 The Nigerian Economic Summit has proved to be resilient in promoting dialogue and collaboration between government and the private sector. This has led to a number of very worthy initiatives and joint interventions over the years. It's also an opportunity, a regular opportunity for us to review the conditions and policies that impact on overall economic performance and to collaboratively interrogate some of the important ideas and prescriptions preferred for the Nigerian economy. This address will be devoted, essentially, to an aspect of the theme of the summit from poverty to prosperity, making governments and institutions work. The focus is on charting the course from poverty to prosperity for the majority. Absolute poverty is defined as a number of those who cannot afford the bare essentials, food, shelter, clothing. Sometimes the World Bank says those who live under $1.90. But this has become bad, especially over the past three decades, perhaps the biggest economic challenge for Nigeria. What is astonishing about the poverty situation is that it has persisted even when the nation earned its highest revenues. The MBS figures published of its household poverty savings in 2012, which was the last survey done, showing that despite rising oil prices and growth figures, poverty increased in every study cycle. I'll just share some of the figures to be very quick. In 1980, absolute poverty figures at the absolute numbers were 17.1 million Nigerians. In 1985, 34.7 million Nigerians. In 1992, 39.2 million. 1996, 67.1 million. 2004, 66.7 million. 2010, which is the last household survey of poverty done, 112.47 million. The figures for the next cycle are currently being compiled by the MBS. But the truth is that despite what would appear to be rising revenues, especially oil revenues, poverty has remained more or less pregnant. And in fact, in the period between 2004 and 2010, doubled actually in absolute numbers. The problem of poverty and the attendant deficits in human development indices becomes more significant because our population continues to grow at about 3% annually, and we have to become the world's most populous nation by 2050. The world's third, sorry, third most populous nation by 2050. Of this population, over 60% will be young people, and about 1.4 million entering the job market every year. But how do we explain the paradox of high growth figures and rising poverty and unemployment figures? The first explanation is that high oil revenues do not necessarily translate to jobs. The oil industry by itself produces very few jobs. The high revenues can only translate to jobs and better living standards if the revenues are invested in diversification of the economy, infrastructure, education and healthcare, and social protection for those who cannot work. The question of course is what happens to these revenues? How come? We are unable to use the revenues in the way that they ought to be used. The most important dream on our resources is grand corruption, the stealing of large sums of public resource by public officials in collaboration with private individuals. I use the expression grand corruption to describe the direct looting of the treasury not necessarily tied to any government contract. This is in essence state capture. It is this heinous phenomenon that the Bahá'í administration has worked on to start. What happens with grand corruption is that by diverting government revenues to private use, resources are not available to be invested in the manner that they are planned to benefit everyone, to benefit the majority of people. No economy can survive on the theft of the commonwealth by its custodians. Impossible. And we must address the questions especially of grand corruption where it's a different thing. And I distinguish between grand corruption and any other kind of corruption and we'll probably get a chance to talk about that in the plenary session on corruption. That's a different thing where government contracts are given out and there's corruption in the cause of execution of government contracts. That is different from losing. That is different from what we see. It is different from taking the resources where it really is and simply diverting them. It is that type of corruption, that grand corruption that has been devoured of this country and has led to the kinds of resource drills that have refused us the kind of momentum that we are to have in our economy. The second reason that explains the paradox of high growth figures and rising poverty and unemployment flows from the first namely the poor investment in infrastructure and the creation of an enabling environment for business. The third is the lack of commitment to diversification of the economy which would of course in turn provide multiple streams of revenue. This is both a problem at the national and at the sub-national level. We are seeing how the state's total dependence on monthly FARC allocations has led to a situation where few states can pay salaries without federal government, without the FARC. Yearly IGR in most states cannot pay their wage bills in one month. Nigeria's productive economy is the sum total of 36 states on the FCG where the states do not have enough private commercial activity even agriculture to generate sufficient IGR. Job creation is stifled and poverty deepens. The fourth reason that explains the paradox of high growth figures and rising poverty and unemployment figures is the low investment over