A poignant statement was made by an accomplished Nigerian some 20 years ago. Sam Aluko, the then Chairman of the National Economic Intelligence Committee, surveyed the landscape with his trained eyes as a professor of Economics and declared: “It is those nations that refuse to remain the footnote of the history of other nations but take their destiny in their own hands, that rule the world.”
These words of wisdom came to mind at the 21st version of the Nigerian Economic Summit which started in Abuja on Tuesday. Against the backdrop of the unprecedented economic travails which the nation has been grappling with in recent times, travails vividly mirrored by declining oil prices amidst the global economic downturn, it came as small or no surprise that President Muhammadu Buhari’s speech at the event exemplified the mood of the moment.
In fact, the theme of Mr. President’s speech is self-explanatory.
Tough Choices: Achieving Competitiveness, Inclusive Growth and Sustainability. Represented at the opening ceremony by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, the president pointed out that Nigeria has found itself in the heat of monumental challenges that in turn require ruthless but necessary prescriptions with a view to overcoming the challenges.
Despite the seemingly insurmountable challenges, however, light flickers at the end of the tunnel. This, according to the President, is on account of the fact that Nigeria throbs with what he called “incredible opportunities” for getting out of the woods. The President firmly believes that if such opportunities are properly harnessed, this country can achieve “competitiveness, inclusive growth and sustainability.”
As someone who had been called upon to clean up the Augean Stable by virtue of the Pan-Nigeria mandate given to him in the last presidential poll, the President said he feels duty-bound to rebuild the institutions which corruption and crass mismanagement have undermined over the years.
He said: “We, as a government, are called upon to make tough choices in exchange control restrictions; altering the absurd recurrent – to capital expenditure ratio, reducing the deficit and reducing the overall size of governance we are called upon to clean up the mess and rebuild the institutions that corruption has ravaged over the years.
“We are compelled to redress the paradox of high growth figures and widening inequality, rising unemployment and poverty. It is evident that any economic model that leaves nearly half of the citizenry behind requires re-thinking. This is why our economic model would involve substantial social investments over the next three years.”
Serving as an able representative of his principal, Vice President Osinbajo later x-rayed a number of pertinent issues raised by various participants at the event. Focusing on how the Buhari administration is working to alter the peoples’ economic fortune for the better, for instance, the Vice President cited the proactive and practical measures being taken by the government.
These, he said, include the Conditional Cash Transfer and the renewed support for medium and small enterprises.
Aside from generating the direly–needed employment chances across the country, these and other holistic measures are targeted at reducing poverty, social tension and criminality. Indeed, given the extent of the rot that has been allowed to eat deeply into the fabric of the country’s economy over the years, except a surgical operation is undertaken, the type of operation which the the President called tough choices, the nation may sink deeper into the mire rather than exploring the huge opportunities for sailing to success.
The million naira questions are: has Nigeria under the incumbent administration started to toe the path of revivals? Are we as a people harnessing the once-in-a-lifetime-opportunities for achieving the competitiveness, inclusive growth and sustainability which we desperately need? According to economic experts, one of the significant ways which the Buhari administration has proactively answered such posers is evident in the introduction and implementation of the Treasury Single Account (TSA).
With this move, the government has struck a potentially fatal blow at the soft underbelly of the monster called corruption. Prior to the advent of Treasury Single Account, it was fashionable for a typical federal government agency to operate as many bank accounts as it pleased, leading to a situation whereby even some top officials of such agencies had no inkling of the number of accounts being operated by their agencies at a particular time. This, needless to say, allowed the culture of impunity and criminal wastage to flourish with reckless abandon.
The Treasury Single Account has enthroned accountability, openness and integrity in the conduct of public affairs. So much so that an outfit such as the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has started to render monthly accounts of its income and expenditure, a far cry from the opaqueness and impunity that had characterized its operations over the decades.
From the foregoing, it is obvious that this year’s version of the annual National Economic Summit is not what can be called “business as usual.” Certainly with the ripple effects of the present administration’s change agenda being felt across the broad spectrum, even the blind can see that a new order has come into force.
That being so, discussants, at the summit, including economist, accountants, technocrats, politicians, business leaders, entrepreneurs, and so forth, are expected to dispassionately examine the tough choices facing the nation with a view to proffering solutions on how competitiveness, inclusive growth and sustainability can be achieved. By doing so, the main objectives of holding the Economic Summit would have been duly achieved.
As a last word of sort, it must be emphasized that as vital as it is to jaw-jaw, it is no less imperative to ensure that things do not end there. Rather, proactive action should accompany the summit. In other words, the product of the summit should not end in the dustbin or under the carpet. Let it serve as a roadmap for our economic revival and national growth. More so as the recommendations of too many previous economic summits have more or less been in vain. So help us God.