Prior to the just concluded general election, the president-elect, Bola Tinubu, privately instructed an economic team headed by the chairman of the board of directors of Citibank Nigeria, Yemi Cardoso, to research on the best way to get “double digit growth rate” in Nigeria.
Cardoso, a financial and development expert, in 2020, gave a hint of this private research at a colloquium organised in honor of former Osun state governor, Rauf Aregbesola, in Lagos state.
He noted that, “Any kind of prosperity, in my view, requires growth for individuals and countries that they live in.
“In one of the studies done where we looked at eight high growth economies, we found something very interesting and it is that there was no identical policies in every single high growth economy.
“Nigeria must learn from countries such as Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Macedonia, who improved their ease of doing business, removed bottlenecks around the inflow of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), trained and educated their workforce and concentrated on their comparative advantages,” he added.
It is pertinent to note that Tinubu, during his campaign activities, emphasized on removing bottlenecks, reducing bureaucratic process, educating our workforce (emphasis on student loans), and setting up regional industrial hubs specific to each region’s comparative advantage.
There is no way the former governor of Lagos state would have been adamant on double digit growth rate and boosting the nation’s economy before the end of eight years if he didn’t have the answers.
Also, Tinubu was the only presidential candidate bullish about annual double digit growth rate.
It is quite obvious that his answers and confidence in solving our economy quagmire are founded on the e research privately undertaken by Cardoso and his team.
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