The President of the African Development Bank, Dr Akinwunmi Adesina, recently compared Nigeria’s promising $1,857 gross domestic product per capita of 1960 to the dismal $824 in 2024! He contrasts the index with South Korea’s GDP, which rose from $158 in 1960 to an astronomical $36,157 in 2024.

Even though the little-known Independent Media and Policy Initiative, which is probably an apologist for President Bola Tinubu’s government, countered that Nigeria’s per capita GDP in 1960 was $93, not $1,857, as Adesina had claimed. Well, neither Akinwumi nor IMPIC have revealed the sources of their claims.

As President Tinubu rounds up his Presidency’s mid-term, the economic indices show little positives for the poor messes’ cost of living, suggesting that the liberal economic options of the Bretton Woods institutions are sorely needed for the Nigerian economy that was almost collapsing under the weight of subsidies to petrol, electricity and the naira.

Indeed, the rates of inflation, lending and conversion of the naira to the American dollar, the major currency for international trade, were adversely affecting the cost of essential items, like foodstuffs, medication, road and air transport and house rent. And many Nigerians went to the poorhouse with this horrible dispensation.

 

By the way, the Janus-faced World Bank and International Monetary Fund that prescribed the harrowing economic reform policies now criticise it. There is an inexplicable gap between the deft disclaimers of the economic policies by the Bretton Woods institutions and Nigerian liberal economic evangelists, who argued that the subsidies will burst the economy.

The wonder of it all is that the government that justified the reformist economic policies does not seem to have introduced appropriate policies to mitigate their effects—apart from short-term cash transfers and food palliatives that do not even reach enough numbers of the poor.

Indeed, the government seems to be experiencing some fatigue in implementing the more foundational remedial policies, like raising crude petroleum production, selling petroleum for naira and promoting the Compressed Natural Gas alternative to petrol.

 It seems the 2027 general election has become a major distraction. And this calls for more urgent actions to implement some kind of grand Marshall Plan to put Nigeria on the road to economic redemption.

The following are some actions that the government should be taking to assist Nigerians in coping with the effects of its policies, which, by the way, other major presidential candidates of the 2023 general elections insisted they would implement if they were elected.

As the government invests in solar energy for the Presidential Villa, the gesture should be extended to its secretariats, tertiary institutions, medical schools, and other major facilities. State governments should do the same.

The current template that places electricity generation companies, the national grid and electricity distribution companies in silos should be replaced with integrated electricity companies in designated markets. Eko Electric should have its own transmission line and generation units added to its distribution facilities.

State government-owned enterprises, like Odua Investments, should take advantage of the transfer of electricity to the concurrent legislative list and invest in the electricity sector. Any excess production can be exported to East and West African countries.

Because water is necessary for domestic and industrial purposes, state governments must upgrade old waterworks and invest in new facilities to provide potable and clean water for the good health of citizens and use in manufacturing companies.

To complement the efforts of the Federal Government, state governments or a consortium of contiguous states must invest in railway lines to connect their urban centres to their industries and farm gates. Of course, these connections should be linked to other states and regions.

State governments should revive the old farm settlements established by the government of the likes of Obafemi Awolowo, to grow food for consumption and cash crops for export. Private investors should be encouraged to invest in agro-allied industries within or close to the farm settlements.

 

The Nigerian economy cannot survive with the import-substitution economic strategy, a booby trap that ties Nigeria’s so-called manufacturing capability to the continued importation of industrial manufacturing machinery, their spare parts and raw materials.

Therefore, the Federal and State Governments should use the auspices of the National Economic Council to form a harmonised industrial plan that will initiate privately-owned or publicly-owned manufacturing plants that can manufacture industrial manufacturing machines, spare parts and raw materials.

Also, the government should encourage investors to establish heavy industries, like automobile manufacturing plants, and provide realistic plans to revive the practically moribund textile industry, even though the garment industry seems to be thriving.

These heavy manufacturing industries will generate employment for youths who are looking for jobs that have not been created. Only deliberate government encouragement and interventions can help these industries grow. It is not enough to throw soft loans at the industries; the government should appoint competent hands to do the necessary follow-ups.

The Federal Government should be more serious in implementing its naira-for-petroleum policy. As this makes petroleum products more readily available and reduces the need to source foreign exchange to import the same, it reduces the pressure on the naira.

The Federal Government and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, which have repeatedly stated that they wanted to ramp up production of crude petroleum, should please make good their promise. This should provide more funds for the government’s development programmes.

And, yes, the terrorists and their enablers, within Nigeria, or from across the Sahel, must be taken head-on, either with kinetic or non-kinetic strategies. And enough of the sabotaging efforts of enemies within, the fifth columnists, who “fall the hands”, or compromise the efforts, of the patriotic military men who stake their lives for the safety of fellow Nigerians.

If indeed, terrorists or bandits, as some people in the government prefer to call them, are from the Sahel, the government must initiate a review of the Economic Community for West African States protocols on inter-border movements, though the long-unmanned borders and the cultural affinity of Nigerians with neighbouring countries cannot be easily ignored.

But there is a need to ask why Nigeria’s military, which provided most of the men, firepower and logistics for the ECOWAS Monitoring Group that maintained peace in the West African sub-region, woefully fails to contain the so-called terrorists from the Sahel.

Maybe, if all governments cooperate to implement these economic policies, it will be easy to drive the seven per cent annual GDP growth rate that the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, is proposing, to achieve President Tinubu’s projected $1tn economy by 2030.

And for the sake of social justice, the government must allocate the resources of the country so that the extremely wide disparity between the rich, who flaunt their (usually ill-gotten) wealth, and the poor, is significantly narrowed.

State governors, who now receive higher remittances from the Federation Account as a result of the removal of subsidies, should significantly contribute to bringing this social injustice home. Apart from paying the new minimum workers’ salaries regularly, they must implement appropriate economic policies.

In short, Nigerian governments must consistently initiate policies to significantly improve the performance of the economy and equitably distribute the gains. And if all these seem didactic or pedagogical, there are no apologies for the audacity.

X:lekansote1, lekansote.com