the years in the businesses at the bottom of the pyramid the so-called informal sector. And we heard at the last speaker speak about this so-called informal sector and why we need to recognize it and invest in it. The approach of the current government to reversing poverty and its consequences originated from the debates at the manifesto drafting stage in which I had the privilege of participating. The two classic sites at play were those who felt that so long as we created a sufficiently enabling environment for businesses, for the formal sector to thrive who would create enough jobs and opportunities for all there was no need for a massive welfare scheme and no need for direct government creation of jobs. It always, according to the argument, leads to dependencies and it is unsustainable. The other argument and the one that prevailed was that while we supported a private sector-led economy we had to intentionally address the creation of economic opportunities for the bottom of the pyramid, for the poorest. We were also convinced that governments still had to create some jobs directly especially for the large number of people coming out of tertiary institutions and who of course have no immediate opportunities. So a major premise of our economic model was the focus on empowering the jobless youth and millions in extreme poverty by a mix of micro-credit schemes, infrastructure support for markets and small business clusters and welfare for the most vulnerable and the direct creation of jobs on a consistent basis. In some, our focus has and will continue to be job creation. We've also decided that our focus will be on the following. One, ensuring that at least 30% of budget is spent on capital, especially infrastructure. To quote to leading Nigerian economists as growth in public capital expenditure arises unemployment falls and the Human Development Index improves. Therefore, infrastructure-based policies which initially reduce unemployment will also improve the living conditions. Two, diversifying the economy, especially agriculture, mining and the promotion of MSMEs. Three, strong fiscal discipline, especially zero tolerance for grand corruption. Four, support to states for payments of salaries and emollements. And five, a social protection program covering at least 5 million of the poorest in its first phase. Most of these points were captured in detail in our economic recovery and growth plan. Generally speaking, we have tried to keep faith with these objectives. By putting in place a stricter regime of fiscal discipline, we provided for 30% capital expenditure from 2016 despite earning over 60% less than in the previous four years. We invested so far a total of 2.7 trillion in capital spend, the highest ever in the history of the country. This covers investments in rail, in roads, in power, and in dams. In diversifying the economy, agriculture has been a major success with increasing budgetary allocation to agriculture from 8.8 billion in 2015 to 46.2 billion in 2016 and 1.03 billion in this particular cycle. Through the anchor boroughs program, credit is given directly to small holder farmers and the anchor boroughs program is an agricultural program for finances for holder farmers. And the CBN and 13 other participating funds have so far given credit, totaling 120.6 billion neither. And this has been given to 720,000 small holder farms who cultivate 12 commodities so far including rice, wheat, cotton, soil, cassava, poultry, and ground nuts across the 36 states and the FCT. In addition, we launched a fertilizer program to improve local blending capacity in collaboration with the Kingdom of Morocco. Today we have 11 fertilizer blending plants with a capacity of 12.1 million metric tons. Price has dropped fertilizer per bag from about 13,000 and hovers anywhere between 5 and 7,000 naira per bag. The anchor boroughs program is now digitized. We have all farm lands, GDPR is marked. Biometric data of farmers is captured, electronic cards are issued and specific inputs are required. This has enhanced traceability and enhanced productivity and yield also. Today, but for a few drawbacks, we are confidently approaching self-sufficiently in rice production from importing $5 million of rice every single day. Official imports are now down to 2%. And if you note, I said official imports are down to 2%. We have paid attention to supporting the states through loans. Paris Club refunds, old since 2005, and budget support facilities totaling 1.9 trillion naira so far have been given to the states in one form or support of the other. The simple reason being to ensure that consumers spending in the states does not suffer even more. On assumption of office in 2015, over 20 states were owing salaries for periods ranging from 3 to 12 months. For most states, the regular income of civil servants is a critical part of the economy of those states. A major plan of our administration's plan to move the needle positively on the poverty numbers is the social investment program. Our social investment program is the largest and most ambitious social investment program in the history of our country. We've provided $500 billion for it in both the 2016 and 2017 budgets. But the total spend on the program so far in both cycles is closer to $250 billion, and that's from both budgets. The program has six components. The MPAR program, which is our Graduate Employment Scheme, and this is the largest post-tensory jobs project in Africa. 