Politics FG on tract to transform Nigeria in 5 years - CBN Official

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President Goodluck Jonathan’s transformation of key sectors of the economy will throw up a new Nigeria in the next five years, the Deputy Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in charge of Financial System Stability, Dr. Kingsley Moghalu, has said.

The North America Correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Moghalu made the remark during the launch of his book "Emerging Africa", at the Nigeria Embassy in Washington DC on Sunday.

Moghalu said that the hand over of power supply facilities to private organisations would improve electricity supply and reduce the cost of doing business in the country.

According to him, the same development will happen when individuals or private firms finally get involved in the development of the nation's refineries.

The government has put very strong efforts and has given priority to job creation under the Transformation Agenda and I know that some very good results are already been achieved in this regard.

"I believe that almost a million jobs have been created in Nigeria over the past year alone. That is quite a very significant achievement but we need to do more, we should never rest on our oars."

Moghalu, however, said that job creation was key to Africa’s future while explaining that economic development was interdisciplinary and a multidimensional affair.

The whole question of unemployment is very important for Africa's economy in future. Africa has a huge youth population and that is going to increase in the future; so it is important that we create jobs at the pace of our population growth or that, we reduce our population growth.

The demographics is important because it can even create more wealth through increased individual GDP per capita. But it is important to create jobs, otherwise if we don’t create jobs, you have hundreds of millions dissatisfied youths in the future and that is not a good scenario for Africa.

"Many African countries recognise this, Africa's economic planners increasingly recognise this, Nigeria increasingly recognises this."

The CBN deputy governor said that African countries were on a trajectory, pursuing better quality leadership and that they needed to continue to do so because it was the secret to the future.

Moghalu said his 397-page book dealt with economics, philosophy, strategy and public policy as they were
all intertwined.

He said that there was no one dimension to economic development, stressing that leadership was critical.

This is why I think this book is a very different book from any book that has been written about Africa in the world economy in the last five years. In any case, it is one of the few; it’s not the only one written by a senior African policy maker.

In this book Emerging Africa, I tried to interrogate the conventional wisdom where Africa is at this point today in the global economy, and I tried to take a fundamental look at what African economies and African countries need to do in order to create wealth and to prosper as nations.

There is a difference between the wealth of individuals and the wealth of nations. This book is concerned with the wealth of nations.’’

He also said that he looked at a number of issues such as globalisation, capitalism and free market, foreign investment, international trade and the role of strategy and risk management in Africa's quest for development.

Nigeria’s Ambassador to the U.S., Prof. Ade Adefuye, described the book as a combination of philosophy, law, economics and politics, noting that it brought out the best of the author.

"I agreed to most of his comments and the need for us to take all these principles and concepts and apply it to the peculiar situation that we find ourselves. He also provided some suggestions as the way forward."

"At the same time, he showed that he is optimistic even though he is very realistic. He is very confident about the Nigeria’s future, agreeing particularly with his declaration that once we get the power right; there is no limit to where Nigeria can be and what Nigeria can achieve ."

"He has combined well his knowledge of all kinds of disciplines and deep understanding and insight of what is happening in Nigeria and Africa. This shows very much in his book, " Adefuye said.

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