 All right, welcome back. It's still the Independence Day special right here on Plus TV Africa. And of course, our next guest is seated and aptly poised to do justice to the next discussion on the state of the Nigerian economy. Professor Indubusi Indubusi Radha, Wokoma is a director at the Center for Economic Policy. He is a director at the Center for Economic Policy Analysis and Research University of Lagos, Nigeria. Or should I say, Koka, Nigeria. I hope I got it right. Prof, welcome to the program. Thank you. You're getting markedly. Nice to have you this morning. I would love to start on a very controversial note. I'd like to describe the Nigerian economy as it is today. And please, could you kindly face your camera? Yes, in one word, all right? In one word. And then proceed to tell us, give us your thoughts on the performance of this administration as far as its macro and micro policies are concerned, based on your description of the economy in one word. Now, one of the things President Buhari said today in his speech, Independence Day speech, which is his last before he goes back to his farm in Daru, like I said earlier, he said, quote, efforts in resetting the economy manifested in exiting through economic recessions by the very practical and realistic monetary and fiscal measures to ensure effective public financial management. He also said in addition, well, we'll stop at that. So he seems to have given himself some plaudits for exiting through recessions, hence giving himself a pass mark. So those two questions you can answer. Well, if you want me to describe the Nigerian economy in one word, I would say, presently scrambling. Yeah, the things are falling apart in so many respects. And I'm an examiner, I'm a professor of economics, and it is not the student who will tell you he did well in an exam. It is the examiner, the consumer, the people who say, look, our conditions are better in terms of unemployment, in terms of inflation, whatever. So when you are the cook, you wait for the consumer of your food to tell you, oh, this is tasty, the food is good. And like people say that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So I think to that extent, we can say that the people of Nigeria should be able to say, yes, we had the president, he came into office, and our lives are better, or our lives are not better. I cannot look at the indicators and I say, in this area, or this area, look at the exchange rate, look at that, that the economy is doing well or not doing well. And let's take a look at, when we go forward, about how the current government made the economy. We can look at the statistics and look at the data, and look at the excess food accounts, well, how much was it, and how much is it now? We can take a look at inflation with a single digit. Currently, it is over 20%, it's more expensive. And look at increase in income. The income level has not changed significantly. Take a look at the exchange rates, take a look at the environment, take a look at the recession that the country came out of, what led to that the country been able to exit the recessions. It was basically due to developments in the oil and gas sector, because when you have to change the price of oil globally, it affects the level of income we get as a country. So the monetary policy and fiscal policy actually have made that contribution, but they are not the major reasons why the country came out of the recession that were reported in 2016 and 2020, 2020 because of the COVID-19. So if you look at the whole thing totally, and look at the level of money the country has been able to borrow, by the time we have, if we have time for all this, we cannot go into them in details. I think the economy is not doing very well, in my opinion. I think a lot still has to be done because that will explain why many young persons don't find hope in the country. And they are looking for alternatives outside this, I was sure. So there are many issues that can be looked into to know whether the economy is doing well or not just, yes, it's good. There are areas you can say that the country could have had some progress, maybe trying to focus on infrastructure and all that. But largely speaking, I think the economy has not been, it's like packing up in so many areas. Okay, but let's talk about the fact that our economy is over dependent on a certain sector. And we know the economy is divided into several sectors. The primary sector, which oil is patrolled, we'll get to talk about agriculture. But let's talk about the over dependence on just the primary sector and oil and gas sector of our economy. Now, prior to now, we know that agriculture was immensely, in 1960, contributed about 60% or over 60% of the GDP. Now we're looking at 25%. How did we get here? Yeah, basically the policy environment has gradually been positive. Taking a look at the government's program, the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan, ARGP, which this current government brought in brought up to be able to run the economy. For all indicators that the ARGP had, it fell below targets. All, the only targets that the ARGP met was the price of oil, because it was underestimated, because we did a study at our center on the performance of the ARGP in the first two years. You find that for all indicators, all the sectors, What is the ARGP? What does that mean? Economic Recovery and Growth Plan of the Bwari administration, which was a four year medium term plan, which was meant to enhance the economy in three core areas, the macroeconomy and the issue of trying to get the economy diversified away from oil, that is the first plan. The second one is on investing the people, being able to give the money to those who are vulnerable and all that. They thought what would be the economy competitive. These are the three core key areas that the ARGP focused on. For all the projections of the ARGP, none of them met a target, not one, over the four year period. And like I said, the only area in which the government did not think that the part of oil would go as high as it did. So it underperformed. We've been able to get the economy diversified away from oil. Up to today, oil is still the mainstream of the economy. So not much has really changed. And if there's anything that happens to the global economy in the area of oil or oil price, the economy begins to pick up. Either the price goes up or if the price goes down, the economy begins to falter and begin to shake. So it is still dependent largely on the oil sector. And I think a lot has to be done. We need to talk about developing the non-oil sector. For now, we are just speaking. I've been an economist for many years and I know in our various conferences, we're talking about the economy being diversified. It's been like a sing song over the years. It's just like talk. But not much has happened. And this government has been able to talk more about it. Not much has manifested from the ARGP plan. But Professor Ndubisi, my question is, how did we contribute? I mean, did agriculture then contributed 60% or over 60% to our GDP? And now we're struggling and grappling. Even though agriculture 25 is still the largest that you have in our economy now, looking at other sectors, 2%, 9 and thereabout, you can't still compare with agriculture, but we're not where we should be. And so what could be the issue? Yes, like I said, the issues about policy and focus on oil. For example, when we talk about getting the economy