Jude Chinedu, Enugu
Former Minister of National Planning, Prof Osita Ogbu, has said that Nigeria’s economy would continue to nose-dive unless the country embraced innovative strategies, stressing that if Nigeria was fortunate enough to have a purposeful leader who will formulate policies to intentionally move towards an innovative economy, it would in few years be on equal footing with developed nations of the world.
The renowned economist spoke at the 2019/2020 distinguished lecture of the Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT) Business School, held in Enugu.
He said: “Nationhood requires deliberate construction by leaders that care; leaders that can unify voices and whose radiance of trust is wide and deep. This issue is very urgent because it is the bedrock upon which all other things are built. “To lift 200 million people out of poverty as the President promised requires a growth rate of 7.2 per cent for about two or three decades and we should be interested in growth that is not built on oil prices and growth that is not cornered by a few through acts of corruption. This growth must be innovation driven.
“We must re-engineer agriculture and industry. Growth that widens our inequality is antithetical to innovation. Indeed, the current low agriculture in Nigeria means that more people are producing less. We only look at the output without considering the input. Our low manufacturing growth is a serious problem to poverty reduction.
“The clusters which autonomously developed in Nigeria cities like as Nnewi, Onitsha, Aba, Kano and Lagos, can be supported to scale up, technologically upgrade and innovate. There are programmes of the Federal Government which can be redirected for this purpose.