Private sector outlines how Tinubu can reduce poverty

Creating an enabling environment for the private sector to thrive while enacting people-oriented policies may be the best way Nigeria’s President-elect, Bola Tinubu, can reduce poverty in Africa’s biggest economy, experts have said.

They said such policies would help to accelerate national development and reduce the poverty level in the country.

Olaolu Boboye, a senior analyst at CardinalStone, said the incoming president must create the right policies for Nigerians to witness poverty reduction.

“To reduce poverty, there is a need for impactful policies that are people-oriented,” Boboye said.

Godwin Anono, president of the Standard Shareholders Association of Nigeria, said the government investing heavily in critical infrastructure could help the country achieve its industrialisation plan.

He said such investments would spur more development in the country and further lift people out of poverty.

Anono said the incoming president could also focus more on enhancing the business environment to achieve the industrialisation plan.

“Improving the business climate is imperative to attract more foreign direct investment into the country. This will enhance our foreign exchange inflows and ensure that our economy becomes a hub for international businesses,” he said.

Muda Yusuf, chief executive officer of Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise, said the president-elect could have a committee that would recommend and implement such policies on behalf of the economy.

Yusuf said the incoming government could also urgently initiate broad policies to engender investment confidence.

“This will deepen its legitimacy and serve as a framework for quality governance in the country,” he said. “This will entail having a credible economic team across the country, and that will drive the reform the economy needs for growth.”

He said the next administration must move the country from a rent-seeking economy to more local production to achieve the much-needed development.

Nerus Ekezie, former director of National Association of Small and Medium Enterprises, said the president-elect could initiate innovative policies to transform the SME sector.

“The government intervention should come through appropriate channels to get to the right beneficiaries and formalise many of our informal businesses,” he said.

He said the government should be cautious about implementing policies to avoid some mistakes made during previous interventions for the sector.

More than half of Nigeria’s population lives in multidimensional poverty – more people than there are in neighbouring Cameroon and all 11 countries of Southern Africa combined – according to the UNDP and Oxford University.

In his 80-page manifesto, titled ‘Renewed Hope 2023 – Action Plan for a Better Nigeria,’ Tinubu said his administration intends to build on the existing social programmes initiated by the Buhari administration, such as cash transfers to the poorest, school feeding, and economic empowerment programmes, to pull millions of people out of abject poverty.

“Through such programmes, we are able to incentivise poorer families to make the fateful and correct decision to send their children to school. This will provide these children with a chance at formal education previously closed to them. By helping them, we make society better,’’ Tinubu said.