Nigerians face hard times. How is the Senate helping to navigate the nation out of the economic doldrums?
The economy has always been on our agenda. You have to understand that 90 percent of our revenues come from oil. We are all aware of the price of oil has plummeted since the last one year. It came from $100 down to even $28, $30. We are operating a mono product economy. And there is high level of unemployment. So it is clear for us that, in order to address some of these issues we must do the following.
First, we cannot continue to depend on oil. We must diversify. We must diversify to agriculture and solid mineral. But we all have to understand that these sectors are not such that you can go there on a Monday and by Tuesday, Wednesday you begin to see results. They need five to ten years to give you what you want. What we must bring about in these sectors are reforms. It is not even policies. People who want to invest in these sectors are skeptical of somersault in polices. What people are looking out for is the kind of laws the country has that support the sectors.
For instance, in agriculture, if you talk about agriculture diversification and you don’t have any law that is clear or shows that there is a move to promote either commercial agriculture or credit to farmers, nobody is going to do any business. People would not want to invest in those sectors.
So you begin to see that we are addressing some of these areas. In the agricultural sector we are doing it.
On the economy, one of the bills before us which I am hopeful that the two chambers will soon pass is our public procurement law. It is a pity that it is not well reported. We saw earlier on that we must do something to stimulate the economy. One of the things we must know is that when you are going through this kind of downturn or recession, you must think outside the box.
We told ourselves that the country spends in its budget a lot of money, close to N2trn in capital purchases, outside salary etc. Most of the money is used to purchase goods outside the country. So that two trillion is help other countries’ economy. What stops government from saying, look I have my two trillion naira, if I don’t find those goods in Nigeria I can buy it any other place. But I must first make a concerted effort to see whether I can find those within Nigeria.
If there is no law that supports that, it will not happen. It cannot be left to one government today, another one in four years comes with different plans. If there is a law well backed up, it will encourage entrepreneurs to say, well there is a law in Nigeria that says that this ministry must buy this item first in Nigeria. I as an entrepreneur, if I can produce that goods locally, I have a market.
The America we talk about free trade etc, as early as 1920s had such a law. It was called ‘Buy America’. China still has it. Few countries in South America have it. I told somebody that even if this is the only law that we passed it will have huge impact on our economy. There would be money going into stimulating the manufacturing sector and providing jobs to Nigerians.
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