A Nigerian energy analyst has linked Nigeria’s plunging economy to so much dependency on crude oil for revenue.
He decried the shift from the nation’s former economy mainstay – agriculture – to crude oil and stressed the need for further diversification of the economy.
“The country abandoned every other facet of development and focused exclusively on oil which is entirely not sustainable.
“We are here because we took what is potentially an advantage and turned it into a disadvantage.
“If we think about the trajectory of the Nigerian economy prior to the discovery of oil and how well we were doing, the economy was so robust and was doing so well – the Naira was equivalent to the Dollar as well as the Pound and was actually stronger than the Dollar,” Mr Israel Aye explained on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Tuesday.
Mr Aye further stressed that “what is sadder is that the potential of this economy to grow on the back of several other sources is enormous.
“The potential that exists in manufacturing, tourism, steel – Ajaokuta and Alaja is endless,” he said.
Answering a question on what Nigeria has not gotten right, the Director of Aspen Energy said that “Nigeria has yet again, a golden opportunity to achieve the diversification of her economy in the present crisis.
“It is the nature of commodities generally and it is what has happened in the oil industry from inception.
“This crisis has a potential to help us wake up to realise one critical factor that even oil prices at 200 Dollars will not generate enough revenue to grow the economy,” he maintained.
Suggesting a solution to the leakages in the Nigerian economy, the energy analyst said that “we need to as a matter of urgency, come together, sit down and look at a master plan for how we are going to grow this economy and then, develop the petroleum sector as a subset of that.
“I wish we pay a lot of attention to our human resources, their utilisation and come up with policies for people development to put people to work”.