500,000 graduates have been recruited as teachers, agricultural extension workers, and as public health officials. The last batch of 300,000 were recruited at the end of August. Each of these volunteers is provided with an electronic tablet. The first 200,000 have been provided. We're yet to provide the remaining 300,000. And this electronic tablet contains relevant training materials, including some of which they are trained to provide required services on an ongoing basis. So the teachers have training materials for teachers. The extension workers in the farms have training materials for extension workers in the farms, and we've also trained several of them in various aspects of extension work. And in addition, in each of those tablets we have a wide range of training materials from which the beneficiaries can train and use for their own self-development. The device empowers them to participate in the digital economy as data collectors and as analysts. And we've seen, especially from the MPAR program, we've seen that a lot of the beneficiaries of the MPAR program, a lot of these young graduates, have been very enterprising and they themselves have gone out to do all sorts of various other things for themselves, which some of the training and the tabletry they receive has enabled them to do. Our government enterprise and empowerment program, which is just called GIP, is a program where we have given out so far over 15 billion in interest-free loans ranging from 50,000 to 350,000. And this has been disbursed to more than 300,000 market women, traders, artisans and farmers across the country, including the FCT. 56% of those loans have gone to women. The trade and money program, that's different from what we call the market money, which is 50,000 to 350,000. Now this is an important component of giving microcredit to the bottom of the trading pyramid. The smallest businesses, the one table trader, the bread or plantain cellar or the mesai or mesuya and all of the very small traders. Most of them, their total inventory is not even usually up to about 5,000 nairas. If you look at their trades, if you look at what they're selling, most stone cell don't have an inventory of up to 5,000 naira at any given point in time. When I went to launch the scheme at the IA market, because a woman who was selling her pommon, which for those who do not indulge in that delicacy, is the height of a car, you know, but it is a delicacy, you know. Everyone is pretending that they don't know what pommon means. I really am. So this lady had her pommon in a bucket, just a bucket and it had water in it. And I asked her how much it was. She said it was about 3,000 naira. They told everything there was about 3,000 naira. So I said to her, OK, so what is your profit? How do you make profit from this? And she pointed to the woman who was standing right next to her. The woman who was standing right next to her had her own pommon in a little bowl, you know. And she does point that to her like, I am a big player here. Look at this one. So it's very clear that a lot of these people are really the bottom of the pyramid, but they are hardworking. They are in that value chain making their contributions. And one of the ways that we thought we could really add some value to that is by enabling them to buy more, improving their inventory so they can improve their own capacity to earn. Most of them, as I've said, are the small, they are the last in that value chain. They sell the single sashes of soap, sugar, spices and all of that to the largest numbers of people. But they are forgotten and ignored in economic plans and budgets. And they are considered too unwieldy and too risky for micro-credit loans. So under the scheme we are giving micro-credit to about two million of these perpetrators across the country. And the scheme enables them to draw further credit if they are able to pay back within six months. What we found is that a lot of these small traders, first we are able to reach them, technology has enabled us to reach them through mobile phones. Many who do not have mobile phones share a single mobile phone and have several sims. But we are also looking at how this would expand, how we can actually expand financial inclusion. And on account of this, we've been able to open about 349,000 new bank accounts. And we are working with about between 6 and 10, I think, of the banks to be able to open bank accounts for many of these individuals so that they can have more access, you know, more access to credit, more access to financial trading and all of what, and all of what have been in the formal economy would provide for them. So we give them a stronger chance to earn more while they also service the value chains which they already, which they are already a part of. But more importantly, I think, we bring them into the formal sector and where they have access to more government, a bit of it. I want to say also that, aside from what the beneficiaries have gained, and I've talked already about the new bank accounts and all that, I think that we are also in a position to see what exactly, and to study our informal sector a bit better. One of the problems we've had is with collection of taxes, especially of a very, very large informal sector. We're bringing in several into that, into the net, into the formal sector which of course enable us to improve even on our very low tax-to-GDP ratio which is about, well, is now close to 