Nigeria: A big emerging global market

Mr Onnoh Ruhl, World Bank's Country Director (right) being interviewed by VON reporter, Adam Shemang

Nigeria: A big emerging global market
Ben Adam Shemang, Abuja

Nigeria has been described as the next big market emerging across the globe with a per capital income that is the same as that of India.

World Bank’s Country Director, Onno Ruhl, who made the observation in Abuja noted that Nigeria’s non-oil growth is at a steady 9 per cent while overall growth is at a steady 7 per cent.

“If I were a young Nigerian, well-educated, I would come back to Nigeria. You would make more money than you could in most other places in the world”, Onno Ruhl said.

Untapped potentials

Mr Ruhl, who described Nigeria as investors’ delight, noted that despite the steady economic growth of the nation, several sectors of the economy were yet to achieve their full potential. One of such sectors according to the World Bank boss, is the Nigerian entertainment industry.

Mr Ruhl explained that the Nigerian film industry (popularly called Nollywood) is already the third largest film industry in the world and about half a million people are employed by the sector.

In his words: “If the Nigerian government helped by protecting better against piracy and making sure that more of the revenues from the films flow back to the people who make them, they could improve and it could be a product that would go beyond its current export market and then create even more jobs.”

The World Bank Country Director noted that Hollywood is the second largest export product of the United States and if the right economic framework were created for the Nigerian film industry, it would become a top foreign exchange earner.

He pointed out that Nigeria would definitely make more money out of Nollywood than it could ever make out of steel.

De-emphasizing oil

Aside entertainment, Mr. Ruhl noted that agriculture is another key sector with great prospects. According to him, Nigeria used to be the world’s largest producer of palm oil and ground nut as well as a large exporter of cocoa but those potentials were lost following the discovery of oil.

“These potentials would be re-discovered if government at all levels would look at Agricultural productivity in a much more systematic way. Nigeria should be a country that should be a positive contributor to the food security problem for the whole world; not a country that worries about its own food security. Nigeria should produce much more food than it eats and the rest of the world needs that food”, he said.

Home grown solution for continental problem

The World Bank chief applauded a home-grown safe motherhood programme, “Abiye” in Nigeria’s south-west Ondo State, noting that the programme holds the key to achieving Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5 in Nigeria and Africa.

Mr Ruhl said that the success of the programme in addressing maternal mortality and infant mortality in the state was good news for Nigeria, a country that accounts for 10 per cent of the world’s maternal deaths.

He called on State governments in Nigeria to engage in a healthy competition in developing their states as well as imbibe the culture of peer review.

Iheanacho/Ekata