Former Governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi has identified three things that the Federal Government must vigorously pursue if Nigeria must get out of economic recession.
Obi was a guest speaker at the 1st Annual Conference of the Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP) held on Thursday at Renaissance Hotel, Ikeja in Lagos.
Speaking on the theme “Sustaining growth through diversification of the economy”, he contended that Nigerian economy was already diversified.
Buttressing this, the former Governor said the non-oil sector is contributing about 80% to the nation’s GDP, noting that the tragedy was that “the oil sector, however, accounts for 90% of our foreign exchange earnings.”
He listed three ways to put the economy back on the path of growth. According to him, the government must as a matter of urgency embark on aggressive savings, diversification of the economy towards manufacturing and lastly investment in developmental education.
“Our economy is fully diversified because the non-oil sector is actually contributing about 80 per cent to our GDP today.
“But the tragedy of our economy is that 90 per cent of our export revenue is derived from just one sector – oil.
“Diversifying our economy through manufacturing and investment in education is what we require today to turn around our economy.
“And by aggressive savings, we’ll be able to get the resources to bring about micro economic stability to the country, defend our currency and be able to attract FDI and portfolio investments and unlock the resources to invest in our deteriorated infrastructure,” Obi, who described himself as a trader and businessman said.
Another Guest Speaker and Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, charged GOCOP to come up with code of conduct for online media practitioners.
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