Vice President Yemi Osinbajo says
the problem of extreme poverty in Nigeria keeps him up at night.
Osinbajo disclosed this at a
dinner and Interactive Session with Faculty Members, Harvard Business School
(HBS) on Tuesday in Lagos.
The vice president featured
alongside Srikant Datar, Professor of Business Administration (HBS), and Bayo
Ogunlesi, a Nigerian investment banker at a question and answer session
moderated by Hakeem Bello-Osagie, Chairman of Metis Capital Partners.
“I think what keeps me up at
night has to do with extreme poverty; the issue is that the largest number of
those who vote for us are the very poor.
“The promises that government
makes to them is that their lives will be better and obviously they are looking
at their lives being better in the shortest possible time.
“I will like to see Nigeria being
an industrialised nation in the next 10 years; a very strong middle class and
most people living above poverty line.”
Osinbajo said that a lot of
government policies were taking into account people at the bottom of the
pyramid with a focus on agriculture and getting credit facilities to farmers in
order to achieve self sufficiency.
He said that many farmers in the
country had been lifted out of poverty by this administration.
According to him, a lot of
attention had also been given to the Social Intervention Programmes (SIPs)
which factored the provision of cheap credit to petty traders at the bottom of
the pyramid.
The vice president told the HBS
that Nigeria was open to business with its various potentials and urged
Nigerian investors abroad to look homewards.
“If you are going to do business
anywhere in Africa, it has to be Nigeria.
“This is where you have the
energy; you have the drive.
“We are already seeing that kind
of activity; business people will always be driven by profit.
“Talent will always go in the
direction where it is best rewarded; one can’t afford to be sentimental about
that.
“As people see that the
environment is getting better for business, they will come back; the
opportunities for making huge profits are here.
“Practically everything we are
doing in to ensure that there is environment for business to thrive. People are
leaving but people are coming back.”
He said that the Federal
Government, through the Special Economic Zones (SEZ) was encouraging the
manufacturers.
The vice president said that the
government was looking at natural economic clusters and had set up shared
facilities and power.
He said a lot was going on the
agro-allied sector and of course, resolving the power challenges.
“In the next few months, we will
unveil a plan that deals with most of the critical issues in the power sector,”
he said.
On climate change, Osinbajo said
that the momentum was in favour of renewable energy and Nigeria was doing a lot
of investment in renewable energy; solar power and opening up opportunities.
On his part, Datar said he was
particularly proud of Osinbajo as an academic in governance, adding that
academics provide enabling environment for good governance.
He pledged HBS’s support in
providing needed support for human capital development in Nigeria and
proffering solutions to tackling Nigeria’s infrastructure challenges.
Speaking, Ogunlesi said that the
era of depending on government for infrastructure was gone, adding that the
Federal Government had no business running infrastructure in Nigeria,
especially the airports.
In a vote of thanks, Emir of
Kano, Alhaji Muhammadu Sanusi 11, called for urgent action to address the high
poverty rate in Nigeria especially in the North West.
He also advocated for a committee
on girl-child education to boost enrolment in schools and uplift their living
standards.
The event also attracted Lagos
State Governor, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu, US Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr Stuart
Symington, immediate past Minister of Trade and Investment, Mr Okechukwu
Enelamah, immediate past Minister of Budget and National Planning, Sen. Udoma
Udo Udoma among others.
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