Buhari also needs to appoint a development economist like Wale Adeyemo and give him or her a freehand to do the following things

Ayo Akinfe

(1) Ensure that annual gross domestic product (GDP) is never below 10%. Single digit growth should be considered recessionary

(2) Attract a minimum of $50bn in foreign direct investment (FDI) annually

(3) Hold monthly meetings with the 36 state commissioners of trade & industry and ensure that they each attract a minimum of $1bn in FDI into their states annually

(4) Get each state to locate at least one vocational training college in each of its local government areas to address the skills shortage

(5) Get local investors like Dangote, Adenuga, Otedola, Chukwuma, Alakija, etc to enter into partnership deals with multinationals so Nigeria can manufacture all their products locally through a subsidiary

(6) Mobilise our evangelical churches who have more liquidity than anyone else in Nigeria at the moment to merge their financial arms and create a genuine conglomerate that can compete as an industrial player with anybody in the world

(7) Work with the governors of states that have adopted Sharia law to attract Islamic finance. Their strict Sharia regime scares away many foreign investors so this capital has to be replaced with Islamic finance. We have all seen what Islamic finance is doing in Malaysia, Turkey, UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia

(8) Getting companies that are relocating from China as a result of coronavirus to consider Nigeria as a first choice alternative investment destination

(9) Signing agreements with multinationals in industrialised nations under which they will commit to making Nigeria one of their top three investment destinations whenever they want to expand internationally. Some should be persuaded to sign “Nigeria first” agreements

(10) Getting local industrialists to commit to manufacturing everything we consume in Nigeria. Anything they cannot produce, we should learn to live without 

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