The Director-General, West African Institute for Financial and Economic Management (WAIFEM), Prof. Akpan Ekpo, has charged the 36 states of the federation to play their role in putting the Nigerian economy on the path of growth and development through economic nationalism and fine-tuning of the existing framework if the Federal Government must deliver on its change mantra.

Ekpo who was the guest lecturer at the Inaugural Lecture of Centre for Financial Journalism with the theme: The Nigerian Economy in Distress: Policy Choices for Buhari’s Administration. According to him, “it is clear that the Nigerian economy was in distress. Economic nationalism involves the need to strategically depend on domestic resources with selective engagement with the outside which would result in some element of change”.

The adoption of this philosophy of economic nationalism he added, would address the issue around what happened to our education system, healthcare, employment, provision of other basic needs, infrastructure, poverty and inequality.

“If the global economy is in recession, the Nigerian economy would experience same at least as a client. However certain policies could cushion the effect of such recession”.

He however, said that massive investment in infrastructure across the country would save the collapse of various institutions and sectors  and revive the ones already moribund in the country, while also calling for the modernisation of agriculture and industrialisation since the economy has to be productive to generate revenues to pay debt, generate employment and more investment opportunities.

“Investment in power in particular would enhance growth and generate employment. It would result in the establishment of new micro and small-scale industries as well as sustain existing ones,” he said.

The Professor however made a case for the rebuilding and restructuring of the public school system, adding that only the public system could produce the mass of literate Nigerians who would aspire to acquire various skills at the tertiary level.

He admonished the President to have a committed team that would put the economy on the path of sustained growth and development.

Also speaking at the lecture, the Chairman of the occasion and Founder, Centre for Values in Leadership, Prof. Pat Utomi, said that the nation is still going through the economic experience of 1982-85 and the nation would continue to repeat same mistakes because there is no institutional memory.

Utomi said that the problem with the economy was that people who talked the most were people who knew nothing about what they were talking about, laying credence to the fact that of what has happened in Nigeria and other climes.