8%. It used to be about 6%. So we've also tried, as part of enabling the informal sector, we've tried to provide infrastructure for small economic clusters and markets. And this we've done through our energizing economies project, providing solar power to markets and economic clusters for small businesses and petty traders. In our area market in Aba, we've provided solar power for over 31,000 shops. In Sabangari market in Kano, we've provided solar power for over 13,598 shops. We're opening solar market in Lagos on Friday where we're providing, where we're providing for over 1,000 shops in the first place. We're also going to be doing Balogu market in Lagos and with Baguio market in Oyo. We've done in Mundo State about three markets already, Secombe market NEPA 1 and 2 where we've done close to 1,000 shops as well. In total, we've given solar power to about 81,691 shops. And we've serviced over 320,000 MSMEs. Our small businesses, of course, are focused on our economic plans. So our MSME clinics taking regulators to the MSMEs in all the states of the federation. We've gone to 20 states so far. And we've also in the process set up one-stop shops for regulatory and business approvals in several of those states. Just to quickly explain that, one with the MSMEs is that we've actually gone from state to state with our regulators. So we have NAFDAQ, we have SON, we have DOI, for credit purposes, we have the Corporate Affairs Commission and several of the other regulators and business approval agencies. And we actually take them to these states where we have these interactions over a two-day period with the MSMEs in those states. And here, of course, is to ensure that the regulators are better able to understand the problems and the issues that the MSMEs have. And what we've done in some states is to then set up one-stop shops in those states. So you have under one roof where most of the regulatory authorities are under one roof so that the small businesses don't have to travel long distances to NAFDAQ or SON and all of that. And in some of the states where we've set up one-stop shops in Cross River State, in Ocean State, in Plateau State, and in some states we've also established and equipped facilities where we have shared facilities for small businesses. So for example, for the tailors or for very small businesses such as that, we actually provide a facility which is registered by the state government, has required approvals and all of that, equipped with whatever equipment there need to be, machines and all of that, and power so that small businesses in those clusters can use the facilities without necessarily paying a small fee and without necessarily having to register again and do all of the various things that an individual business may need to do. We've done that in Abia, in Anambra, in Kaduna and in your states. So by and large, we've tried to focus on the MSMEs and of the 20 states I've been to about 18, I've gone to 18 of those states along with the regulators. And one of the things that you consistently find is that there's a huge number of individuals who are doing their businesses and groups who are doing their businesses, but who just have problems with the regulatory authorities, who have problems with NAVDAC, problems with SON and all of that. And we're happy to say that NAVDAC now has cleared using technology, has cleared this backlog of over 5,000 applications. And part of that is because they've been able to see for themselves what the MSMEs are going through and the MSMEs have confronted them with their problems. As part of our social investment programs, our homegrown school feeding program, it provides a free-balanced meal to over 9.2 million children in public primary schools every day. The program is operational now in 26 days. And by using local produce, livestock and poultry to support local agriculture provide jobs for, at the moment, 95,440 cooks resident in the various communities in which the schools are located. And they, of course, are the employees of the program. We pay them directly. The cooks are paid directly to the government. We have their BVNs. We have their bank accounts. And they deal with the individual schools. So we have cooks in the schools in every local government. The program is designed to improve malnutrition outcomes and also to improve school enrollment. And, of course, to provide, because it's a homegrown school feeding program, we buy produced locally all of the produce that is used is, of course, bought locally from the farming in any of the localities where we have the homegrown school feeding program. A conditional cash transfer program under which we have we pay 5,000 monthly to the poorest and most vulnerable households in the country. On the condition that they participate in educational health and nutritional and some environmental activities. So far, we've covered about 300,000 households and our target under the first phase is 1 million households. We're assisted in this by the World Bank that helps with admiration the local communities and the World Bank and our staff actually identify the individuals who are considered the poorest community by community. It's been a very slow process where we had thought we would be able to get to the 1 million mark by the end of the year but our projections show that we'll only be able to do as much as 1,000 by the end of the year. In addition to creation of jobs two other issues are critical to resolving