Obi: Why Nigeria must be a production country

The presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, has again said Nigeria must move from being a consumption to a production country, stressing that it is the only option to take the country’s economy out of the wood.

Obi, in a series of tweets on his verified Twitter account, said it is a three-tracked plan aimed at achieving Goal 12 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), by ensuring sustainable consumption and production pattern.

The LP presidential flag-bearer said his administration will be on agriculture and production-centered growth for food security and export, with more emphasis on exporting finished products instead of commodities and raw materials if elected as president in the 2023 general election.

Obi noted that Nigeria has over 84 million hectares of land with only 40 per cent of it cultivated, stressing that “Nigeria’s arable land is her new oil and gold”.

In pursuit of Goal 9 of the SDGs, the governor of Anambra State stated that if elected, his administration will from its inception, continue to encourage investment in infrastructure – energy, transport, irrigation, and telecoms – to grow these and other sectors.

Obi said: “We will enforce the legal framework protecting foreign investors and their indigenous partners. This is the only way to temper monopoly and capital flight.

“They will also close the infrastructure gap between now and 2030, with a view to expanding the frontiers of financial inclusion to ensure that SMEs have greater access to credit for their growth.

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“We will work with financial institutions to improve their ability to identify credit-worthy borrowers, and support inventory financing, which will help to unlock finance for SMEs dealing with high account receivables.”

He added that the concept of migrating from consumption to production was to ensure that Nigeria, as a nation, must look beyond oil.

“We, therefore, intend to leapfrog Nigeria from oil to the Fourth Industrial Revolution by expanding physical infrastructure through market-driven reforms that will unleash growth-enabling entrepreneurship and market-creating innovations,” the LP presidential candidate said.

Obi noted that the concept entails that the country ensures sustainability and resilience, stops borrowing for consumption, and channels all loans to be invested in regenerative projects.

“We shall pursue a drastic reduction in cost of governance and corruption,
improve ease of doing business to attract Foreign Direct Investment to jumpstart industrialization and when borrowing is unavoidable, it will be strictly for production.

“It is also imperative that henceforth, we should strive to operate within available resources and strive for a balanced national budget as cost-saving measures.

“Whatever oil we still have will be refined domestically. These measures along with ending the leakages, including the subsidy regime and improving our tax regime should do the magic of moving Nigeria from consumption to production,” Obi stated.

The Star