Utomi Asks Govts to De-emphasise Crude Oil in Budgeting
· Subsidiarity central to revamping economy, he proposesNigeria’s leading political economist, Prof Pat Utomi, has recommended how Nigeria can effectively manage grave socio-economic realities that will follow the lookdown, asking governments at all levels to make crude oil irrelevant in the budgeting process.
He faulted the national policy that placed crude at the centre of the country’s budgeting, a practice he described as regressive, unrealistic and unworkable, as evidenced by the lacklustre performance of the Nigerian economy He added that the economy was “in a triple shock challenge from loss of confidence that resulted in the Forbes write up that Nigeria was a money losing machine for investors; imploding oil prices and signals from Wuhan.
He then shared his experience when he visited Rome in October 2019, described how he boarded train from the Italian capital city to Milan, Torino and other places effortlessly. However, Utomi noted that the development of the country “is not influencing how the political leaders are thinking. We have real problems. We have seen India attracting foreign direct investments . But in Nigeria, politicians only think of what their friends can get out of it.
He reflected on the economic structure of Nigeria in the late 1950s and before the military took over in the 1960s, noting that Nigeria’s was then an economy that was run from sub-national level contrary to the present order, whereby the economy was managed from the national level. “As a result, we saw the death of groundnut pyramids. We saw the demise of cocoa. We saw the complete wipeout of palm produce business. We are now importing palm oil from Malaysia. We can go on and on about this story,” Utomi reflected on Nigeria’s glorious days in disappointment.
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