Experts have stressed the need for Nigeria to diversify its economy from oil and invest more in agriculture and manufacturing to create jobs for its rapidly growing population.
The experts also called for the promotion of entrepreneurship and adequate support for start-ups while providing a national credit scheme for easy access to cheap credits by Nigerians.
The consensus among the experts who spoke in the U.S.-Nigeria Business Council webinar themed ‘Job Creation in Nigeria – A Closer Analysis of Strategies and Methodologies that Give Results,’ held recently said that the Nigerian economy can survive without oil if the right policies and action are taken by the government to boost other job-creating sectors.
Chizoba Nnamchi, managing director of Nibiru Industrial Corporation Limited, said the country must look at other sectors of the economy to create more jobs for its rising youth population rather than depend solely on oil.
“My strategies to drive job growth would be to diversify the economy, encourage growth in sectors like agriculture, manufacturing and services, and reduce dependence on oil,” Nnamchi said.
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He said Africa’s most populated nation should invest in infrastructure to develop transportation networks, energy and telecommunications to attract businesses that can create jobs.
Also, he urged the promotion of entrepreneurship, while calling for adequate funding support for startups and MSMEs to fund mentorship and training programs, to help to generate more jobs for the economy.
“Promote private partnerships and implement policies to improve the business environment that would attract foreign investment,” he said.
He added that the government should enhance the farm-to-table value chains and encourage value addition.
The experts noted that for the country to create more job opportunities for youths which will support in reducing Nigeria’s poverty rate, both the government and private sectors should collaborate to provide cheap credits to small business operators.
Kayode Aladesuyi, founder and CEO of MYai Robotics, called for the provision of cheap credits by the government for average-income earners, noting that with this, several Nigerians will rise above the poverty mark.
Comparing Nigeria to other countries like the United States where cheap credit is used, Aladesuyi said Nigerians can rise from poverty if average-income earners can afford to buy cars and houses with the help of cheap credit.
“We should support the government’s plan for a national credit facility for all citizens,” he said.
“Now we have families that are averaging N300,000 a month. A person living in a community suddenly can buy an apartment, go to a bank and buy a car, and it comes directly from his paycheck, directly to the bank,” he added.
According to him, Nigeria is one of the leading countries in West Africa, hence he reiterated the need for the country to take full advantage of this to grow its economy.
“Now, there are geopolitical implications that Nigeria has to take advantage of aggressively. There are three other countries like Nigeria in the world; the United States of America, China, and Russia,” he noted.
“All of these three countries dominate their economic hemisphere completely. But we’ve never taken advantage of that natural gift that God gave us to be a dominant economy in our hemisphere,” Aladesuyi added.
He also said Nigeria is at the centre of the world; hence goods manufactured in the country can reach 80 percent of the global market within two weeks faster than China, remarking that “the greatest direct threat to Chinese economic domination in the manufacturing space in Nigeria.”
