By Tony Obiechina
Nigeria is a country blessed with a diversity of people, cultures, mineral resources, oil, and gas, amazingly rich biodiversity and abundantly diverse agro-ecologies that should make us a land of bountiful harvests with the capacity to feed Africa.
Unfortunately, non-inclusive growth has stagnated the country’s growth and development over the years.
Nigeria’s dependence on crude oil for majority of government’s revenue has been touted as a significant root cause of many economic challenges.
Volatility in the commodity’s price has continually exposed the economy to external shocks leading to dwindling government revenue, slowdown in foreign exchange inflows, unpredictability in planning and economic recession.
The neglect of other viable sectors has hampered holistic economic development and contributed to worsening economic indices such as rising inflation, unemployment, and currency devaluation. Data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) shows that historically, economic growth in Nigeria has been mostly volatile. Despite the vast growth potential in Nigeria, the economy grew at an average rate of 3.44% between 1982 and 2021, lagging the 4.5% average annual growth posted by emerging and developing economies during the same period.
The recognition of the effects of non-inclusive growth has pushed forward a rethinking of economic growth priorities based on the need to raise citizens’ welfare and leveraging the guiding principle of shared prosperity. Achieving shared prosperity dictates the deliberate advancement of the human capital within a country. Human capital development influences economic growth and can contribute to the development of an economy by increasing the knowledge and skills of its people.
Globally, economies have advanced by increasing their capacity to train productive and skilled workers. The appalling state of education and health systems evident in Nigeria’s statistics on out-of-school children, high level of illiteracy, internally displaced persons, maternal mortality, malnourished children and poverty rate is reflective of the relevance placed on Nigeria’s greatest asset – its human capital.
To change this narrative, the private sector, governments from all tiers, development partners and other relevant stakeholders must deliberate on the imperatives and opportunities to reverse Nigeria’s human development crisis.
The Government is implementing bold social programs to reduce the number of poor through interventionist programs. Still, the fact of the matter is poverty is not just about money. There is a need to prioritise investments in the youth through upskilling them for the jobs of the future and opening up the social and political space for them to air their views and become a positive force for national development.
We must address the fundamental reasons for agitations by listening, understanding, removing prejudices, and allowing for open, national dialogues, without preconditions, but with the goal to build a cohesive, united, fair, just and equitable nation for all.
The 28th Nigerian Economic Summit (#NES28) with the theme “2023 and Beyond: Priorities for Shared Prosperity” scheduled to hold on the 14th and 15th of November, 2022 at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja seeks to galvanize stakeholders to deliberate on an actionable framework for transformative political leadership and effective governance, to facilitate economic growth and nation building.
NES #28 presents the best opportunity for stakeholders to agree on a consensus on the national and sub-national imperatives for economic security, social justice, conscientious governance, political stability and environmental sustainability.
The summit hopes to discern the imperatives for harnessing Nigeria’s latent human capital wealth as a means of securing our collective future by identifying critical factors for effective policy implementation for sustained economic growth.
#NES28 will also highlight stakeholder actions needed to eliminate barriers to inclusive economic growth and development; Identify pragmatic initiatives to elicit economic leadership at the subnational levels, by adopting a “Bottom Up” approach to economic growth and development and articulate the economic agenda for the incoming leaders in 2023 and beyond.
The public-private dialogue platform Nigerian Economic Summit (NES#1) was held from February 18-20, 1993. Participants at NES#1 concluded that it is imperative for the private sector to continuously dialogue and cooperate with the public sector.
Over the past 27 years, national and global policymakers and business leaders have acknowledged that the annual NES is the premier platform for public-private dialogue in Nigeria.
