Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo has blamed the low turnout of foreign investors to bureaucratic bottlenecks which abound in the country’s processes. He said this in his lecture entitled “Why Start-ups Fail and Strategies to Save Them”.
Lamenting the unnecessary bottlenecks that exist in the country’s processes, the Vice-President said ‘The problem we have experienced in Nigeria in most cases is that approval processes are needlessly difficult. Bureaucrats generally get caught in, seeing the process as an end in itself not as a means to an end.’
He further stated that bureaucrats have the wrong mindset as they believe that delay in their work has no further consequences, ignoring the potential harm that it may have on valuable growth of the country and other processes that have nationwide impact. In addition, the lure of abusing their positions to engage in corrupt practices was also highlighted by Osinbajo.
‘…all of these processes become toll-gates for corruption one way or the other, so the public official really does not render services himself as being involved in the business of growing private enterprise or growing business or creating jobs,” Leadership Newspapers quotes Osinbajo as saying.
He further acknowledged that it was the government’s duty to ensure that the business and administrative environment in the country is investor-friendly. As such, he revealed that President Buhari had setup a committee with him as the Chairman, whose job it is to ensure that Nigeria moves 50 places up in the World Bank’s ease of doing business index before the end of 2017.
In addition, he said the FG had introduced the visa-on-arrival innovation, in an attempt to shunt long application processes. This was done as reports showed that ‘one of the critical issues facing foreign investors was accessing the country’s visa’. He believed this would serve as added incentive to potential foreign investors.
Parts of this article originally appeared in Leadership Newspapers.