Former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and Founder, Institute for Governance and Economic Transformation (IGET), Professor Chiedu Moghalu, has called for the need to set out a National ambition for Nigeria, with leaders who can execute a sustainable vision for the country to transform the economic structure and the lives of citizens.
Prof Moghalu said this as the distinguished guest lecturer at the 5th Goddy Jidenma Foundation Public Lecture held at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Victoria Island, Lagos on 15th November, 2017. He urged Nigerians to stop underestimating the sheer scale of the challenge to the country’s economic growth.
He said:
“Nigeria has failed to achieve intensive and effective economic growth because the country’s economy is managed mostly on an ad-hoc, reactive basis. It is a ‘survival’ economy in which most governments have had no real economic vision or a strategy to execute such a vision successfully.
Most damaging, there is little interrogation of either received wisdom based on global economic policy “fashions” or of the country’s own policy assumptions that are consistently long on populism and short on substance.
“Our path to economic growth is challenged by the failure to build the necessary foundations for prosperity in a liberal capitalist economy. Nigeria moved into financial liberalization without achieving the required minimum threshold of industrialization — which is what drives economic transformation.
Finance does not play the optimal role it should in Nigeria’s economic development and the three factors of production – land, capital, and labour are out of synchronization in our economy,” the former CBN Deputy Governor declared.
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