During the annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) on Sunday, the DG of the World Trade Organization Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala called for collaboration to tackle Nigeria’s socio-economic problems as opposed to exchanging blames.
She noted that one reason Nigeria’s economy has declined is the lack of consistency in policy implementation. She pointed out that new administrations fail to continue working policies that were put in place by predecessors, allowing politics to shape policies.
“A very important part of the explanation for why we have not been able to succeed is lack of policy consistency,” she said.
“Successive administration failing to continue good and I emphasize good economic and social policies, put in place by predecessors, allowing politics to frame policy. What we can call the ‘not made in my made in my administration syndrome’.”
“We all understand that where policies are bad and not working, of course politics should intervene, but where things are working to the good, we ask, why fix what is not broken,” the DG added.
She then suggested that for more stability in Nigeria’s economy, there has to be a cross-party social contract of sorts, dissuading the change of certain working policies should an administration change.
Furthermore, she stressed the importance of security and prioritizing the lives of Nigerians, properties, and assets, referring to it as the first component of the social contract.
“Security has been weaponized in our country for political purposes, by political actors leading partly to the difficult situation we have now.
We have politicians who believe that the best way to make their opponents look bad is to instigate insecurity, making it look like they can’t govern, regardless of whether this leads to the loss of lives and property of innocent Nigerians, this has to stop,” she said.
GDP concerns
Leaning more into the country’s economic concerns, the WTO DG relayed that Nigeria’s population growth has outpaced GDP growth for some time. She disclosed that GDP growth has been negative at 0.9%, since 2014.
Source: Channels Television
“For example, in the decade between 2000 and 2014, we have an average GDP growth rate of 3.8% well above our population growth rate of 2.6% per annum, meaning that people were on average truly improving their standard of living,” she said.
“During the following decade, average annual GDP per capita has been negative around minus 0.9% meaning people were worse off because we were not able to sustain prior positive growth momentum,” the DG added.
