Tayo Aduloju, CEO, of Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) has said that Nigeria needs a class of politicians with the political will to implement reforms and transform the nation.
He stated this at a press briefing recently held in Lagos ahead of the Group’s 30th-anniversary celebration.
“Nigeria needs a political class of active reformers. Political will matters because we’re not the government. Our best advocacy without political will in government won’t work and political will has certain characteristics. The first is the willingness to make tough choices, and the capacity to implement the right ideas,” he said.
He further noted that although the increased monetary transparency bodes well for the country, total governmental transparency will require more work and advocacy.
“There’s a lot of work in governance on transparency issues. I would argue that if we fixed transparency and accountability across the governance value chain, it would be transformative, even audit transparency. So everything in the public finance governance value chain requires a deeper amount of transparency and accountability than we are currently seeing today. And that’s something that we have to collectively continue to advocate for,” he said.
Read also: NESG seeks integration of summit outcomes into govt’s plans
Concerning the 30th anniversary of the Nigerian Economic Summit, Aduloju stated that it allowed the think tank to reflect on the economy’s growth pattern in the last three decades.
“The 30th Summit allows us to deeply reflect and ask hard questions like are our current economic policies working? What can we do differently in the next decade? In 30 years, we have watched the economy move from IBB-led, Abacha-led, Abdulsalami-led, Obasanjo-led, Yar-Adua, Jonathan, Buhari and now Tinubu. Because of the role we have played, it also allows us to ask these difficult questions,” he stated.
He revealed that Nigeria had been on a growth trajectory, but a sequence of poorly implemented reforms and choices reversed the growth, ultimately slowing it down.
“Concerning the phases of the NESG, the first few years were very close because of military rule. We went from there to 1999 when Obasanjo came with an accelerated opening of the economy. It slowed down a bit under Yar’Adua. We plateaued under Jonathan. Then, after the competitiveness and growth we saw in the first decade, we went to a second decade where it was completely low growth and that’s the path that we’ve been on with high inflationary pressure, high unemployment and high volatility,” he stated.
Aduloju stated that the NESG assumed a cautiously optimistic outlook on the Nigerian economy.
“Our general outlook at the NESG is that we are cautiously optimistic. This is coming from direct engagement, not hope. Hope is not a strategy. It is from asking the actors, what are you doing? How are you doing it and seeing some movement? If this continues to happen and in better coordination with the Presidential Economic Coordination Council, then we should see some less noise, more harmony, alignment and more progress,” he said.
He also revealed that the NESG was currently engaging the National Assembly to legislate Nigeria’s longer-term agenda rather as opposed to the politically motivated agenda seen over the past 30 years.
“We think we should legislate the longer-term plans in Nigeria. We are currently engaging the National Assembly as a joint committee on development planning. We are saying can we look at legislating our longer term plans because it’s not ideas. If you pick all politically motivated agenda and look at the documents, the targets are the same,” he said.
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