The Nigerian Economic Summit Group, NESG, warned that insecurity is the biggest threat to investment in Nigeria and urges the FG to provide security agencies with the necessary support to deal with insecurity.
The NESG disclosed this in its May 2021 report, titled ‘Sectoral reforms and Investments in Nigeria; A Focus on the Manufacturing Sector.”
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What the NESG said about insecurity and Investment:
“The biggest threat to investment in Nigeria is insecurity,” the report said.
“The President and National Assembly must provide security agencies with adequate resources – equipment, finance, training, etc. – to tackle the insurgency, banditry, and other forms of social vices. There must be clear key performance indicators and heads of security agencies must be sanctioned when they fail to meet relevant goals,” it added.
The report also stated that “Nigeria has numerous favourable conditions for investment, especially in its manufacturing sector,” citing the following:
- Large arable land.
- Strategic location in Africa.
- Large market and opportunities presented by the AfCFTA.
- Import dependent–manufactured and agricultural goods account for 72.5% of total import in 2020.
- Weak manufactured goods exports – share of manufactured goods to total exports was 7.7% in 2020.
- Large population – Nigeria has a population of over 200 million people.
It went on to state that the FG must tackle insecurity, develop industrial policy in identified areas and provide targeted infrastructure to attract investment in the Nigerian Manufacturing sector.
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What you should know
The African Development Bank also stated this week that Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, needs urgent economic diversification to move the country from a single income source (oil and minerals) towards multiple income sources.
“In pursuit of long-term recovery and sustainable development, Nigeria needs urgent economic diversification. Nothing is more poignantly demonstrative of the danger of over-reliance on a single or narrow range of commodities,” Prof. Oyelaran-Oyeyinka Oyebanji, Senior Special Adviser on Industrialisation at African Development Bank (AfDB) said.