To mark her 61st birthday, Nigeria should set herself the target of becoming the world's number one manufacturers of the following 10 products over the next decade

Ayo Akinfe

[1] Mobile phones - 300m
[2] Electricity transformers - 1m
[3] Generators - 10m
[4] Irrigation pumps - 20m
[5] Farm tractors - 5m
[6] Crude oil wells - 5,000
[7] Oil rigs - 1,000
[8] Bicycles - 40m
[9] Microphones - 100m
[10] iPads - 30m

It is only manufacturing that is going to get us out of this rut. Anything else is just window dressing. If we want to create jobs, generate wealth, get our youth to lay down their arms, end banditry/kidnapping, ease all this ethnic strife, stop religious conflicts, etc, we simply have to manufacture our way out.

Any nation with a population of 200m and a meager gross domestic product of $375bn and a paltry annual budget of $33bn, is never going to be at ease with itself. Nigeria is not productive enough an economy to have peace and security!