Nigeria: Time for backward integration, import substitution

Change is the right management language for today’s economic landscape in Nigeria. A complete modification in style of governance and implementation of policy initiatives, suitable to make the desired difference in the nation’s economy, with a total shift from the current harrowing economic experiences painfully felt by everyone, is of essence, and most pertinent. With the present trend in economic policy, the formulators are passionately urged (as a matter of urgency) to strategise on the roadmap that will yield positive economic outcomes by adopting well-known and tested economic reform programmes that have worked in other economies that have gone through similar economic turmoil. Fortunately, Nigeria as a very promising nation, happens to be a privileged economy, with great economic potential in terms of human and natural resources that could be leveraged and productively exploited for future economic gains leading to the desired enviable economic growth and development. This is regardless of the country’s current daunting economic challenges that are traceable to bad governance, misrule and poor leadership performances in the recent past.

To make the supposedly wrong economic process right at this time demands a drastic economic reform programme that works for this economy, particularly considering our peculiar domestic and systemic, social, ethno-religious challenges. In the financial sector, everybody is witnessing the progressive reverse trend going on with the downward exchange rate in favour of the naira against other currencies (the United States dollar dropping from N2,000 to about N1,050 per USD). This feat was possible because our financial experts were forthright and diligently applied their expertise with professionalism, patriotism and passion. This is the secret behind their visible success so far in the financial sector, achieved with the tools of fiscal and monetary policies they effectively applied. Capacity-wise, this economy has all it takes to turn things around for the general good of every citizen, but for the corrupt mindset of certain very influential individuals with access to policy formulation within the economy, who would rather be manipulated to favour their personal interests at the expense of the state. Such Nigerians seriously require a divine touch for a change of heart and to mend their evil ways, for the good of this battered economy.

Strategically, a paradigm shift is needed in the international arena, to speedily remedy the unfavourable deficit balance that is recorded in the nation’s economic and commercial activities in the global market. This is also expressly identifiable in the ways, manner and form of the nation’s export and import trading activities with other economies. Nigeria has continued to be projected as a “mono-export, and import dependent economy” to the outside world. This mercantile status (as a “consumer nation”) in global markets needs to be changed to one where the balance of trade becomes favourable to the national economy with a surplus from exports against total imports (or the cumulative inflows of goods and services). This reversal can only be feasible if reformative policy initiatives are introduced in the management of day to day activities within the economy.

Among the economic reforms that should change the tide are the backward integration policy and the import substitution policy initiatives. These initiatives will reposition the economy on a pedestal for export operations on finished goods or locally manufactured products; and become net exporters of such products. At the same time, it will enable the economy to wear the garment of self sufficiency. The organised private sector of the economy and all investors in the manufacturing sector, represented by the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) and similar stakeholders, require governmental backing, protection and encouragement to be sustained (especially the incubation of newly established domestic industries) in their various local business operations. This is to enable them to mature and become formidable, with their goods competing effectively with other foreign brands in global markets.

Nigeria currently needs to implement these economic policies for survival and growth (projecting itself in global markets as a developing country and an emerging market with competitive non-oil finished goods). This concept shall make Nigeria extricate itself from the economic status of a consumer nation, and drastically reduce her dependence on developed economies (even for refined petroleum products, for which she is a major player in the global energy sector, being Africa’s foremost oil producing country).

These policy initiatives shall enable local industries to be protected and strengthened for growth. The application of import quotas and tariffs are among the economic measures that should be implemented for effective realisation of a backward integration policy (especially on products that are manufactured outside Africa), now that the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) has become operational. Africa’s resources should cease from being exported at ridiculously low prices to the developed economies, which are then resold to Africans as finished goods/products at very exorbitant rates. Nigerians should rethink and be wise, economically.

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