the poverty problem. The first is education and the second is health care. Improved educational outcomes are crucial to our overall strategy to end extreme poverty to reduce inequality and remain in the path of sustainable growth. UNESCO's Global Education Monitoring Report and the Education Commission's Children's Center Generation Report say that there is important evidence of the impact of education on individuals' earnings on economic growth and in particular they find that education actually reduces poverty, increases individual earnings and reduces economic inequalities and promotes economic growth. By their estimates, 171 million people could be lifted out of extreme poverty if all children left school with basic reading skills. That's equivalent to a 12% drop in total and that's in the world total. Absolute poverty could be reduced by 30% from learning improvements as outlined by the Education Commission. Now, the point also, one of the major challenges that we have and this has been outlined is population growth and the massive population growth that we have experienced in about 3% yet, but one of the outcomes of the studies that have been done on education is that by educating women in particular, by educating girls in particular, we could actually reduce our population growth by about half just by educating women and I think that's the focus which, that's an issue which we are focused on and looking at how exactly to ensure that the constraints, the cultural constraints, religious constraints and all of those kinds of constraints are dealt with so that we can educate the largest numbers of women and also address at the same time the population figures which we see can become a major problem although it could be an advantage. First is achieving the educational outcomes specified in the Sustainable Development Goals the targets for school enrollment targets for quality of education adult literacy and the quality of teaching by 2030. Second we are undertaking an ambitious program to get the 9 million out of school children back to school it's a complex process requiring the full cooperation of state governments, religious authorities as well as resources to build the schools and equip them properly and train the required number of teachers. One thing we found we've held a summit recently with all of the state governments under the umbrella of the National Economic Council to look at how to address these problems especially problems of out of school children and many of the conclusions have reached many of the implementable ideas that we've reached were already rolling out so that we can see to a drastic reduction in the numbers of children who are out of school. Our school feeding program is already leading to improved enrollment and the Empire program also can be a source of the initial requirement for teachers. Three are rapidly increasing population the phenomenal achievements in technology and best population has changed the educational challenge before us quite radically given our limited resources and the current gaps in educational attainment in our country is clear that we must change both the substance of education that our children receive and the methods by which they are taught. We identified early-stage investment in primary and secondary education as key to becoming a knowledge different economy. There's also general agreement about the importance of STEAM education as opposed to STEM in Nigeria which is science, technology, engineering, arts and math and the need for a workforce with STEAM skills to drive economic prosperity. We also have held several meetings and some have attended the education summit where we looked in detail at some of these issues especially the introduction of science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics into our curriculum in primary and secondary schools. We also recognized that schooling should support the development of skills in cross-disciplinary, critical and creative thinking, problem-solving digital technologies all of which are essential in all of the 21st century occupations. Set against Nigeria's desire for a strong, functional STEAM education is a fact that decades of neglect of basic schooling infrastructure and adequate teacher training must be matched by a focused investment in large-scale and innovative solutions that overleap our current conditions. The federal government program aims to introduce in-class skills development on functional, economic and interpersonal skills around the STEAM subjects we have talked about. A countrywide curriculum is in development with coding digital arts, design thinking robotics, critical thinking and other skills taken into account. And this content is currently being developed in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT, the Oracle Academy, Microsoft, Cisco Academy and IBM all of who have agreed and are working with us in developing this new curriculum. For improved health outcomes in the health sector we are similarly exploring options for radical reform by ensuring that health gets at least an 8% share of any increases in government spending and by ensuring that the recently operationalized basic health care provision fund is used to substantially increase health care financing. We are also moving aggressively to change that reverse relationship between primary and tertiary health care which attracts almost the same level of funding. So between primary and tertiary