Dear Friend,

As an financial advisor, I look into different aspects of the economy.

Government should restructure its finances to give more support to agriculture, mining and other sectors that can create jobs to cushion the effect of the COVID-19 crisis on the Nigerian economy.

Before now, the government have been trying to move the economy from an export driven economy to a consumption driven one. There should be more local aggregate demand to drive the economy.

Government has heavily invested in supporting the agricultural sector. With lessons that we have learnt during the COVID-19 crisis, it makes sense to deepen internal competences across different sectors.

Agriculture has the capacity to employ a lot more people. Our first problem in Nigeria is unemployment, if we can develop our agriculture value chain, a lot more people will be employed.

Almost 100 million Nigerians live in abject poverty, but remember, poverty isn’t just the lack of money, and it is also lack of access to information that can lift you out of that poverty.

Agriculture can increase aggregate demand and we can generate more tax revenues, which can make our GDP more liquid. We have a GDP of $360 billion, but we don’t make up to $20 billion in tax revenue. We can make our GDP more liquid by ensuring that people get to work.

Your thoughts?

In the 21st century, I really doubt that agriculture will do anything to the Nigerian economy. It doesnt even have the capacity to make a Nigeria a trillion dollar economy. Even countries with advanced agricultural systems like Brazil and Netherlands do not have agriculture contributing anything major to their GDP.

What can actually grow the Nigerian economy to enviable heights is tech. The government needs to invest a lot to make sure Nigeria is a safe haven for tech startups. A whole lot of outsourcing is going to south America and India and these guys dont even speak as good English as we do.

Buhari has been chanting on agriculture being a major job creator, what has been the results so far? Farmlands being ransacked by jihadists and maurading Fulani herdsmen in Benue, Southern Kaduna, Plateau, Ogun, Ekiti, Ebonyi, Rivers etc. People can't run large farms in peace again. Investment worth millions of naira gone down the drain and those responsible for these heinous atrocities aren't held accountable. Yet we've a seemingly educated Nigerian spewing bullcrap and mumbo-jumbo about same industry being a major job creator. Wahlai! So-called intelligent Nigerians are very myopic, out of touch and intellectually redundant!

Anyway, I have one assignment for you: Google a list of countries where agricultural activities make up half of the GDP and check their poverty rates. Then check out countries who are major agricultural exporters and the percentage of employment agriculture contributes.

Tomorrow, he would chant that "I'm an educated Nigerian blah blah blah"