President Tinubu has embarked on a 10-day working holiday to France and the UK. I just hope he comes back with the following agreements in his back pocket

Ayo Akinfe

[1] Our insecurity crisis has spiralled out of control. We need a whole mechanised division of the Nigerian Army trained into a commando unit of special forces up to the standards of say the US Navy Seals or British SAS. Both Britain and France can train our military if they want to

[2] We need at least $10bn invested in cattle ranches, dairy plants, animal feed compounders and leather factories to address our chronic Fulani herdsman crisis. We all see how the rest of the world is throwing money at Ukraine without a qualms, why not Nigeria too?

[3] Nigeria currently only generates 7,000MW of power compared with say Egypt’s 24,700MW and South Africa’s 58,000MW. We desperately need investment in this sector. We need the industrialised world to pledge an annual investment sum of at least $5bn in the sector. Both Britain and France must pledge to invest in the sector

[4] Any British or French supplier of finished goods who recieves a contract to supply any Nigerian government with finished goods in excess of $1m must commit to opening a manufacturing facility in Nigeria. Failure to do so should be classified as money laundering in my opinion

[5] France’s automobile companies Renault, Peugeot, Citroen, etc must commit to opening an electric car engine manufacturing joint venture in Nigeria. Britain’s Rolls Royce should take out a minority stake in the venture

[6] Britain and France must both pledge to offer their investors tax breaks and export credits if they invest in the Nigerian rail network. The goal is to bring the Nigerian network up to European standards within 10 years

[7] Nigeria is the world’s major producer of at least 10 agricultural crops and is among the top 10 producers of about 50 other tropical products. Britain and France must offer their food processors export credits to come and open processing plants in Nigeria

[8] To industrialise, a nation needs power, crude oil, steel and manpower. Of all these areas, the one place where Nigeria is totally lacking is steel as we do not produce one tonne. As a matter of utter urgency, British and French steel manufacturers must be offered tax rebates of up to 80% to locate to Nigeria as without it, we will remain perpetually under-developed

[9] All Nigeria’s foreign debts to Britain and France must be converted into investment grants. We have an annual infrastructural deficit of $100bn and a paltry budget of about $33bn, so simply cannot afford to be servicing loans. Basic arithmetic shows that our economy cannot accommodate paying all these foreign loans

[10] Britain and France must pledge to ensure that 10% of all investment by their industrialists comes to Africa as from 2026. To facilitate this, they must offer them a combination of tax rebates, export credits, green credits, relocation allowances, etc to their private sectors

ayoakinfe@gmail.com