Experts urge quick resolution of power, infrastructure challenges to spur economy

Experts have highlighted the way forward to address Nigeria’s economic challenges; providing steady and table electricity, construction of roads that will enable easy movement of goods across the country and ease of capital transaction.

 This was suggested by Peter Lewis, Director, Africa & Middle East Programme, John Hopkins University during his keynote address at the ongoing 24th Nigeria Economic Summit.

 “On what needs to be done to move Nigeria economy forward; one, I will suggest electricity, it needs to be liberalized, look at what has happened in the telecommunication industry. Power is not the only thing, roads also need to be constructed, particularly rural roads that can link the rural areas to the cities for easy movement of goods,” Lewis cited.

 Meanwhile, the most recent Gross Domestic Product (GDP) report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS)  showed that Nigeria economic growth rate for the second quarter of this year recorded a decline in performance from 1.95 per cent in the first quarter to 1.5 per cent.

 The bureau, in the report, said the second quarter growth rate was constrained by contractions in oil GDP. It said oil GDP contracted by -3.95 per cent in the second quarter, as against 14.77 per cent in the first quarter of the year under review and 3.53 per cent in the second quarter of 2017.

BusinessDay analysis of the GDP reports showed that it was the first time since Nigeria’s exit from recession, that the economic growth was driven by the non-oil sector, which grew by 2.05 per cent, representing the strongest growth in non-oil GDP since the fourth quarter of 2015

Lewis, however, concluded by talking about how easy of the capital transaction in Nigeria can also serve as a catalyst to the country’s economic growth.

“Finally easy of capital transactions is another thing,” he concluded

 Also speaking at the economic summit taking place in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, Yemi Osinbajo, the Vice president of the federation linked government’s inability to effectively use the country’s generated revenue to solve all the country’s problems to ‘grand’ corruption.

 This form of corruption he defined as the one that involves some stakeholders taking government funds from its treasury and using it for their personal needs.

 “About 104 million Nigerians are in absolute poverty in the last 2010 survey and this is due to the about 3 percent annual population growth rate. And despite increasing revenue from oil exports and other sources, this has not translated to the betterment of Nigerians due to grand corruption,” Osinbajo explained.–