On his way back from China, I hope President Tinubu does a stopover in India to look at how they are implementing an unprecedented policy of double digit annual economic growth

Ayo Akinfe

[1] India’s population recently overtook that of China. They now have 1.428bn people compared with China’s 1.425bn. However, India has not been caught napping as this population growth has been matched with concurrent economic growth

[2] India prepared for this moment by building industrial cities, wooing blue chip companies in their hundreds and achieving 10% annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates every year

[3] By 2050, Nigeria is going to become the world’s fourth most populous nation behind India, China and the US. Are we prepared for it? We are sleeping and no doubt, an impending disaster is looming

[4] First of all, we lack the landmass to deal with this population growth. It is estimated that we will have a population of 400m by 2050. Our current landmass of 923,770 square kilometres is wholly inadequate for this. Whether we like it or not we simply have to merge with some of our neighbours

[5] More worryingly, we lack the economic clout to deal with this population growth. Our current GDP is about $400bm. We need at least $2trn

[6] Our population is growing at a rate of about 3% per annum. We are not even getting that level of economic growth. Nigeria needs at least 5% annual GDP growth just to break even

[7] At the moment, it is only Lagos that is really attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) into Nigeria

[8] Lagos State accounts for a quarter of Nigeria’s GDP and about one third of non-oil GDP. We have no choice but to replicate this across the 35 other states if we want to match India’s target of 10% GDP growth

[9] Does President Tinubu know what he has actually let himself in for? He needs to get something like 10% GDP growth and attract about $10bn a year in FDI. The last person to do this was Major General Yakubu Gowon, who got an average of 25% GDP growth between 1968 and 1971 when he was head of state

[10] I look forward to seeing President Tinubu’s plans to attract the top 50 global blue chip companies into Nigeria as they have done in India. What the Indians have done is constructed purpose-built industrial cities to house these investors. After Covid-19, a lot of them are relocating from China as they do not want to plant all their eggs in one basket and India has wholeheartedly embraced them

Ayoakinfe@gmail.com