By Chukwudi Nweje
The presidential candidate of the Young Progressives Party, (YPP), Prof. Kinsley Moghalu has made a case for a constitutional restructuring of Nigeria to place ownership of natural resources in the component units of the country.
He said that Nigeria cannot achieve development unless it makes economic diversification the central thrust of its policy and noted that the country witnessed its best broad-based economic growth.
The former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) said this in a paper, titled: ‘Economic Diversification and the Wealth of Nations: Lessons and the Path Forward for Nigeria’, delivered at the annual conference of the Nigerian Economic Students Association (NESA), in Port Harcourt.
“Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution, by placing ownership of natural resources exclusively in the hands of the central government, creates a disincentive for economic diversification. This is because it hampers a regional approach to economic diversification and economic management in what is a supposedly federal state. Devolving fiscal autonomy to the state governments will engender competitive manufacturing and the diversification that will drive it.”
He called on Nigeria’s economic policymakers to help the government develop targeted export policies and incentives that would drive diversification, which he said would require “a comprehensive and joined-up approach to economic policy, rather than the silo approach we have seen for many years.”
He said that for Nigeria to drive economic diversification successfully, special attention must be paid to trade policy and improving Nigeria’s share of global merchandise exports, which he said have been virtually stagnant in over a decade.
He said the Economic Advisory Council to President Muhammadu Buhari should work on a full-time basis, even as the entire economic management apparatus need to acquire and establish strong competence in industrial policy, if the economic diversification goal of the government is to yield results
“It is important that such a council and the rest of the country’s economic management apparatus acquire and establish strong competence in industrial policy if our economy is to become truly diversified.