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As the global world today is looking to create a future without the input of oil, today we have electric cars manufactured in some key countries around the world, renewable energy and technologies coming up in different aspects of society. I urge the Nigerian government to look beyond oil.
Is Nigeria ready to look beyond oil?
As a country, we do not have the culture, the requisite awareness about looking beyond oil. Our budget today is benched on the production and sale of crude oil despite so much promising talks about diversifying the economy and harnessing the potentials of agriculture, mining, entertainment, tourism et al.
How should Nigeria be preparing for this shift?
There should be critical and deliberate investment in key sectors like agriculture. It’s just that oil has made us very lazy as a people, we are not thinking productivity, we are not thinking income generation as a nation, we are not thinking about exports. The political class is lazy, the economic class is lazy, so it gives us a concern that our country, the “Giants of Africa” as we acclaim to ourselves, the most populous black nation in the world, we are not looking at an alternative to oil at this point.
There should be a deliberate culture, a deliberate awareness and effort on the part of government to shift our focus. I believe what we have as agricultural resources is even more than the oil we have today.
Nigeria needs to have a sort of mental re-orientation to tell our people that the world have moved beyond oil and we have to start thinking in that direction.
Harnessing our agricultural potentials
What we see as agriculture today in Nigeria today in Nigerian polity is, most times, laughable because government have no business doing business. We see government investing in agriculture with poor maintenance and no plan for sustainability. The private sector is supposed to be an engine room to any sustainable economic growth and they should be encouraged. We have a critical mass of young people who should be encouraged to partake in agriculture through awareness, maybe through the NYSC program.
There should be a proper and deliberate engagement of the private sector to massively invest in agriculture and there should be a level if policy backing from the government like reducing interest rate on agricultural loans which is currently about 21%. If the government is serious in encouraging agriculture, interest rate should be in single digits. Agriculture is not a vehicle that should be used to settle political interests, it has to be deliberate.
We have not been able to utilize a sizeable fraction our youth resource and that’s why we are where we are today because the idealism and strengths of the young people have not been properly utilized. We need to get our visionaries on board.
What we should be doing regarding renewable energy
Any country that would shy away from considering renewable energy sources would be doing herself a very huge harm. It is the way to go. In the Niger delta we could harness the ocean wave and tidal energy along the coastal regions, the northern part of Nigeria could utilize solar and wind energy because of their weather type, geothermal and biomass resources in the east and west.
The government need to invest in research. They need to invest in youth empowerment and development.
How can the young mind help galvanize the power sector?
There should be a deliberate effort on how to bring some young minds who are professionals into policy-making positions. There is a notion that there are no young Nigerians who can fit into high political positions which I think is wrong. There are young ‘hot-brained’ Nigerians doing extraordinary things outside the shores of this country, but how many of them have we really engaged back home. what we have today is a lot of brain drain that’s why we see people going out dying in the Mediterranean sea seeking greener pastures. We need to create a platform for our youths to thrive, for us to contribute our own quota.
In the sports industry today, young able-bodied Nigerians are flying the flags of our country home and abroad same as the entertainment industry.
Those who are contributing effectively to the growth of our GDP in Nigeria are majority of young people (my opinion).
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