transformed, economy transformation globally, third world countries move from commodities, agriculture. You move from there to industry and then you move to services. When the GDP of the country was rebased under Jonathan, you discover that more than 50% of our economy is on services, ICT, insurance, banking and finance and so on. And then the middle, which is industry, agriculture, manufacturing, was very thin. And because of the focus on oil, we get cheap money from oil, we've been able to abandon agriculture and manufacturing. And then we now translated, even the agriculture that we had that was as high as up to 55% of the GDP contribution actually began to shrink. And in recent times, it's also been affected because we're now focusing a lot more on livestock. This year about headers and so on, which also affecting crop production. Agriculture has two major components in GDP computation. We have the crop and we have the livestock. The bulk of agricultural contribution is in crops. And for crops, we have cash crops, we have food crops. Now, if you take a look at livestock, the major component there is poultry. But you know, because of the need to give prominence to cows and other kinds of livestock, we've been able to affect the production of a car, of a crops because of livestock production. Talk about livestock transportation plan, which basically is about 2% contribution to GDP. We are destroying the other 30, 40% because of 2%. So I think the issue is about policy. The focus of government and focus on oil has actually been able to bring down this proportion that agricultural contribution to GDP from what it was before to what it is now. So it's about policy and the focus of governance. They've been able to drive the economy. All right. Because we're looking at Nigeria 62, we would also go back in time to look at what's been happening over the years. And since independence then, what has been Nigeria's economic development been since we took reins and we switched to self-governance or government. I remember that some national leader from ahead of state said the problem of the country is not how to make the money, but how to spend it. And of course, I do remember some years ago, I wasn't alive, then maybe I may not have been alive, but Nigeria was the mecca of the Dubai of Africa or West Africa where people were tripping into this country, including my parents, came from Ghana to Nigeria. It was a place where you could come and see skyscrapers. You could come and see flyovers, the flyovers and Lagos and the butterfly interchanges have been there for years. I mean, it was a time where the cement production in the entire world was affected because of the humongous construction going on in Nigeria. So this is a country that even before Egypt and Dubai began to plan and build cities, Nigeria had already started building a city from scratch in the mode of the FCT Abuja. So Nigeria has been there before Ghana got there. Nigeria has been there before Egypt got there, before Dubai got there. What went wrong and when did it go wrong? Yeah, in my opinion, Nigeria has three problems, basically three. Number one is leadership. Number two is leadership. And number three is leadership. Leadership, leadership, leadership. If you take a look at economy that have actually been transformed across the world, even in Asia, take a look at Singapore. Singapore, for example, we have a look at you. Look when you came in and transformed that economy. Take a look at even Ghana. From third world to first. From third world to first world. Take a look at Hong Kong. Take a look at South Korea. These economies in Asia, even Taiwan, they moved from third world to first world in the literature. And if you find out what are the growth drivers, it's just leadership, principally. Ghana was worse than Nigeria. We had this, that is why we have this language of Ghana was good. They all tripped into Nigeria because the country went down until a man emerged, Rollins, and he turned things around for the whole country. And the Ghanians went back. Many investments actually come into Africa, or West Africa, go to Ghana, not Nigeria, because of leadership change. And I think the critical thing is, if you get it right, that is number one. The next thing is about the structure of Nigeria. Needs to be taking it, we seem to look at the structure of Nigeria. Because the structure of production, the structure of governance is very critical. When all of us actually are going at the same pace, that is not how it was. Even in the First Republic, the country was doing much better. I had the Western region going at their own pace with their own policy structure. We had the Eastern region, we had the North. We need to look at the structure of Nigeria. We don't all put all of us, we don't talk about everybody being centralized. It affects economy growth. We need to look at the structure and then make sure that we have the right leadership. It will turn around the economy. This economy is a great, this country is a great country with huge potentials. But because people who have been squeezed together and then we don't have the right leadership, everybody comes in, want to defend the interest of its own people and all kinds of, it is compartmentalized and it affects economy growth. So I think the issue is leadership is so important. Get it right and make sure that we have the right structure. I believe in restructuring. It affects economy growth and they will be able to make sure the country will achieve what it has planned. Well, I'm sure that we have to let this go, but just to just leave this at this point, Professor Ndubisi, there's been... Wocoma. Wocoma. I don't have to call you entirely, entirely. But I mean, it's been stated that the kind of structural legacy that we inherited from the colonial government is responsible for what we're faced at the time with because we inherited a system where as much as we were good with exportation of raw materials, we're very dependent on the Western market for commodities. So the discouragement of industrialization has continued and we see that in the disguise of green environment and green policy and green economy. And Niger and other African countries are binding to this. When you ask yourself how much of the gas are you emitting into the globe at the end of the day, it's not even up to 10%. Why are we even continuing in this line? But I'm sure that it will be another time to have this thought. I'm sure you want to say something just in a few seconds, Professor. Well, basically, we need to gain from our natural resource. There's always a trade-off in any economic policy or any economic action. There's always a trade-off. You gain here in this day. So if actually we need to generate income, make sure we minimize oil theft because we are now, it's like double Joe party. You have the negative effects of oil production. You have the stealing and the ordinary person is not benefiting. So if we're able to get as much as we can from our fossil fuels and also bear the consequences, I think we can still do one at this in the short term. All right. Thank you very much. Professor Undu Bisi Ngokomans, Director of the Africa Center for Policy Analysis and Research, University of Lagos, Akoka. We appreciate your time. Thank you very much. And happy October 1. Thank you. All right. Congratulations. Yes indeed. We'll be right back. We have more ahead on a special independence program right here on Plus TV Africa.