The Presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has vowed to lead the country out of darkness.
Atiku made this declaration at the 2022 Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) private sector economic forum ahead of the 2023 presidential election held in Victoria Island, Lagos.
The former president said the private sector is inevitable for any economic policy or programme to succeed and gave reasons why he will be inculcating the private sector leadership in driving economic growth and development agenda.
“The private sector is key to any government’s development agenda and must always be listened to. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data, the public sector accounts for only 7.5 percent and the private sector, 78.9 percent of national consumption expenditure.
“Similarly with investment expenditure, Government investment is only around a quarter of that of the private sector, 85 percent of the investments in the Medium-Term National Development Plan 2021 – 2025 are envisaged to be private sector funded.
“According to the Nigeria Infrastructure Master Plan. Nigeria has n infrastructure financing deficit of approximately US$ 100 billion per annum which cannot be met by the public sector while Nigeria’s annual budget is only USD 30 billion.”
He noted:
“Nigerians are poorer today than in 2015, capital has taken a flight, Nigeria has consistently run-on budget deficits since it came to power in 2015.
“Nigeria has a potential to double its GDP by 2030 and achieve per capita income of approximately US$5000. We cannot overcome our challenges without significant reforms to restructure the economy, we need to support the private sector to unleash its growth potential and play key role in the economy.
“We will restore investor confidence in the Nigerian economy to take risks and invest capital, break the jinx of infrastructure financing, declare a state of emergency in the power sector to underscore the concerns about the state of affairs in the sector and stimulate growth to create jobs and wage war against hunger.”