health care today we have almost the same level of funding but we think that this is wrong and so we are looking at a 60% for primary health care 20% for secondary and 20% for tertiary health care in the allocation of funds. Universal health insurance is a fundamental policy for the federal government and we believe that using co-payments in order to share the cost between individuals the private sector and the government while the poorest 40% will be exempted from making such co-payments. By this means we hope that we can get a 45% increase in the share of the population covered by primary health care in the next four years up from the present 12.6%. So keeping a similar level of ambition we should have 98% coverage in the next 15 years. By similar means the total government expenditure on health should increase from 7.8 billion in the next four years as compared to the current level of 5.3%. This year alone the basic health care position fund contributed an additional 55 billion to health financing. The real issue is that we must increase the aggregate national health expenditure. In 2017 the health budget of all of the 36 days was a little over 332 billion Naira which is about 4.9% of the total budget size. This year only Bouch's state has met the 15% target of the Abudia conference and the Abudia conference was where African Union countries pledged to set a target of at least 15% of their annual budget to improve the health sector. So as far as sub-nationals go we expect that there should be that there should be increased funding in the health care sector. And we've looked at this as part of our human capital development meetings that were held with the states and we're looking at how working with the state governments we can increase the digital spend, health care spend of our states. This year for the first time the federal government met its 1% of the annual budget prescribed by the health act. So for the very first time we're spending 1% of the budget which is a recommendation of the health act. But that is of course very very simple. In comparison to the actual needs of the health care sector improved health outcomes of course will entail greater cooperation with the private sector. As greater demand arising from health insurance will cause more high quality private hospitals to be built. Already the Sovereign World Fund has invested about 10 million dollars to build a world-class cancer treatment center in Lagos. I think that by and large in terms of policy and practices you know, critical costs is a technology driven future. And in the past few years we have spent quite a bit of time and quite a bit of resources looking at how to prepare for that technology driven future. We've launched one of the most aggressive drives for promoting business in the tech space. We're partnered with local and international tech companies and innovators in the building of tech hubs and promoting innovation. Our aim is to advertise access to support for innovation and cyber commerce and to create jobs. We've established hubs in collaboration with the World Bank and the Lagos Business School. We've established the Climate Change Hub at the LPS in Lagos. In Yola we've established the Northeast Humanitarian Hub it's also a technology hub focusing on innovative solutions for dealing with humanitarian, the different humanitarian challenges. We've also in collaboration with Civic Hub which is an appugia-based hub promoted technology and innovation in universities with students innovation challenge in the six geophysical zones. And we're building technology hubs in three universities. The Unilag Hub we hope will be ready by the end of this year. The Bank of Industry in response to the direction set by the government has launched a 10-billion-dollar tech fund. We believe that technology like entertainment and the arts requires our active support especially in the development of policies as we engage on chartered territory in the coming years. Consequently, the president director that will establish a technology and creativity advisory group to work on and to formulate policies in these very dynamic spaces. So far we've held about three meetings. We held one last week and most of those who participated in the advisory group players in technology and in the entertainment industry. Perhaps as I close the greatest challenge through the years has been governance and institutional witnesses systemic corruption integrity and inefficiency in our public service and the administration of justice system. We've taken a strong stand on corruption especially grand corruption but there's still a long way to go cleaning up systemic corruption is as you can imagine and as you know a difficult task by its very nature systemic corruption always fights back using the various institutions that are to be reformed and I believe that we have to keep focused we have to keep vigilant and alert and when you call all of the collaboration of the private sector all of the collaboration of the professions in ensuring that we're able to deliver on the governance issues that have so damaged a lot of the progress that we could have made. I wish as I close to commend both the NESG and the Ministry of Budget and Planning for the very hard work and consistency through the years. I want to thank you very, very much again for the kind invitation to be here and it's now my distinct pleasure to declare the 24th Nigerian Economic Summit open. Thank you.