The Renewed Hope manifesto of the Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is achievable.
Mr. Adio said “the Renewed Hope Manifesto holds a lot of promise for the prosperity and Economic Development of Nigeria”.
He compared the targets set out in the document to what was achieved in South Korea between 1979 and 1988 where the Country doubled its GDP within 8 years and also went from being a net importer of Goods and Services to a net Exporter.
He added that similar thing happened under the returning Brazilian President, Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, from 2002 and 2008, where the GDP was also doubled and over 40 million were moved from poverty to the Middle class.
He however said the implementation will be the challenge as it can be bogged down by the Bureaucratic bottle necks the nation is famous for.
He advised that such programme will need a dedicated team of well drilled and knowledgeable individuals both with the Presidential Villa and outside to make it work.
He however said he is in no doubt that the Renewed Hope document is very good and implementable.
“It seemed to be the challenge from the first 2nd, 3rd Republic and even the Fourth Republic so far. I mean, if we are saying that we haven’t solved any major social problem in the last 40 years in Nigeria. And let’s just take off from the renewed hope that you were just talking about.
And clearly, one of the things that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu says he’s going to do in that document is to essentially double GDP over his course of eight years. Essentially, he wants the economy to grow by 10%. And to do that, he wants to expand the market economy.
He wants to stimulate consumption by creating a credit system in the country. He wants to create jobs. And to create jobs, he wants to implement an industrialization policy. For him to achieve that, he wants to drive some sort of an agricultural revolution.
Now, the question is, from what he stated in his document, if he implements those policies clearly, and for me, it’s almost similar to what the South Koreans did between 1979 and 1988 and what the Brazilians did between 2002 and 2008.
And in those two situations, South Korea moved from exporting about $150,000,000 in a year to $160,000,000,000 in just ten years and growing faster than industrialization did in 100 years.
What the Brazilians also did was exceptional. Lula de Silva ensured that he reduced poverty, he moved 40 million people into the middle class from poverty by doing two critical things opening a market economy and some sort of welfare system that put money in the hands of the poor.
So if Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu is able to do as stated in his document that he will promote a private sector led economy and on the other side, a welfare system that puts money in the hands of the poor, then we are likely to see that our economy will grow.
I’m not as optimistic as economic advisers are to say we’re going to grow at 10% in the first two years, but I’ll be cautiously optimistic to say we can grow at four or 5%. And if you maintain a four or 5% growth over the next eight years, we are likely to be able to double GDP. We are likely to be able to create at least 10 million jobs.
We’re likely to be able to expand the economy. But the key, like you said, is in how we can actualize this is by having a technical core, because that’s what the Brazilians did and that’s what the Koreans did.
They ensured that the People that controlled and managed the economy and that managed the welfare system were a group of technically competent individuals who had the finest education, who had the integrity, who were well resourced to be able to implement the agenda of the President without any interference and to see through to a logical conclusion.
So the difference here or the devil in the detail now will be in the ability to create a competent bureaucracy that will be able to implement those policies to the letter without being bogged down by our usual civil service bureaucracy.
Where files are moving, where a guy is not in office today, where you are looking for director implementation, you can find him. If that happens, we’re going to be in this same mess that will have been over a long period of time.
But if Asiwaju is able to find not just the competent team in Aso Rock, but the competent team in the bureaucracy to be able to drive many of these policies and programs, then the hope that the document thoughts might just be realized in 8 years.
