Frontpage

Obi, Kwankwaso, Atiku, Tinubu: Competitive, inclusive economy a ‘must-do’ for Nigeria’s next President

February 13, 2023544 views0 comments

BY BEN EGUZOZIE

One of United States leading think tanks, Brooking Institution, in an analytical article on Nigeria’s highly anticipated new government that will come into being after the forthcoming general elections, has placed a heavy weighting on fiscal and economic reforms, charging the incoming president to have an unwavering determination to implement policies that must deliver an inclusive and competitive economy, in what is described as a set of ‘must-do’ activities for the new leader of Africa’s largest economy by gross domestic products (GDP) and the continent’s most populated.

The piece is no doubt targeting  and looking to draw the attention of the three leading soapbox gladiators and their teams of policy handlers, namely, Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Abubakar Atiku of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who many polls have put in front seat of potentially winning the February 25, 2023 presidential election and going on to form a new government. In particular, Peter Obi has topped the majority of the polls that have been released so far, while a fourth contestant, Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) has come a distant fourth in all the polls.

The Brookings Institution, in its latest analysis on Nigeria, prescribed a set of ‘must-do activity’ for the incoming administration in Nigeria as the country prepares to elect a new government in a matter of weeks; and just like many other global analyses before it have posited, it has zeroed its job prescription on reforms, which the new president is expected to carry out along with policies it said must deliver an economy that is both inclusive and globally competitive.

In the piece, “Nigeria in 2023: Bridging the Productivity Gap and Building Economic Resilience”, written by Wilson Erumebor, senior economist with the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, but presently teaching Economic Development of Africa in the Department of Economics, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London; and published in the Brookings Institution’s flagship publication, Africa Foresight 2023, it prescribed:

“The new administration, working with stakeholders, needs to develop an agenda for economic and social inclusion. At the heart of such [an] agenda must be improving the lives of the average Nigerian. This agenda must also include a practical strategy on how to structurally transform the economy, moving labour and economic resources from low productivity sectors to high productivity sectors,” Erumebor wrote.

The piece recommended that the government must leverage the tradable services sector, which it noted is at the top of the productivity ladder, with the potential to improve incomes and raise overall productivity.

“The challenge with this sector, however, is its inability to accommodate labour in large numbers. Nevertheless, the sector is important, given Nigeria’s young population who are increasingly driving technological revolution across various sectors on the African continent. To leverage the full potential of this sector, the government will need to design and implement national skills programmes aimed at upskilling young Nigerians, to ensure many more embrace digital skills and capabilities,” Erumebor proffered in his analytical prescription piece ahead of the inauguration of the incoming administration on May 29.

The attention of the incoming government, in particular the president, is sadly drawn to the concentration of millions of Nigerians in employment with low level productivity. “Worse still, 80% of workers are employed in sectors with low levels of productivity — agriculture and non-tradable services. This means that the kind of jobs needed to generate income growth and lift many Nigerians out of poverty are not available in large numbers. As Nigeria approaches the general elections in 2023, there is immense pressure on political leaders to tackle these economic challenges and implement policies that will deliver an inclusive and competitive economy,” Erumebor wrote.

In particular, Erumebor, also a doctoral researcher at SOAS, University of London, wrote that the job of Nigeria’s new government should include strengthening the country’s recent shift of economic activity towards agriculture and manufacturing, which will create the needed jobs, thereby lifting millions out of poverty. As a share of the GDP, agriculture expanded from 23 percent in 2015 to 26 percent in 2021, while manufacturing declined from 9.5 percent to 9 percent respectively.

In an x-ray of the country’s performance in the last seven-and-a-half years, the author noted that non-oil exports as a share of non-oil GDP averaged only 1.3 percent, while manufactured goods as a share of total exports remained low at 5.2 percent in 2021, adding that part of the problem facing the economy is the neglect of the manufacturing sector.

“Essentially, Nigeria is not producing enough, for both local consumption and export. The consequences of having a weak manufacturing base for a country with such a large population are evident in its foreign exchange shortages, limited number of jobs created to accommodate workforce entrants, and an import bill that can hardly be met (nor sustained) by current export earnings,” he lamented.

The analysis of the Nigerian situation showed that the seven years of 2015 to 2021 have been tough for Nigerians, and a period during which the country’s GDP growth averaged 1.1 percent, with two successive economic recessions. Unemployment and underemployment rates increased to an all-time high of 56.1 percent in 2020, pushing some 133 million Nigerians into multidimensional poverty, according to latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Similarly, economic growth has not been inclusive, and the country’s economy faced key challenges of lower productivity and weak expansion of sectors with high employment elasticity.

Businessamlive Website Stats