Nigeria needs 10% growth to reduce poverty — Peterside

By Favour Ulebor, Abuja Businessman and former Nigerian Stock Exchange chairman, Atedo Peterside, has said Nigeria’s economic growth rate of about four per cent is inadequate to generate the jobs and investment needed to lift citizens out of poverty, insisting that the country must target annual growth of 10 per cent. Peterside spoke on Tuesday at the second Oxford Global Think Tank Leadership Conference in Abuja, where he identified declining investment, corruption, political patronage and the misuse of public resources as major obstacles to stronger economic growth. He said Nigeria’s investment-to-Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio had declined steadily since 1999, despite the optimism that followed the return to democratic rule, when local and foreign investors showed renewed interest in the economy.

According to him, investors have been discouraged by an environment where access to opportunities is often determined by political connections, while small and medium-sized enterprises face harassment from regulatory authorities. Peterside called for an economy in which investors could operate without relying on political connections, stressing that public resources must be channelled into productive ventures to achieve the country’s growth ambitions. He warned against celebrating modest economic growth while corruption and the diversion of public funds persisted, arguing that procurement processes could be manipulated to enrich individuals at the expense of development. “Procurement can become legalised theft,” he said, citing inflated contracts and the award of projects to politically connected business partners as practices that undermine the effective use of public funds. Peterside maintained that Nigeria could not move from four per cent to 10 per cent growth…