Nigerian Military has been challenged to play a deeper role in the nation’s economic growth through innovative services in social and infrastructural development as is the practice in many countries.
Minister of State for Finance, Amb. Bashir Yuguda who stated this on Tuesday while delivering a lecture at the National Defence College in Abuja maintained that the military holds the key to maintaining peace and sustaining development.
He praised the Armed Forces for the recent gains recorded in the going war against terrorism in the North-east of the country.
In the lecture entitled ‘Nigeria’s Economic Policies and Reforms: An Assessment of the Real and Informal Sectors’, the Minister stated that the Military could “support development policies of government by promoting innovation and participation in areas of engineering, health and education as is done in most parts of the world. “
According to him, “The role of the military is key to winning the peace and sustaining national stability. The military must continue to play a key and integral role in government’s economic policies.”
The Minister noted further that the structure of the Nigerian economy had changed significantly as results obtained after the recent rebasing exercise revealed that the economy was more diversified than previously reported.
He said: “Previously in 2012, Crude Petroleum and Natural Gas stood at 39% but now the figure has gone down to 12.9% (2013), while Trade and Manufacturing which were 13.68% and 1.89%, in 2010 have gone up to 17.1% and 9.0% in 2013, respectively. The non-oil sector, of which the real sector is a component, now contributes more to national productivity.”
Yuguda described the services sector as the fastest growing non-oil segment, adding that the real sector component, comprising agriculture and industry has also been growing steadily.
“Nigeria has a large informal sector, perhaps the largest in Africa. There was policy neglect of the sector until the present Transformation Agenda. In 2014, the estimated size of the contribution of the sector to GDP was about 37.7 per cent.
“In 2014, the total number of informal operators in six states and FCT was about six million according to a study of the Informal Sector of the Nigerian Economy jointly conducted by Nigeria Institute of Social and Economic research (NISER) and the National Planning Commission.”
Between 2011 and 2013, the Minister said that the government made significant progress in implementing fiscal reforms, stressing that the key tenet of the Transformation Agenda is the diversification of economy and unleashing the non-oil sector.
To this end, Yuguda noted that Nigerian Industrial Revolution Plan (NIRP) was developed with “focus on the entire value chain of sub-sectors like agro-processing, consumer goods manufacturing, cement, textiles and petrochemicals.”
On reforms in agriculture, Yuguda noted that the successes recorded include removal of corruption in the distribution of fertilizer and seedlings as well as revolution in rice and cassava production.
