Sanusi, Nnaji task FG on power, economy

The Emir of Kano and former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Muhammad Sanusi II, has called on the Federal Government to address the challenges facing the sub-sectors of the Nigeria’s economy, as part of efforts to check the impact of the falling price of crude oil on the nation’s revenue.

Sanusi, who made the call on Friday at a lecture to mark the 41st Convocation and Founder’s Day ceremonies of the University of Benin, Edo State, lamented that Nigeria had a “very simple” problem with its economy which it found difficult to fix.

This, he said, was responsible for the country’s continuous importation of economic goods and services which it already had in abundance.

He said, “The way I look at Nigeria and the Nigerian economy is that we have a very simple problem and I do not know why it is just so difficult to fix it. Nigeria is just a series of broken value chains; a country that specialises in exporting what it does not have and importing what it has. This is Africa’s largest oil producer but the largest imports of Nigeria from the United Kingdom are petroleum products.

“We are the world’s largest producer of cassava; we don’t produce starch. We burn our gas every day; for a country of 167 million people, we are generating 4,000 megawatts of electricity. And if you want to know how far we have come, when Obasanjo left office, we were at 5,000 (megawatts). There was a target of getting to 6,000; after we spent several billions of dollars, we ended up moving from 6,000 to 3,000.

“We produce cotton, we import textiles. We have hides and skin but we import shoes and bags from China. Not that we don’t kill the cattle. But what do we do with the leather? We eat ponmo. It is a delicacy; we consume our GDP.”

Sanusi, who is also the Chancellor of the university, added, “We talk of diversifying the economy away from oil. We do not even need to diversify away from oil; you can diversify the oil itself, from exporting crude to producing refined PMS, refined kerosene, diesel, gas for power, gas for fertiliser, petrochemicals.

”Everywhere, we have got potential and if your economy is growing at six per cent with these value chains, imagine the rate at which you will go. And it is not a theory. Ethiopia has been growing at 11-12 per cent consistently for over a decade. They did just this: fixed their coffee value chain; leather value chain; power value chain and cement value chain and every year, they get new value chains and they keep growing. That is a model.”

He, therefore, urged the Federal Government and Nigerian universities to focus their research on fixing Nigeria’s value chains, market the results and implement them to create a multiplying effect in order to improve the economy.

The guest lecturer and former Minister of Power, Professor Bart Nnaji, who spoke on “The University, Industry, Entrepreneurship and National Economy,” lamented that Nigeria and Nigerians were trapped in “technological backwardness” due to the dearth of technology and technologists.

He said that the country had remained a single-digit economy to the reduction in electricity generation and distribution, in spite of the huge human and natural resources.

Nnaji, however, urged the Federal Government to do more to reverse the trend by providing the will and focus to champion the course of science and technology, as well as investing adequately in its universities.

He said, “Where we are is that we are making progress in the power sector. There is a lot to be done in the various aspects of power because, for a country of 170 million people, we really need to be comparing ourselves to Brazil. And even if you look at South Africa, which is one-third of our population, they have 10 times the amount of power we have. Thus, we really have a lot to do in this regard.”