If you look at the statistics, importers are technically doing far more harm to the Nigerian economy then corrupt public officials

Ayo Akinfe

(1) No matter how much we wrack our brains over Nigeria’s economic crisis, we will always arrive at one inescapable conclusion. We are simply not productive enough to sustain a nation state of 200m people

(2) Everything else pales in comparison and in fact, every other problem stems from this fundamental flaw. Headaches like corruption, clueless people getting into public office, poor resource management, religious and ethnic bigotry, insecurity, etc all stem from the fundamental fact that too many people are chasing too little wealth. If Nigeria was at ease with herself economically, half of these problems will disappear overnight

(3) If one does the number crunching, you will just shudder. We have a total annual budget of a mere $28.8bn but of that figure, 70% goes on recurrent expenditure, with maybe about $10bm maximum going on capital projects. Annually, our rulers probably steal between $5bn and $8bn of public funds

(4) In contrast, Nigeria has an annual food import bill of $22bn, a generator import bill of $14bn, a textile product bill of $4bn and a $2.77bn car import bill

(5) As a nation, we are spending more on imports than our annual national budget and we somehow think that this is sustainable? President Buhari has made fighting corruption his main priority but this exercise will be futile unless it is backed up by a similar war against imports

(6) We need a federal agency similar to the EFCC to mount a war against these unrestricted imports. Its main task must be a reorientation of the Nigerian masses. It simply has not registered with us that we are destroying the future of our children, grand children and that of unborn generations of Nigerians with our callous consumerism

(7) First of all, any foreign company we enter into a supply agreement with must undertake to manufacture its produce in Nigeria as part of the contract. If it is aircraft, ships, railway carriages, laptop computers, automobiles, electricity transformers, agricultural tractors, etc, all contracts must come with a clause that a production facility must be opened in Nigeria

(8) Any Nigerian applying for an import licence must also sign an undertaking to start manufacturing whatever he or she is importing after a maximum of two shipments. In fact, this should be a condition attached to the granting of import licences with contravention attracting a minimum jail term of five years

(9) It is impossible to dump goods on the Nigerian market without the collusion of local people. We need a national economic rehabilitation centre where importers are retrained and reorientated. Basically, it will convert businessmen from importers into manufacturers

(10) Nigeria then needs to set herself some very stringent targets as part of a five year development plan - GDP ($1trn), budget ($200bn), economic growth (10%), export revenue ($150bn), GDP-to-tax ratio (35%), etc. At the moment, we are just going round in incoherent circles