Agenda for all-round national development

WITH 62 per cent of the population living below 2USD a day, and considered poor, with life expectancy of 51 years, and over 40 per cent illiterate population, bedevilled with a parlous infrastructure such as poor electricity distribution, poor road networks, and dilapidated health infrastructure, the underdevelopment profile of Nigeria is in bold relief.

Though by the sheer nature of superiority of democracy over autocracy, Nigeria made some gains between 1999 and 2015. Such gains were almost completely wiped off by 2015 July-2016 when the nation’s economy started contracting leading to her worst economic recession in 25 years -2.4 per cent.

The crisis of Nigeria underdevelopment as we have highlighted above can only be confronted and resolved with a bold agenda and plan aimed at changing the present economy structure of dependence and it must be revolutionary massive.

Full employment as a policy of achieving growth and development

As earlier observed, unemployment is at an all-time high in Nigeria, at national level, stood at 18.6 per cent, this is a recipe for an unending chaos. Full employment through value creating jobs is not just a social policy to help the needy but an economic policy to continuously sustain economic growth for a strong population with disposable income, is a key driver to attract investment into new ventures, industries and infrastructures. Economists such as Lord Maynard Keynes, who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer in England, understood clearly the role of creating employment in bailing out a depressed economy in other to stimulate growth. It must be a policy of the New Nigeria Economy to stimulate employment in Agro-Allied industry, ICT, Manufacturing, infrastructure, solid minerals extraction, not just for exports but linked to the needs of local industries.

Restructuring public finance, and the financial sector for a growth-led strategy

In order to direct available finance in the country for key task of industrialisation; the country must prioritise available finance for modernising the country’s infrastructure. The trend in which 80 per cent of revenue in the nation’s budget has been disproportionately consistently applied to recurrent expenditure; whilst capital expenditure takes the back seat at 20 per cent must be discontinued.

To begin with, it must be the goal of public finance to allocate 50 per cent of revenue to capital expenditure. Secondly, there must be a complete change in the budgeting system from the current envelope system where annual budgets are merely a repeat of previous year sectoral allocation with variations, accounting for inflation. Budgeting must become NEEDS-based, driven by national economic priority, based on a new plan to build modern infrastructure, make the needed social investment for the country and industrialise Nigeria.

Thirdly, another element of financial reform that Nigeria needs to undertake is to ensure banking and financial sectors make capital available to the real sector of the economy. Whereas, monetary policy formulation is within the competence of the Central Bank which has autonomy over this matters, the necessary coordination between the fiscal and monetary Authorities must be generated to allow the new reform, which must also include bringing down the present unsustainable lending rate to a single digit. At 17.5 per cent – 25 per cent lending rate in the Nigeria financial market, no meaningful industrialization can take place as industrialists and manufacturers from other countries take money for business for as low as 4 per cent. In Malaysia, prevailing lending rate is 4.9 per cent; China is 4.35 per cent; India is 9.45 per cent; South Africa is 10 per cent. Nigeria must move within the single digit band.

Removing bottlenecks to promote investments in the economy

As previously observed, the high interest rate of return that investment posts in Nigeria plus the size of the market should naturally recommend the country as a perfect investment destination. But the ability to attract massive private sector investments both from Nigerian and foreign investors has been limited by unnecessary hurdles investors face in trying to obtain permits, licenses, approvals etc. Paper works in Nigeria take more time than even the time developer spend in building infrastructure that the nation desperately needs, whilst it was the good intention of the drafters of the constitution and various legislations to provide autonomy to many regulatory agencies to protect them from unnecessary interventions, the autonomy granted have in most cases been turned to protection for administrative incompetence, which has continuously impeded the ability of the country to net needed investments. These particular problems have acquired international notoriety. Whilst some progress has been made through the initiative of the office of the Vice President of Nigeria between 2016 – 2017, the progress made in the ease of doing business needs to be more rapid. At the moment in Nigeria was ranked 145th out  of 190 countries in the World Bank ease of doing business report in 2018.

