiding framework for the Nigerian economy.
According to Moghalu having a worldview also matters for Nigeria because it will enable it to assess from a comparative and competitive standpoint the distance between West Africa’s biggest oil producer and other more successful countries.
“A solid world view can drive us to catch up with and possible overtake countries that, at our independence from colonial rule in 1960, had less economical or technological prospects than Nigeria but today are advanced industrial economics, countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and even South Korea fall into this bracket,” the presidential aspirant said.
A look into Nigeria agriculture showed Kingsley Moghalu was right, Palm oil , which used to be one of the nation’s major sources of foreign exchange in the early 1960s, is massively imported from Malaysia and Indonesia. Statistically, Nigeria currently has a global share of 2.9 per cent, with Indonesia leading by 33 million metric tonnes, Malaysia – 19.8 million metric tonnes, Thailand – 2 million tonnes and Colombia -1.1 million metric tonnes.
Moghalu also recommended the constitutional repeal of the Land Use Act that traps the wealth of Nigeria’s citizens in the hands choking grip of state bureaucracy, scraping the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and reforming it as a partially privatised company, deregulating the downstream petroleum sector, and avoid further foreign borrowing which has put the country back into debt trap that will weigh down the future generations of Nigeria.
He said Nigeria revenue to debt service ratio is very high at about 66 percent, that is not sustainable, that implies that the total of that amount are used to service debt, and as such there is no room to finance developmental activities .
“And even if the government is currently borrowing at a low interest rate, they never can tell what will happen in the nearest future”.
And as such he urged the Nigerian government to look at alternative areas of generating revenue locally, other than sourcing from fund through borrowing.
The government can ensure more people are encouraged to pay tax, not necessarily to increase the tax but to increase the people that are paying tax, of which the major challenge is the fact that the people do not have trust in the government, he added.
He said Nigeria has failed to achieve high-quality economic growth because the country’s economy is managed mostly on an ad-hoc, reactive basis.
“Nigeria’s citizens must now elect a new kind of leadership that offers something radically different by virtue of possessing the insights we have discussed here today, and having the political will to take the economic management of Nigeria in a new direction of soundness, quality and results”, Moghalu said while speaking on ‘Overcoming Poverty: The Secret of the Wealth of Nations’, at the 2018 bullion lecture organised by Centre for Financial Journalism in Lagos.
On the point of Nigeria having a worldview, a nation’s plan that all its citizens work towards achieving, Olabiyi Durojaye, the chairman of the board of commissioners of Nigerian Communications Commission, said it is good for Nigeria to have a worldview and set high targets, as could achieve most of its plans, if not all.
And he went further to stress on the fact that Nigeria should however use the borrowed funds judiciously so it will be able to get returns on whatever it invest in
Emeka Osuji, professor at the Pan Atlantic University commended Moghalu for the lecture while urging the youth to understand the system with which they need to innovate and create wealth.
HOPE MOSES-ASHIKE, ENDURANCE OKAFOR, DIPO OLADEINDE
