Tinubu rebuilding Nigeria’s economy – NRS boss

By Shina Abubakar, Osogbo

The Executive Chairman, Nigeria Revenue Service, NRS, Dr Zacch Adedeji, has disclosed that President Bola Tinubu has embarked on the difficult task of rebuilding Nigeria’s economy, stressing the need to tread the path of innovation rather than a raw material exporting country.

Adedeji, while delivering the maiden distinguished personality lecture of the Faculty of Administration, Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU, Ile-Ife, Osun State, themed ‘From Potential to Prosperity: Export-led Economy’, noted that there is need to rethink growth through the lens of complexity by not just producing more of the same stuff.

He stressed the need to complement the stringent policy embarked on by the President Bola Tinubu administration, which is already yielding positive results, by adopting a complexity-focused strategy to diversify the economy.

Adedeji said, “President Tinubu has already begun the difficult work of rebuilding our economy. The goal now must be to transform Nigeria into a nation that possesses the collective knowledge to produce, innovate and compete. By adopting a strategy focused on complexity, we can finally begin to harness her true potential.

“We can build an economy that is diversified, resilient and most importantly, one that provides prosperous lives for all Nigerians.”

He lamented that Nigeria possesses a high-tech oil sector and low-productivity informal sector and also lacks the vibrant, labour-absorbing industrial base that serves as a bridge to higher complexity.

The NRS boss stated that Nigeria witnessed stagnation in its exportation for 3 decades between 1998 and 2023, but between 2008 and 2023, the country added six new products to its export basket.

“Because of our current position, the Harvard Atlas concluded that we are positioned to take advantage of very few opportunities to diversify using what we already know,” he said.

Adedeji urged Nigeria to learn from the world by comparative study of success and failure like Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia, South Africa and Brazil.

He said, “When we put these stories together, the divergence is clear. Vietnam used global trade to build a resilient, complex economy, while the others remained dependent on natural resources or a single low-tech niche.

“There are three big lessons here for us in Nigeria as we think about our roadmap. First, avoiding the resource curse is necessary, but it’s not enough. You need a proactive strategy to build productive capabilities.

“Vietnam’s success came from integrating itself into Global Value Chains (GVCs). They positioned themselves as the assembly hub for the world’s electronics, importing high-tech parts and exporting finished products. This allowed them to “borrow” technology and management skills from abroad to build their own know-how.

“Nigeria, on the other hand, remains a supplier of raw materials to these chains, not an active participant within them. We must realise that productive capabilities are not permanent. The examples of South Africa and Brazil show us that you can actually lose your industrial edge if you aren’t careful. Over-reliance on the easy path of resource extraction creates economic and political incentives that crowd out the difficult, long-term work of building an industrial base.”

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