Peterside: Building strong economy is a shared responsibility
Atedo Peterside, a Nigerian banker, entrepreneur and the founder of Stanbic IBTC Bank Plc., said yesterday that building a strong economy is a shared responsibility.
Peterside who served as Keynote Speaker during the dinner to celebrate the 25th Nigerian Economic Summit in Abuja, said he was saddened that Nigeria was still battling with economic predicaments debated over two decades ago.
“I am not claiming that we have not achieved phenomenal progress in certain areas such as telecommunications, commercial and investment banking, pension reform and other service sector pursuits such as information technology, music, film, art and fashion. “The harsh reality is that whatever gains Nigeria achieved in income per capita over the course of the last two decades are slowly being wiped out, as falling annual per capita incomes have become the norm in every single year since 2015,” he said.
“In a nutshell, falling living standards appear to have come to stay in Nigeria and so. hordes of Nigerians continue to join the ranks of the extremely poor year after year, at a time when several African countries are successfully lifting more and more of their own people out of poverty,” he added.
On the way forward, Peterside said, “It is not too late for President Buhari’s government and our National Assembly to borrow a cue from Mozambique and learn how to enact laws that provide clarity and reduce uncertainty for investors in the oil and gas sector and other sectors too.”
“We appear to have frightened most investors away (local and foreign) and they will not be coming back any time soon until we correct the structural dysfunction that frightened them away in the first place.
“Investors appear to have concluded that the Nigerian economy is rigged against all except the very wellconnected and they are right.
“By definition, the well-connected investors are few and so our Investment/GDP ratio is likely to remain low until we make it possible for all other investors (Nigerian and foreign) to come back and partake in the task of baking a bigger cake on the basis of a level playing field,” he said.