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Experts in political economy have described Nigeria’s touted fiscal federalism as amputated.
At the second annual Professor Pita Ejiofor Frontier Lecture in Management Sciences recently in Awka, Anambra State, they also espoused ways to ensure effective economic diversification in the country.
Themed ‘Managing Nigeria’s Economic Diversification: Lessons From Other Climes’, the three-day lecture was part of the 2019 Faculty of Management Sciences International Conference of Nnamdi Azikiwe University (NAU), Awka.
Delivering a paper entitled ‘Issues and Lessons on Nigeria’s Economic Diversification’, the keynote speaker, Dr. Abraham Nwankwo, observed that the country’s federal system, as well as diversity of soil, climate and vegetation provided the basis for diversified economic activities, competitive sub-national resource exploration and fiscal autonomy of each region.
The former director-general of Debt Management Office (DMO), Abuja, asserted that the regional efforts would help to generate revenue to finance development projects, while contributing to the federal treasury.
“In essence, revenue base of the entire economy would be highly diversified because it would be a combination of diversified range of revenue sources from the various sub-nationals based on their varied natural resources,” he said.
Vice Chancellor of Federal University, Otueke, Bayelsa State, Prof. Seth Jaja, said diversification of the economy would take the country out of economic woods.
Jaja, who delivered the paper on ‘Changing Face of Management Sciences: Implications for Nigeria’s Economic Diversification’, predicted that Nigeria would face economic obituary by 2030 if it fails to diversify.
Earlier in his welcome address, the Vice Chancellor of NAU, Prof. Charles Esimone, described Professor Pita Ejiofor, after whom the Frontier Lecture was instituted, as a catalyst of the emergence and development of management as an academic discipline in Nigeria.
He noted that the theme reflected the country’s current economic predicament.
The theme, he said, “has been informed by the country’s inevitable economic predicament, a situation predicted by our vulnerable dependence, to the neglect of other resources, on the export of crude oil for revenue.”