After his recent trips abroad in search of foreign direct investment, what President Tinubu now needs to do is appoint a minister for manufacturing like Germany did in the 1940s

Ayo Akinfe

[1] Nigeria’s fundamental problem is that we are not productive enough as an economy. All our other problems like corruption, mismanagement, kidnapping, ethnic mistrust, religious intolerance, violent crime, terrorism, etc, all stem from that source

[2] If the Tinubu administration wants to fix Nigeria, all it needs to do is address our limited manufacturing capacity and everything else will fall into place

[3] We basically need three of our brightest sparks and most energetic beings in charge of a few key ministries. President Tinubu needs Nigeria’s three brightest sparks appointed a the ministers for security, power supply and manufacturing

[4] All President Tinubu needs to do is read up how Albert Speer became Germany’s minister of armaments and munitions in 1942 and assumed significant responsibility for the war economy. He sped up the production of tanks, aircraft, submarines, assault rifles, anti-tank guns, etc

[5] Speer placed a cap of 45 years on the managers of all armament factories. He then sought to step up mass-production in the German economy to enable it compete with the allies

[6] Among the positions Speer held were inspector-general of German roadways and the inspector-general for water and energy. He proved to be ambitious, unrelenting and ruthless. Speer set out to gain control not just of armaments production in the army but in the whole armed forces

[7] Speer was fêted at the time and in the post-war era, for performing an armaments miracle in which German war production dramatically increased. Nigeria needs someone who can perform such a manufacturing miracle in sectors like automobiles, TV sets, motorcycles, mobile phones, electric meters, transformers, etc

[8] In August 1943, Speer took control of most of Germany’s ministry of economics, to become, in Admiral Dönitz's words - Europe's economic dictator. Nigeria desperately needs such a person today as we need to grow our economy from around $400bn to say $1trn in about two years

[9] Just take security alone. One big problem our armed forces have is they have to wait for imported equipment. Most of this second hand equipment is getting obsolete anyway and we do not get the quantities we want at the time we want it. Every serious nation must be able to manufacture its own defence equipment

[10] Albert Speer had some very unpalatable excesses which we should not copy but he knew how to increase production. It was befitting that he was jailed for 20 years in 1946 as punishment for his role as a leading Nazi but that does not negate his industrial development blueprints. I look forward to seeing Bola Tinubu’s industrial blueprint

ayoakinfe@gmail.com