Legal luminary, Olehi urges govt to prioritize private sector in Nigeria’s economy

By Athan Agbakwuru, Owerri

Renowned Learned Silk, Ngozi Olehi, SAN, has advised the Nigerian government, at all levels, to drop the system of shabby state control over the nation’s economy and adopt a robust policy of pragmatic combination of markets, private enterprise, private investment, state ownership and strategic government action, to push the nation to the realm of global economic superpower.

Addressing newsmen in Owerri Tuesday, on the ‘Private Sector Perspectives on the State of the Nation,’ the SAN said that Nigeria’s political leadership needs to ask a more practical question of what economic arrangements would actually produce wealth for the people, stimulate productivity, promote technology and technical knowhow and secure better living standards for the people.

He pointed out that since sustainable economic development requires incentives that reward productivity contended that Nigeria has robust legal frameworks which guarantee entrepreneurship, private business, competitive markets, foreign investment, profit incentives, decentralized economic decision making, market determined prices and export competition.

Olehi urged the federal and state governments to replicate the miraculous revolution of China into economic superpower through transforming the way they exercise power over the economy by moving from shabby State control towards a model which China simultaneously practiced with its one-party communist rule, substantial state ownership, strategic state enterprises and extensive government planning.

He regretted that leadership deficit, advanced corruption, ineptitude, tribalism and religious politics have crippled the giant that Nigeria ought to be and made it a laughing stock amongst the comity of nations.

His words, “China was a very wretched and undeveloped country before 1980. A country can have excellent constitution, democratic elections, relatively functional courts, parliament and abundant natural resources and still be bedevilled by multidimensional poverty if its governing elites are interested in patronage, rent extraction, political survival, ethnic or sectional advantage.

“The Chinese model suggests that institutions matter but that the quality, competence, incentives and the development orientation of political leadership operating those institutions matter immensely and these point to the need for informed voting culture, not electing thieves who would loot public treasury dry.

“Before the reforms initiated in 1978, China faced widespread poverty, low industrial productivity, food shortages, largely closed economy and weak technological capability with a GDP comparable to or even below that of many African countries but unlike Nigerian leaders who pursue only elephant projects with high kick-back margin, China invested heavily in Agriculture, infrastructure, digital revolution and exports that generated foreign exchange, created job opportunities, industrial learning and secured technology transfers.”

According to him, China’s historic rise to global economic and political superpower is a lesson to Nigeria on the power of vision, disciplined governance, institutional continuity, industrialization, investment in human capital and relentless execution and expressed hope that if political leaders combine strong rule of law, accountable governance, macroeconomic stability, industrial development and investment in people.

“Nigeria will achieve sustained prosperity within a generation if the electorate could eschew bitterness and elect shrewd technocrats and leaders who could dig Nigeria out from the pit of economic failure.

“Though economic backwardness could be blamed on lack of visionary leadership, the persistence of the electorate to vote recklessly and choose face-cap and t-shirt politicians who have developed the satanic and poverty-causing skill of transactional governance make the people significantly responsible for the woes that worsen hardship and penury after each electoral season.

“If Nigerians have not learnt the need to change their voting and leadership considerations, the disaster that looms would plunge the nation into irrecoverable national crises because the evolving destructive governance model will tear the country into shreds and return the people to the dark ages. No nation grows by persistent and mindless retrogression”, he concluded.