By Tony Obiechina, Abuja
The Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Prince Clem Agba on Wednesday announced that the 28th Nigerian Economic Summit (NES #28), is anchored on imperative partnership.
The Minister who announced this at a press conference in Abuja said the Summit is jointly convened by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) with the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning.
The Minister said 11 pre-summit events had been held between August and September across sectors and thematic areas in preparation for NES #28.
These he said covered fiscal policy, investment, financial inclusion, MSMEs, and Infrastructure, amongst others.
“The Pre-Summit events also included a National Economic Dialogue for Youths focused on critical areas, including Economic Growth and Stability and Human Capital Development.
“These events have kick-started the Summit discussions and will be examined in further detail at the Summit, with outcomes reflected in the 2022 green book”, Minister said.
He said the theme of the Summit, “2022 and Beyond: Priority Shared Prosperity”, is scheduled to hold from November 14 -15 in Abuja.
According to him, the theme was carefully chosen to discuss priorities for post 2023 with emphasis on the policy and strategies encapsulated in the National Development Plan 2021-2025 and Nigeria Agenda 2022-2050.
Speaking earlier on this years Summit, the Chairman of NESG, Mr Asue Ighodalo projected that “in five years, Nigeria can become a leading industrializing and reforming nation in Africa that focuses on building its State capacity and capabilities”.
Within that period, Nigeria he said, “can break free from decades-long political, policy, legislative and regulatory binding constraints”.
“We can create an enabling investment climate and business environment, underpinned by a motivated, capacitated, well-resourced, world-class civil service that drives open, transparent, high-performance governance at all levels.
“We can move Nigeria decisively towards structural and institutional reforms required to unlock local content development, sub-national economic diversification, competitiveness, and growth in the medium term.
“We can make moderate and incremental progress in poverty reduction and job creation, and we can make Nigeria the dominant shareholder of FDI inflows into the African continent.
Ighodalo pointed out that since the country is in full electioneering season, “2023 presents another opportunity to demonstrate a strong political will to tackle Nigeria’s socio-economic challenges”
This year, the NESG he said “seeks to unveil the most critical challenges for urgent attention: these are unemployment surge, huge infrastructural deficit, fiscal weakness, human capital and skills gap, flawed security architecture, and corruption”.
This summit will delve into the causes and implications of these critical challenges.
Ighodalo lamented that “our nation is in a season of social discontent characterised by massive economic pressures and challenges on businesses and citizens. Macroeconomic instability is driven by stagflation pushing more people below the poverty line. More Nigerians are multidimensionally poor than are monetarily poor. The World Bank estimates that in 2022 alone, 7 million Nigerians will go into extreme poverty” .
“These socioeconomic pressures are accentuated by rising food inflation and a growing food insecure population that the World Food Programme puts at 61 Million as of October 2022. This situation has over 38% of our under-5 children experiencing chronic malnutrition and 70% of our children suffering from Learning Poverty (lacking basic literacy and numeracy skills)”.
He said “Nigeria’s Internally Displaced Persons Index 2021 shows that we had 3.2 million IDPs as of last year. This year adds an additional 1 million IDPs triggered by flooding that has not only destroyed lives and livelihoods but threatens food sufficiency and security”.
