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By DR. Franklyn Akinyosoye
I don’t want to address what the government can do immediately to cushion the effect of the looming crisis in the country, but in the long run we should look at the following:
1. Focus on service, service right now is at 57% of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP). If we can do this instead of going for industrialisation, who knows. We have tried it for so long and its not paying. Switzerland is all service and has one of the highest per capital. Hong kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Brazil is trying it now.
2. Sell off our refineries and be net exporter of oil. Retrench 50% of civil service workforce over a period of 10years and reduce Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
3. Human capacity development. Train and retrain none workers. Give scholarships to all first class students employ them.
4. Invest in processing more than industrialisation for a start. Start with Agrobusiness.
5. Develop quality infrastructure. Any product that fails the quality test must be punished. All routes and outlets must have basic quality infrastructure.
6. Encourage invention, innovation and research.
7. Invest heavily into Information Technology (IT) and make Nigeria an IT hub of Africa, take it from South Africa. Invest in the youth involved in IT heavily and patronize them. Insist on local IT infrastructure usage amongst all business level. Either p2p, b2p or b2b. Insist all primary, secondary and tertiary education must be IT complaint and software must be purchased locally. We consume Microsoft, Hp, SAP, etc the highest but their offices are in SA. With this they will come here… more jobs will be created.
8. Clean up and oil all the value chains related to all exportable produce, encourage farming and surplus harvest and buy the surplus. Maybe set up commodities board in each Local Government
9. Invest heavily in education with leanings towards entrepreneurship and scholarship.
10. Help create and manage endowments funds for research and inventions, using universities not government related research institutes. Or better still attach all government research institutes to universities. Insist all specialized Universities focus on their specialty. Let them have affiliate schools abroad, For example in Sweden or Norway where they have billions of dollars in endowment funds for research.
11. Take Tourism, Aviation, Security, Banking, the whole value chain of real estate and medicare dominate these industries in Africa to the extent where we become competition to China and South Africa; let healthcare tourism be foremost in revenue generation.
12. Work a program for exchange of human capital. Create a barter around it. We have too many professors in Nigeria, export some to African universities in exchange for patronage from 4 fronts etc; stop licensing university, let them merge or new ones buy or invest those not doing well.
13. Put a team of 20 billionaires in Nigeria to do what Tony Elumelu is doing and support with 100b, match whatever they raise in funds and to be managed by a fund manager. Invite 100 citizens from 50 countries in Africa every year for training, IT, invention, medicine, hospitality, leadership, business training etc. Create a hub of knowledge and let this run for 15 years in the first instance. They will go back to their countries selling Nigeria.
16. Take a university each from 6 geopolitical zones and make a model giving them a 15 year period to be the best in Africa, Middle East and Latin America, leading human knowledge from all fronts churning out EMPLOYABLE GRADUATES
17. Build a culture of discipline, respect and peaceful coexistence by abolishing nepotism and sectionalism. Rewarding hardwork, competence and discipline.
18. Insist we consume what we produce especially where we have comparative advantage
19. Manage Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to focus only on industries we don’t have comparative advantages to grow our SMEs, on industries that can produce or import raw materials.
50% equipment imports for industries must be CKD and 20% SKD
20. Address power like the world has come to an end.
