For Nigeria to recalibrate its economy, it must grow the non-oil sector by 15percent for 10 consecutive years, Donald Duke, a former governor of Cross River State, has said.
Duke, who spoke exclusively to BusinessDay, said the need to recalibrate the economy became necessary because in another 10 years Nigeria’s population will be 230 million.
“Our GDP today is under 500 billion dollars; we need to be a 2.5 trillion-dollar economy to sustain the growing population,” he said.
The former governor, who recently declared his intention to contest the 2019 presidential election, on a yet-to-be-disclosed platform, also noted that the restiveness in some parts of the country and feeling of discontent in Nigeria have some correlation with the current biting economic realities in the country.
“A lot of the discontent in Nigeria is triggered by economic dislocation; people have no stake in this country. So, you need to get people to see themselves as stakeholders in this country,” Duke said.
According to him, “Whether it is Boko Haram, herdsmen crisis, militancy – it is purely economic.”
He also pointed out that part of the reasons for the restiveness in the North East was the death of textile companies in those areas.
“The North East used to be one of the world’s largest cotton belts. States such as Adamawa, Taraba and Borno competed with Mississippi. We had textile companies in those areas, but as long as we allowed cheap imports from emerging China and South East Asia and India to come in, our local factories could not compete; and as long as they could not compete, they shut down, when they shut down cotton growing ebbed in Adamawa.
“That was the genesis of all these Boko Haram crises. So, agriculture and industries are related. One must be there to drive the other. You cannot develop industries because of the high interest we are having. Some of the companies that claim they produce locally import and repackage. They cannot compete if they manufacture in-country,” he said.
He emphasised job creation as solution to youth-related crimes, citing his experience while as governor of Cross River.
“We did something in Cross River when we wanted to build the water scheme. They were going to use mechanical diggers to put the pipelines all over; I called the contractor and said to him, you are not going to spend all this money and people won’t feel it; so, we are going to get people to dig the trenches for you to pass the pipelines; he said no; it would take too long; but I insisted and say I am the client, it is either you do what I want or… So, he agreed. I tell you, for the 12 months that the programme was going on there was no reported crime in Calabar,” he said.
