The National Leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Senator Bola Tinubu, has proposed a seven-point agenda that would revive Nigeria’s troubled economy.
The APC chieftain also said the measures would drastically reduce her dependence on petrodollars.
According to Tinubu, the development of a national infrastructure plan; the return of commodity exchange boards and the promotion of government-backed housing programmes were important measures that could help to reposition the national economy.
The seven-point agenda was part of a recent lecture the APC leader delivered in Lagos, where he said the decline in oil prices had revealed the travesty of the country’s extant economic model.
He said, “We must realise that no populous nation has ever attained broadly- shared prosperity without first creating an industrial capacity that employs large numbers of people and manufactures a significant quantity of goods for domestic consumption or export.”
According to the former Lagos State governor, America and China had implemented policies to protect key industries, employment and encourage exports.
He added, “A strong common thread is their policies of buffering strategic industries in ways that allow for the expansion and growth of the overall economy.
“So, we must press forward with a national industrial policy fostering the development of strategic industries that create jobs as well as spur further economic growth.
“Whether we decide to focus attention on steel, textiles, cars, machinery components, or other items, we must focus on manufacturing things that Nigerians and the rest of the world value and want to buy. We must partially reshape the market place to accomplish this.
“A national economy cannot grow beyond the capacity of the infrastructure that serves it. Good infrastructure yields a prospering economy. Weak infrastructure relegates the economy to the poorhouse. The government must take the lead.
“The focus on infrastructure has important corollary benefit. Federal expenditure for needed infrastructural spending has empirically proven in every place and in every era to boost recessionary economies and provide employment when sorely needed.
“Deficit spending in our own currency to advance this mission is neither a luxury nor a mistake. It is a fulcrum of and balanced and shared prosperity. We must overcome the economic, political and bureaucratic bottlenecks preventing us from achieving reliable electrical power.
“The hurdles we face are not technical in nature. We must convince those political and economic factors currently impeding our quest for reliable power to step aside so that we may obtain this critical ingredient to economic vitality,” he pleaded.
“The long-term economic strength of the nation is dependent on how we deploy idle men, material, and machines into the productive endeavor. And this is highly dependent on the interest rate.
“The normal profit rates in most business sectors cannot support the burden imposed by current interest rates. If our industrialists do not invest in more plants, equipment, and jobs, the economy will stagnate. The banking system would have achieved its goal of low-interest rates at the greater costs of economic growth.
“Consumer credit must be more accessible to the average person. The prevailing norm is for a person to purchase high -priced items such as a car in one lump sum. This is oppressive. It defeats the average person and constrains transactions in real estate, vehicles, and appliances that could vitalize the economy.
“They need to provide longer-term mortgages with manageable interest rates. The government should provide the supporting guarantees to make such financing a reality. By sparking the effective demand for housing, the overall economy is enhanced. The construction sector and the industries allied to it will surge.
“Though effective, this policy was shunned because it conflicted with the free market totems that we were asked to erect against our own interests. We must return to commodity exchange boards, which will allow farmers to secure good prices and hedge against loss.
“An agricultural mortgage loan corporation should be inaugurated to further promote these goals. The proposals stated above are largely within the province of the federal government. Focusing on these and other such things will keep the federal government sufficiently busy.”
