Shubham Chaudhuri, country director of World Bank has said that despite an avalanche of resources to tap from, Nigeria has still not realized her potentials.
He added that for Nigeria to achieve a lot from her potentials, the Federal Government must invest in capital infrastructure and basic development needs.
“Right now, Nigeria does not have the revenues to finance it. We have seen in some reports that Nigeria has the lowest level of government revenue to GDP among some major countries, but we have some other countries too.
“But if you compare them to the rule of thumb on how much the government needs to spend in order to provide the basic functions of law and order-basic services and basic infrastructure-the rule of thumb is usually between 15 per cent and 20 per cent.”
Chaudhuri recalled that Nigeria has spent 12 per cent of its GDP in the last few years. “It means if your revenue is seven to eight per cent of the GDP, and you are making an effort to spend about 12 per; you are already encouraging fiscal deficit which means an overall debt.
“However, that might be worth it if the public spending is in the right places. Nigeria has huge potential and we see this potential in two ways.”
According to him, with Nigeria as the largest economy in sub-Saharan Africa, there are the dynamism and the energy of the people, saying “if things were a bit more conducive to mobilising the energy, the potential is tremendous.
“I also see in it terms of Nigerians in the Diaspora-Nigerians who grow up in Nigeria and then at an individual level go abroad. In the United States, Nigerians are the most educated.
It used to be the Indians but Nigeria has overtaken India in that regard.”
