Triggered by weaker oil revenue and unprecedented currency market crisis from 2015 to 2017, President Buhari struggled to resuscitate Nigeria’s faltering economy in his first tenor. Despite efforts to spur recovery, the escalation of socio-ethnic crisis across the country and weak policy responses kept growth at sub-optimal levels. In setting agenda for the President’s 2nd term, we highlight some of the key policy issues that can foster faster growth in the economy.
First, hitting the ground running with its policy programs & cabinet appointments is a low hanging fruit that will prevent the unnecessary uncertainties that greeted the system in the first six months of the last tenor. Meanwhile, with actual revenue generated the consistently underperforming budget target, and expenditure concentrated on debt servicing and recurrent expenditure, the need to strategically realign the fiscal policies to drive long term growth and development cannot be overemphasized.
More importantly, the implementation of far-reaching reforms across sectors is necessary to stimulate growth. For instance, the Passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill is a must to boost investment across the oil & gas sector value chain. The problem of metering and gas pricing must be resolved in the power sector. To
optimize the potential in the Agric Sector, investments for large scale mechanized farming must be attracted. And for the manufacturing sector, the FGN must ease doing business by investing in infrastructure.
Finally, system inefficiencies which have undermined the ability to diversify government revenue base, enhance social justice, allocate resources efficiently and drive economic diversification, must be removed.
