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Anyanwu: Nigerians are suffering for lack of economic direction

By Chuka Odittah
06 November 2016   |   2:35 am
Who will not be worried? This is our country and we have no other. If something is going wrong, it’s natural you feel worried. Things are not going the way they should.
Anyanwu

Anyanwu

Professor Sarah Anyanwu is the Head of Department of Economics, University of Abuja. In this interview with CHUKA ODITTAH, she decried the absence of ea team to steer the ship of the nation out of economic recession.

Are you worried that two years down the line, the present government has no clear-cut economic blueprint, showing government’s plan on how to grow the economy?
Who will not be worried? This is our country and we have no other. If something is going wrong, it’s natural you feel worried. Things are not going the way they should. And the consequence is that people are suffering. Believe me, things must just be done differently.

Do we need IMF or the World Bank to tell us that we need an economic plan document? You too think about it? These are things that must be put in place to show the way forward. It is like a family that has no focus. We need an economic team. The economic team is the one that will draw up the economic blueprint we are talking about.

But there is already an economic management team in place, headed by Vice President Prof Yemi Osibanjo? 
Which economic team? Is it economic team by name or by virtue of being made up by politicians? Prof Osibanjo is a lawyer and not an economist? Under the regime of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, this was not how we operated and you could see policy directions and achievements. Similar situation took place during the regime of President Goodluck Jonathan. He appointed a world-class economist Dr Okonjo-Iweala as head of the nation’s economic team. And you could see the results also. But today, you say the country has an economic team.

Which economic team? A team made up of lawyer, businessmen, politicians and accountants? Are those the kind of people with requisite experience or qualification to lead or be in the nation’s economic team? You know, with the way things are going, unless we decided to do things differently, the current economic recession may just last for longer period because we are not doing the right thing.

What are those things you think government should do?
For instance, there should be a properly constituted national economic team to give direction. Do lawyers know what recession means? The economic team should be made up of core economists from across relevant sectors. There should be an economic management team down to level of states to guide state governors. Under planning, there should be an economic team to regularly advise the government on issues of modeling our economy in terms of real sector, productive sector, value chain development in agriculture, and of course growth of the GDP, and the issue of direct foreign investments, among others. In the past, the Nigeria Economic Summit Group used to provide direction in this regard.

The solution is implementation. The Nigeria Economic Society (NES) has made very key recommendations to government on the way forward during our recent summit. Let them go and look at that document.

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