•NESG cancels presidential debate
To reduce poverty, unemployment and promote rapid economic growth, the Federal Government has set a target of growing the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to $11.7 trillion by 2050.
The Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Prince Clem Agba, made this disclosure yesterday in Abuja at the pre-summit briefing of the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG).
Prince Agba stated that while it is the duty of the government to provide the laws, the private sector is expected to drive investments.
These investments, he said, would push Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to $11.7 trillion by 2050.
According to him, “The private sector will be the engine of growth of the economy, while the government will implement policies and regulations that promote a favourable business environment to achieve a high rate of investment and saving.
“Investment is necessary to raise the economy to a GDP of $11.7 trillion by 2050, while structural barriers that constrain the vulnerable segment of the society from realising its potential are addressed.”
He said the target of the Nigeria Agenda 2050 and the National Development Plan “is to help bridge the country’s massive infrastructure gap for a sustainable, holistic and inclusive national development”.
Prince Agba added that while the Plan is meant to drastically reduce poverty to 0.6 per cent and unemployment rate to 6.3 per cent, efforts will be made to promote rapid and sustained economic growth of seven per cent.
“Growth will be sustained by maintaining macroeconomic stability, ensuring equity, promoting productivity and competitiveness, ensuring low population growth, as well as girl-child education and women participation in the labour force,” he said.
After the briefing, Chairman of the NESG Mr. Asue Ighodalo told journalists that Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) has cancelled its planned Presidential debate between candidates in the coming 2023 elections.
The presidential debate was scheduled to be held next week in Abuja as part of the National Economic Summit (NES#28).
Organisers of the summit shelved the debate because of what they called “unfavorable climate”.
In place of the debate, NESG said it will organize a town hall meeting for presidential candidates of the political parties at a later date.
NESG Chairman Mr. Asue Ighodalo confirmed the change of plan yesterday while responding to questions from journalists after a scheduled pre-summit briefing.
Asue Ighodalo said there must be a minimum level of issues which presidential aspirants must sign on to.
He said the NESG had “hoped there was going to be a debate, but the prevailing climate wasn’t comfortable for it any more”.
“However we are planning a town hall arrangement. It’s fundamental that each aspirant tells Nigerians how he intends to tackle each sector of the economy. The public can then take them up copiously sector by sector. There will be no aspirant that will say I don’t know. I promise this “, he said.
Speaking more on what this year’s summit will cover, Ighodalo projected that “in five years, Nigeria can become a leading industrializing and reforming nation in Africa that focuses on building its State capacity and capabilities”.
Within that period, Nigeria he said “can break free from decades-long political, policy, legislative and regulatory binding constraints”.
“We can create an enabling investment climate and business environment, underpinned by a motivated, capacitated, well-resourced, world-class civil service that drives open, transparent, high-performance governance at all levels.
We can move Nigeria decisively towards structural and institutional reforms required to unlock local content development, sub-national economic diversification, competitiveness, and growth in the medium term.
“We can make moderate and incremental progress in poverty reduction and job creation, and we can make Nigeria the dominant shareholder of FDI inflows into the African continent.
Since the country is in full electioneering season, Ighodalo noted that “2023 presents another opportunity to demonstrate a strong political will to tackle Nigeria’s socio-economic challenges”
This year, the NESG he said “seeks to unveil the most critical challenges for urgent attention: these are unemployment surge, huge infrastructural deficit, fiscal weakness, human capital and skills gap, flawed security architecture, and corruption”.
This summit will delve into the causes and implications of these critical challenges.
Ighodalo lamented that “our nation is in a season of social discontent characterised by massive economic pressures and challenges on businesses and citizens. Macroeconomic instability is driven by stagflation pushing more people below the poverty line. More Nigerians are multidimensionally poor than are monetarily poor. The World Bank estimates that in 2022 alone, 7 million Nigerians will go into extreme poverty” .
“These socioeconomic pressures are accentuated by rising food inflation and a growing food insecure population that the World Food Programme puts at 61 Million as of October 2022. This situation has over 38 per cent of our under-5 children experiencing chronic malnutrition and 70% of our children suffering from Learning Poverty (lacking basic literacy and numeracy skills).
He said “Nigeria’s Internally Displaced Persons Index 2021 shows that we had 3.2 million IDPs as of last year. This year adds an additional 1 million IDPs triggered by flooding that has not only destroyed lives and livelihoods but threatens food sufficiency and security”.