Nigeria’s economy slipped into recession in the third quarter of 2020 with a decline of 3.6 percent, having contracted 6.1 percent in the second quarter, leading to Nigeria’s second recession in five years. An announcement from the National Bureau of Statistics said Gross Domestic Product grew 0.11 percent between October and December from a year earlier. The good news is that the country’s economy exited recession in the fourth quarter of 2020, recording its first growth in three quarters as the coronavirus-linked lockdown was lifted across the country.
Five years, two recessions! GDP growth over the past five years has been unimpressive for such a resource-rich developing country. What is the way forward? How do we begin to fund our budgets and end borrowing which puts the country in huge debt?
Financial analyst, Tunji Andrews insists that there are sectors that have not left recession. “Only four sectors got us out of the last recession and we just barely escaped it because of the price of crude oil. I do not like the chants of victory that I’m hearing from the people in government. We know the facts. Nothing was done structurally to take us out of this recession? What exactly did we do? What did we change? What improvement did we put on the ground? Did we increase revenue or support businesses? WE DID NOTHING! Our existence or livelihood is tied to oil! It should bother us that we are so tied to a commodity.”
It took Saudi Arabia almost 20 years to actively diversify their economy, we have not even really started! This shows that it would take us even longer to get to where we are going.
“To get Nigeria running is to think large scale. We need to attract big industries to come and invest in Nigeria”, Tunji advised.