Saving Nigeria’s Economy without Human Sacrifice

Going by the overview of Nigeria, Sub Saharan Africa's largest economy who relies heavily on oil as its main source of foreign exchange earnings and government revenues. It is a pity the pandemic has shorting the door of world oil revenues recently. Since then, Nigeria's economic growth has been driven by growth in agriculture, telecommunications, and services.

Before the pandemic, Nigeria is forecasting economic growth of 7%, but most observers will find that estimate over-optimistic. In January 2020 the IMF forecast economic growth of 2.5% in 2020 and 2021. This would be below sub-Saharan Africa's average growth rate of 3.5% in both years.

“This pandemic is changing the entire world and is also going to open up new opportunities for us, for example, to become a leading country in this part of the hemisphere, in the area of agriculture. Food security today is at risk because there is food production in some countries, but there are no logistical chains because transport is slowed down.”

Also, it should be noted that before the pandemic, the economy of Nigeria is a middle-income, mixed economy and emerging market, with expanding manufacturing, financial, service, communications, technology, and entertainment sectors. It is ranked as the 27th-largest economy in the world in terms of nominal GDP, and the 22nd-largest in terms of purchasing power parity.

If the pandemic continues unabated the glory of the booming economy will soon be in jeopardy, the country has been locking down for about two months with no productivity and the oil market, also not selling to generate foreign income. I hope these are not going to harm the economy?

It will be recalled that Nigeria is not a developed country by any reasonable measure. The country's per capita income, gross domestic product (GDP) is much too low, as are the country's living standards. Based on her economy, health care, and living standards, Nigeria is a long way from being classified as a developed country.

At this junction, Nigerian must think of saving Nigeria’s economy without human sacrifice. How do will intend to realize this?

Efforts have been made by the Presidential Task Force (PTF) to gradually ease the lockdown order and this has not been going down well with Nigerians. This because most Nigerians relied grossly on daily income, with many of this class living without savings to fall back at a time like this. This owing lack of economic driven power supply, poor infrastructures such as rural-urban road network, low-level of literacy, low-access to technology, and cost of acquiring technology and needed business information for business boost.

“It will be erroneous for a daily income earner, who can’t even save from that income to expand or boost his/her business with the collateral-based loan or credit facilities.”

Many family men who are doing well business-wise are been faced off due to the pandemic and lockdown. Numbers of businesses are losing their capital, some business owners have died and many more are dying in silence. The financial institutions cannot be approached due to demand for collaterals, which are not available. The credit companies are not helping matters as they charge exuberant rates and even blackmail defaulters.

If the economy needs to survive, then who needs the economy, the people, or what? Government at all levels must design palliatives not necessarily inform or food items or money sharing but an economic stimulus. By economic stimulus, it means the pricing system policy which has long dead or not existing in Nigeria's economy needs to be awakening and keep working. Nigerians need true representation and policy that is working to change the attitude of her citizenry towards the government. For instance, recent government slash down the PMS pump price from N145 to N125 in March, and further to N113.28 and on 7 May 2020 to N108, but what is the effect of this on the economy? The transporters who drive on PMS did not reduce the fee and neither was the impact felt on the price of common essential goods and services. The government can use this pricing mechanism as a palliative to relieve the masses.

Also, mass production of food crops and making them available to the people at an affordable cost will go a long way restoring the hope of the people.

Knowing well that sectors of the Nigerian economy are divided into three:

Primary (agriculture, oil/gas, mining, forestry);
Secondary (light and heavy industry);
Tertiary (services).

The primary sector is capital intensive, while the secondary sectors are for the wealthy conglomerates. The tertiary sector is where many of the able and ready to work young men and ladies fall and engaging themselves because little capital is mostly needed to survive. This sector is as well sensitive and important to the economy of Nigeria because the made of the SMEs. Although the government through the CBN, Bank of Industry (BOI) and the likes are trying but more needs to be done and in a more transparent way.

In conclusion, Nigeria's economic potential is constrained by many structural issues, including inadequate infrastructure, tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade, obstacles to investment, lack of confidence in currency valuation, and limited foreign exchange capacity.

More so, enhancing factor quality by investing in infrastructure, strengthening land tenure security, improving educational outcomes, liberalizing the trade regime and enhancing trade and transport facilitation to help develop value chains and facilitate the efficient reallocation of factors of production, youth engagement and retraining making Nigeria more economically sustainable and buoyant.

Content Writer & ICT Strategist