President Muhammadu Buhari has warned officers of the Nigerian Customs service against being a stumbling block to the ease of doing business in the country. The President delivered the admonition today during the launch of the Kaduna dry port.
Our Customs and Ports officials must now make the Kaduna Inland Dry Port work. They must not frustrate business, commercial and industrial enterprises with unnecessary bureaucracy and delays. Our ‘ease of doing business’ attitude must be visible; we must make this Port work.
— Muhammadu Buhari (@MBuhari) January 4, 2018
Nigeria recently moved up the ranking on the annual doing business report from 169 to 145, notching 24 places. Nigeria also features as one of the 10 economies showing the most notable improvement in Doing Business 2018.
Change in focus
The President seems to have turned his focus infrastructure and the economy, as the Boko Haram insurgency slowly dies out. In his 2018 New Year address, Buhari reaffirmed his administration’s determination to address the country’s infrastructural challenges .
The Federal Road Maintenance Agency has been reconstituted and charged with a 12 week rapid intervention to cover all the political zones . Negotiations will be concluded in the first part of this year for the Port Harcourt to Maiduguri line railway line and the Kano-Maradi rail line.
Poor infrastructure like roads and power leads to a high cost of production. This in turn leads to made in Nigeria goods being more expensive than those imported.
Is it too late ?
Some analysts are of the opinion that the President’s efforts may be coming too late. As the 2019 elections draw near, politics tends to take the front burner.
