While speaking at the 9th colloquium held in his honour at the Eko Hotel and Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos on Tuesday, the national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, identified four things that the country must do to achieve economic revival.
According to the former Lagos state governor, who spoke at the event to mark his 65th birthday, the country must embrace diversification and industrial policy, it must invest in infrastructure and improve on power supply, the Central Bank of Nigeria must lower the interest rates to encourage investors and the government must embark on agricultural reforms.
At the 9th Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu Colloquium with theme, “Make it in Nigeria: Use what we make, make what we use,” Tinubu who spoke in a speech titled, “Nigeria: Meeting current challenges,” said it was time that Nigeria changed its economic model as it was obvious that the old model, where the country relied solely on revenue from crude oil export, had crashed right before our eyes.
He said it was good that the President Muhammadu Buhari’s government had realised this and had begun the painful process of salvaging the nation’s economy by embarking on diversification.
He, however, advised the Federal Government to team up with the private sector players in its quest to diversify the economy, adding that the country must borrow a leaf from the experiences of countries such as England, America and China, which had today become self-reliant by taking tough decisions.
“We must learn from England, which barred the migration of its master craftsmen and the export of textile looms at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution; to America and high tariffs it imposed on foreign manufactured goods for over 150 years from its independence until after the World War 2; to China which implemented a most radical and comprehensive protectionist regime to become the world’s most prolific manufacturing nation,”
Tinubu said.
