Nigeria: How to Use Excess Crude Revenue, By Alaibe

Source from:  This Day (Lagos) 24 November 2007 11/28/2007

Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Mr. Timi Alaibe, has advocated the use of excess crude proceeds and part of the nation's foreign reserves to fund provision of the needed infrastructure that would drive development in the country instead of waiting for foreign investors to fund it. He said while delivering a keynote address titled "From Energy Wealth to National Transformation: Accelerating the pace of progress" that Nigeria was endowed with natural resources which needs equal manpower training to tap the best out of it. He advocated the path towed by Malaysia which pursued what he called an aggressive policy of articulated manpower development which transformed the economy to what it is presently. To him a starting point for Nigeria may be in the articulation of a Master Plan for Accelerated National Transformation which will go through all strata of the society and carry everybody along in an all round development that will be broken into medium and long term projects. Alaibe lamented that lack of vision and planning has led to the stultifying of the development of the country such that in 47 years of the nation's independence all the raw materials, Nigeria produces, it hardly adds value to its raw materials. "My observation then is that, because practically all that we have to offer for the time being are our natural resources in their raw and/crude state and our numbers (population), most foreign investment is in the extractive and 'addictive' (e.g. tobacco and telephony) industries. Until we train our people in their critical masses and install non-negotiable social infrastructure, neither foreigners nor ourselves will be able to invest and apply ourselves optimally in the real sector. All that will come at a huge financial costs and this is where we must again strike the right balance between attracting substantial foreign capital and, most importantly, being brave enough to invest a reasonable part of our capital, public and private, in ourselves, our land and our future. I doubt if foreigners will ever invest in the real (non-extractive, non-addictive) sector, if we ourselves do not. "This is where we must come up with creative financial engineering and venture capital solutions. And it need not always be complex. While there is an indisputable fundamental need to create and maintain sustainability/national stabilization funds, I am afraid we may also have to look partly in the direction of our excess crude proceeds and our modest but respectable foreign reserves. How else can we leverage on part of our 'energy wealth' to stimulate national productivity and transformation", he advocated. Alaibe also made case for the review and passage of the Infrastructure concessioning Bill which will lay the legal framework for the active involvement of the private sector in driving our development like obtains in other parts of the world. Enditem