The time has come to dismantle the bottlenecks through a coordinated reform prowess that will be collaborative between both the executive and the legislative. The desired change in the regulatory system of the various sectors of the economy must reduce waiting time on licensing and permits to 90 days and not 2-3 years, as is current practice. It must also make regulatory agencies accountable in the performance of their duties as autonomy now means literally, lack of accountability.

Prioritising investment in electricity generation, distribution and transmission

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen; Building an industrialised and modern economy will be impossible without simultaneously directing national energy to rapidly increasing electricity generation, distribution and transmission. The current national electricity generation capacity of about 6,000megawatts is too little a capacity for any meaningful development compared to South African’s generation capacity of more than 40,000megawatts capacity. Nigeria need to aim for over 160,000MW capacity within 10) 10 years to be at per with South Africa per capital generation, and also eliminate current inefficiency in electricity distribution and establish a fair and consumer friendly electricity tariff that will as well be cost recoverable to attract an estimated 200billion Dollar investments from both private and public sectors for the next Ten (10) years.

As enumerated earlier in our paper on “Facilitating Resilient and Sustainable Infrastructural Development”, there must be “Administrative and Regulatory” reforms to eliminate bureaucratic bottlenecks in the power sector, quickly to make the needed investment to flow into the sector.

Making social investments the soul of our development agenda

Nigeria as a country has been pulling apart because of rising incidence of poverty, squalor and unemployment. Inequality and The attendant misery have been rising, occasioning massive social instability and insecurity.

An agenda for development cannot just concern itself with expanding GDP and raising infrastructure expenditures alone. But must focus on pin-point targeted expenditure on health, education, the youth population and investment in social services.

The reason Nigeria is experiencing massive social upheavals is not just because it has low income per capital but due also to the fact that available income is not being applied averagely for the welfare of all. Various African countries with half Nigeria’s income per capital post better development indicators.

As we have observed elsewhere: “The social problems are not going to abate except Nigeria invests immediately in the welfare of the people. According to a recent study by the African Development Information Centre, by 2030, Nigeria’s population will grow to about 210 million; 70 million of this forecast population will be living in North- Eastern Nigeria where there is currently an extremist insurgency; 35 million of which will be under the age of fifteen and would not have received any form of formal education. This is alarming!

“We must invest now to bridge the social divide by making primary and secondary education completely free of all cost with feeding and welfare support at primary school levels. This must be a federally financed program worked out with local authorities for effective implementation. Free education must be entirely free indeed without hidden cost such as examination fees and cost of uniforms.

“The quality of educational and health institutions must be upgraded through the recruitment of qualified professionals, training and retraining of existing hands making available needed equipment and infrastructure and improving productivity and output through a scientific audit system that ties reward and emoluments to performance.

“Nigeria must quickly introduce a comprehensive program of accessible, cost-free and qualitative health service coverage for all Nigerians. Nigeria can afford these programs right now as we are already spending billions of dollars managing the social upheavals that are caused by decades of ignoring the welfare of the people especially the young and the vulnerable”.

Conclusion

The task before patriotic Nigerians who have assigned to themselves the role to see a new, modern, economically developed Nigeria with a prosperous population living in peace and security is daunting but achievable!

This great nation Nigeria has seen many national challenges in the past resolved by the determination of her people. Our forebears overcame colonial rule by the share power of their determination, organisation and faith in the future. Our generation paid the price to rescue the established Nigerian democracy after independence from the jaw of military autocracy. The task at hand is to ensure a prosperous democratic Nigeria for all, where the country’s resources and talents will be applied for all, regardless of ethnicity and religion.

We can build that new Nigeria together. On my part, you can count on me.

• Being excerpt of a lecture delivered by Olawepo-Hashim, a former governorship aspirant in Kwara State, at the College of Postgraduate Studies, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, on Wednesday 23rd May 2018.