Presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has unveiled a five point agenda for the transformation of Nigeria’s economy, if he becomes president.
The former Vice President made this declaration at the 2022 Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) private sector economic forum ahead of the 2023 presidential election held in Victoria Island, Lagos.
Atiku said the private sector is inevitable for any economic policy or programme to succeed and gave reasons why he will be inculcating the private sector leadership in driving economic growth and development agenda.
“The private sector is key to any government’s development agenda and must always be listened to. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data, the public sector accounts for only 7.5 percent and the private sector, 78.9 percent of national consumption expenditure.
“Similarly with investment expenditure, Government investment is only around a quarter of that of the private sector, 85 percent of the investments in the Medium-Term National Development Plan 2021 – 2025 are envisaged to be private sector funded.
“According to the Nigeria Infrastructure Master Plan. Nigeria has n infrastructure financing deficit of approximately US$ 100 billion per annum which cannot be met by the public sector while Nigeria’s annual budget is only USD 30 billion.”
The PDP presidential flagbearer went on to decry the current state of the economy and added that the APC led government is dressing Nigeria in “borrowed robes”.
“It has become fashionable for the APC government to blame opposition for failure.
Since APC assumed power, the Nigerian economy has been crawling instead of growing, more than 23 million people are out of jobs,
“Nigerians are poorer today than in 2015, capital has taken a flight, Nigeria has consistently run-on budget deficits since it came to power in 2015.”
Atiku went on to give a Five point agenda on what he’ll do to restructure the economy. He said his economic growth and development agenda Derek’s to stimulate the growth of the economy and place it among the top 20 economies of the world.
“Nigeria has a potential to double its GDP by 2030 and achieve per capita income of approximately US$5000. We cannot overcome our challenges without significant reforms to restructure the economy, we need to support the private sector to unleash its growth potential and play key role in the economy.
“We will restore investor confidence in the Nigerian economy to take risks and invest capital, break the jinx of infrastructure financing, declare a state of emergency in the power sector to underscore the concerns about the state of affairs in the sector and stimulate growth to create jobs and wage war against hunger.”
The President of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Asiwaju (DR.) Michael Olawake Cole CON also spoke at the event, where he reinstated the fact that the chamber is nonpartisan rather interested in the economic agenda of the candidates and their plan to make a better Nigeria in the next dispensation.
He said, “The Chamber is aware of the overshadowing effect of politics over economics in managing the Nigerian economy and would therefore wish to contribute to the setting of a new economic order that can take our economy from the doldrums.
“New policy directions, institutional reforms, and sound governance are critical to creating a new economic order in Nigeria and that is why we have been doing this for the past 16 years in every election cycle to provide a first hand opportunity for presidential candidates to speak to the Organized Private Sector (OPS) on their economic blueprint for Nigeria.”