Experts say political will, infrastructure, human capital development and sincerity of purpose to policies are the recipes needed for successful industrialisation in Nigeria.
The quest for Nigeria to be an industrialised economy with high sustainable growth rate has been the policy focus of every administration that piloted the affairs of the nation after gaining independence in 1960.
However, amid the struggles to realise these goals, the economy has been performing below desired expectations overtime.
The world is tending towards industrialisation; it is however saddening that Nigeria does not seems to be taking part in this general development.
Going by key statistics, Nigeria’s performance is not impressive as the country is lagging behind other large economies in Africa – South Africa and Egypt.
Capacity utilisation in Nigeria averaged 54.6 percent in the first three quarters of 2018, compared with South Africa and Egypt with an average of 81.1 and 72.3 percent in similar period.
Manufacturing value added in Nigeria, which represents the manufacturing’s sector net output derived from the difference of gross output and intermediate consumption, averaged $37.75 trillion in the last three years, compared with Egypt ($50.11trn) and South Africa ($38.39trn).
A clear demonstration of political will to drive industrialisation and consistency in government policies. Government needs to exude seriousness across the variants of industrialisation such as trade relations, strategic alliance, trade protection and private-public partnership, according to analysts at Nigerian Institute of International Affairs.
They say legislations should be enacted to compel new administration to proceed with existing policies and programmes of the previous ones, rather than embarking on new programmes that may probably fail. To them, inconsistency in policies, which is greatly due to transition in government, should be shunned.
Another factor that could put Nigeria on the path of industrialisation is human capital development, Gbenga Ojewoye, a political economist, notes, saying, “Industrialisation is ineffective without investment in human and social capital.”
He told BusinessDay on phone that, “no economy can industrialise without investment in the people,” adding that massive investment should be embarked upon in the area of human capital development, especially education, adding that educational institutions need urgent reformation; technicians should be trained and retrained also, science, technology and research need to be given priority.
Adewale Dare, a research economist, posited that industrialisation would continually elude the country if nothing were done to improve the state of infrastructure. “Adequate infrastructures most especially power supply and transport networks support industrialisation, and without these, nothing can be done,” he told BusinessDay.
He pointed that poor infrastructure had scared a lot of investors, and had equally debar firms from producing at full capacity. The reason why industries are recording high production cost and indigenous products compete poorly in the global market is traceable to bad infrastructure, he stated.
Buttressing Adewale’s point on infrastructure, few backs ago, the Securities and Exchange Commission posited that infrastructural deficit could hit $878 billion if government continues to demonstrate carefree attitude towards improvement. Last year, the World Economic Forum ranked Nigeria 124 out of 140 countries in its infrastructure sub-index.
Undoubtedly, industrialisation is one of the most important economic reforms in human history as it results in job creation, conservation of foreign exchange and stronger performance of indigenous firms.
