DIVERSIFICATION OF THE ECONOMY: THE ONLY WAY TO BY-PASS SOUTH AFRICA AGAIN.

It is no longer news that South Africa has bypassed Nigeria as the biggest economy in Africa; this was as a result of the appreciation of the Rand, South Africa’s currency and the concomitant depreciation of naira over US dollar orchestrated by the reduction of the oil price. You may recall that two years ago during Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, Nigeria overtook South Africa as the biggest economy in Africa after the rebasing of the nation’s economy.

Nigeria is currently a mono-economy and no country maintains economic stability in such situation, hence the current administration must go beyond the usual government rhetoric’s and revamp the nation’s economy so that the people can experience economic development. To diversify the economy, government should look into the following areas:

First, the country should be divided into economic zones, not just political zones as we currently see. We can return to the old good days when the Northern region was known for groundnut pyramids, Palm oil in the East and rubber in the West. Every region or zone should be identified with one thing. Meanwhile this is how it is in the United States where each of the State is known with a particular thing. The US has the largest oil reserve in the whole world but nobody remembers that the country has oil because they are involved in so many other economic activities.

Secondly, Nigeria has a large population with good soil which should be of a great advantage to her economy, thus the agricultural sector, is a very important area in which the nation can utilize to dominate the African markets. Agriculture has moved from ‘cutlass and hoe’.  We are talking about mechanized agriculture. The government seems to forget that we have left the 21st century; we are in the times where some countries like China can cultivate, harvest and produce rice within a week.

Education is also another important aspect of our economy that we tend to negate owing to the fact that we have not domesticated it. How can someone be the Minister of Education and every year we lose billions of dollars to other nations, in the name of quality education, why can’t we develop our educational system, so much so that other countries will send their children and wards to our own schools? The government can start by developing one school, let say the University of Abuja and turn it into something like Oxford, Yale or Cambridge.

The Health sector is another area we are wasting a whole lot of resources, in what is usually referred to as health tourism. The number of Nigerians who travel with the money they made here to other parts of the world to get medical attention is alarming; paradoxically most of these Nigerian patients are treated by Nigerian doctors resident in those countries. We can develop the health sector so much so that our President will have no reason to travel for an ear disease or some sorts.

Finally, I think the Minister of Finance should either resign or be sacked because she has shown that she is incompetent in handling the economy. We do not need experts to tell us that we are in the middle of heavy economic recession and there are no policies coming from that office as to what to do. This is beyond party affiliation even if it means getting someone from PDP to fix this economy; we have to because Nigerians are suffering.

Uwakwe Roland