On 26 October, some of Nigeria's sharpest economic minds sat down for a panel called "Building a New Economic Accord" and delivered a frank message: the country has stabilised, but stability alone will not lift people out of poverty.
Anambra State Governor Chukwuma Soludo, a former central bank governor, set the tone. Current growth of around 4% is an improvement on the 1.9% to 2.1% of recent years, he said, and it does beat population growth. But bringing poverty down in any meaningful way requires at least 7% to 9% annual growth. Reaching the trillion-dollar economy President Bola Tinubu's administration is targeting by 2030 would demand something closer to 12% a year.
Soludo pointed to investment levels as a core problem. Nigeria is putting only 17% to 20% of GDP back into the economy, and government spending across all levels sits below one dollar per person per day. The savings are there among Nigerians, he said. The gap is in channelling those savings into productive ventures. He also called for a real exchange rate kept undervalued by 25% to 30% over a full decade to sharpen the country's competitiveness.
Finance Minister Taiwo Oyedele backed up that thinking. Suppressing prices, he warned, only delays a painful correction. On the question of fuel subsidies, he was direct: a return to them "should be forgotten".
Soludo also sounded a note of caution about the current mood of optimism. Nigeria benefits from what he described as an "almost global elite consensus" behind its reform direction today. A similar consensus existed late in the Obasanjo era, he reminded the room, and it gave way to "command and control" policies, with growth falling and inflation climbing back into double digits. The path is clear. Whether the momentum holds is the question worth watching.
Originally published by African Business.