Our Reporter
The Chairman of Citibank, Dr. Yemi Cardoso, has said a country can only prosper if there is enough ‘growth’ to go round.
He spoke at the 1st Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola Colloquium held recently via a teleconference to commemorate Interior Minister Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola’s 63rd birthday.
The theme of the conference was: ‘Government Unusual, Innovative Economic Solutions to Unlock Mass Prosperity.’
Cardoso said: “Any kind of prosperity, in my view, requires growth. Growth for individuals, growth for countries. In one of the studies done where they looked at eight high growth economies, they found something very interesting and that was — there was no identical policies in every single high growth economy.
“In other words, you couldn’t look at one or two and say it ticks all these boxes. Everyone tailored their situations to what worked for them. However, for you to want institutions, individuals or countries to flourish, take away the binding constraints.”
He listed the binding constraints as protection of basic property rights and rejection of regulations and tax rates that thwart free enterprise.
Read Also: Post COVID-19: Restructuring Nigeria has become a given
Cardoso said Nigeria must learn from countries such as Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Macedonia, who improved their ease of doing business, removed bottlenecks around the inflow of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), trained and educated their workforce and concentrated on their comparative advantages.
The CEO of Lotus Capital Ltd, Mrs. Hajara Adeola, said to bring more women into the wealth creation and mass prosperity spectrum, Nigeria’s infrastructure value chain has to be directly and indirectly improved on.
Her view was shared by Ogbeni Aregbesola.
“Women benefit along the value chain of the ecosystem. For example, any mass infrastructure project you have, these projects always have some collateral benefits along the value chain,” Adeola said at a virtual conference held recently.
She added: “Even if you have a construction site for a road, you immediately have a ‘Mama Put’ cooking, feeding people. Whether it’s a school feeding programme or a school uniform programme, armed services uniform programme, you have the collateral benefit of women and others in the value chain supplying that process.
“In the direct value chain, I will come back to the youth and the area of ICT. Nigeria needs to be more service oriented and ICT is one way to get there. If Nigeria can get that ICT backbone right, it will be one way to empower our women and youths.
“Our youths and young women are brilliant. They are innovative. They are creative.
“One thing COVID-19 has shown us is that people can work for anybody from anywhere.”
Adeola said that federal and sub-national leaders would do well to train women and youths to develop technological capacities such as coding that would come in handy in a fast paced 21st century.
Aregbesola said an empowered, mobilised and motivated people would benefit any state in the medium and long term.
“I want to add a line to what Hajara said that women constitute half of the human population and give birth to the other half. Women also determine the nature, future and character of any society. I wish women will understand how powerful they really are.
“So women, don’t even wait for society to help you. Push yourselves there because you are the core element of human society,” he added.
Broadcast journalist Boason Omofaye moderated the two-hour discussion.
The panelists were Kaduna State Governor Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, Dr. Cardoso, Mrs. Adeola, Country Director of DA Dr. Joe Abah, CEO of Financial Derivatives Bismarck Rewane, Statistician-General of the Federation Dr. Yemi Kale and Kebbi State Governor Abubakar Bagudu.
Leave a Reply