An Economic expert, Mr Leonard Ugbajah, says the quickest way out of recession was for government at all levels to deepen investment in infrastructure and agricultural development in the country.
Ugbajah, the Technical Adviser to the Private Sector Coalition on Competition Bill enactment in Nigeria stated this to news men in Abuja on Thursday.
“The challenge again here is that most of the things we need to do to see the result will come in the long term.
“But then there are certain quick wins we can harvest, one of the things I think the government should be doing right is to focus on infrastructure.
“Now you can’t talk of diversifying the economy when you don’t have the infrastructure base to carry a diversified economy.
“You can give all the special intervention you want which we have done a lot of it in Nigeria.
“We have intervention for rice, we have for cassava, we have for maize and all that, but when the business environment doesn’t support business, then your intervention will go to waste.’’
He also said that it was important government focus on developing vocational education in the country, this he said was a catalyst for achieving a vibrant economy.
He said that government investing more to improve agricultural yield would also help in accelerating the growth of the economy.
“You can’t have a vibrant productive economy, where people carry about certificates that cannot produce anything.
“ For you to have a productive economy, you have to focus on vocational education from the secondary school level.
“We need to return to the era of technical schools, because that is the mid manpower level you need.
“So a fundamental reform of our educational system is important.
“What area should we focus on, we should look at agriculture and when we look at agriculture.
“Not just in producing more but in improving the production process to get higher yield, and looking at agriculture from a value chain perspective“.
He said that the value chain approach to agriculture production would entail devising possible ways to mitigate waste of agricultural products.
He said one of such ways was to site processing plants close to production points.
He also advised the government to channel intervention funds to improving agro-processing in Nigeria using the cluster base method.
“If tomatoes are produced in large quantity in the North, we can cluster tomato processors around that area.’’
He said that the cluster base approach would help bridge the infrastructural deficit in the country.
“What clustering does for you is to localize the right kind of infrastructure you need in a particular space.
“So you solve the peculiar infrastructure problem, you also solve the peculiar problem in the value chain that has to do with skills.’’
On Passage of Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), Ugbajah said that the non passage of the bill was preventing new companies from making investment in the oil sector.
He said that PIB was the framework required to salvage the oil and gas sector from its deteriorating situation.
He commended the Senate for its decision to give the Bill priority now, noting that there was urgent need to pass the bill