Charles Soludo and Nasir El-Rufai, governors of Anambra and Kaduna States, will speak on Nigeria’s economic future at a policy conversation event, which is jointly organised by the Africa Programme of the US-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) and the Abuja-based Agora Policy. Both governors are expected to deliberate on pathways for creating a robust and resilient economic future for Nigeria.
The event, which will take place on Tuesday, May 9, at 10 a.m. in the main auditorium of the Yar Adua Centre, Abuja, is expected to attract the crème de la crème of Nigeria’s economic, political, academic, and policy elite. The event will focus on “How Nigeria Can Build a Post-Oil Economic Future.”
Other confirmed panellists at the event are: Aigboje Imoukhuede, former CEO of Access Bank; Shubham Chaudhuri, World Bank’s Country Director for Nigeria; and Zainab Usman, Director of the Carnegie Africa Programme.
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Soludo and El-Rufai will be expected to share their experiences and other useful insights from their diverse backgrounds in the economic and governance policy arena in Nigeria—Soludo, as a professor of economics, former Chief Economic Adviser to the President, and former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN); and El-Rufai, as a former Director-General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), a member of the Economic Management Team (EMT), and a member of the Policy Implementation Committee under General Abdulsalami Abubakar.
Attendees will also have the opportunity to enjoy a presentation and an exposition on the policy implications of Usman’s book titled “Economic Diversification in Nigeria: The Politics of Building a Post-Oil Economy.” The book was voted one of the Best Books of 2022 on economics by the Financial Times. Building on Usman’s PhD thesis at the University of Oxford, the book uses data and theoretical frameworks to challenge received wisdom about Nigeria’s economic trajectory.
The other speakers will also bring to bear their rich and varied backgrounds in the private sector, international development, policy advisory, and research. Aig-Imoukhuede, the founder of the African Initiative for Governance (AIF), will explore the imperative of collaboration between the public and private sectors; Chaudhuri, also a former professor of economics at Columbia University, New York, will identify lessons from countries with similar size and challenges as Nigeria; and Usman will draw from her academic research, her work as the pioneer director of the Carnegie Africa Programme, and her stint working on different countries at the World Bank.
The event is taking place at a time when the global conversation is about climate change and the transition away from petroleum, Nigeria’s historic economic underperformance and current economic challenges, and the transition to a new administration on the 29th of May.
Discussants at the event will deliberate on some other pertinent questions, which will include: “Why is Nigeria’s economy performing below its vast potential?” “How do power, politics, and decision-making affect this economic development challenge?” “What can be done to position the Nigerian economy on a path of sustained growth, transformation, and diversification?”
The presentations and the panel discussion will be followed by a robust interactive session with participants drawn from diverse policy backgrounds.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, one of the organisers of the event, was established in 1910 and is one of the oldest and most respected think tanks in the world. It was ranked as the number one think tank on the 2020 Global Go-To Think Tank Index published by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Programme of the University of Pennsylvania, US.
Agora Policy is a young Nigerian think tank committed to generating evidence-based and practical solutions to Nigeria’s urgent challenges. It was founded by Waziri Adio, the immediate past Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) and one of Nigeria’s leading columnists.
