If Tinubu read the recent KPMG report on Nigeria’s economy he will know that he has to do something drastic, audacious and unprecedented over the next two years to get the economy off her knees 

Ayo Akinfe 

[1] I read the latest KPMG report on Nigeria yesterday and it made grim reading. It said among other things that unemployment is expected to hit 40% this year as about 5m Nigerians join the workforce annually and we are not creating the jobs for them

 
[2] Just to put things into perspective, our population is growing at a rate of 3% per annum, so we need at least 5% economic growth annually just to maintain living standards. We are currently getting about 2% growth, meaning living standards are falling. To become a nation at ease with ourselves, we basically need double-digit gross domestic product (GDP) growth annually 

[3] If you ask me, Bola Tinubu has to think the unthinkable and do what no other mortal has done before if he wants to lift the 80m Nigerians living in poverty out of it. Those of you who are historians will know of the 12 Labours of Hercules. These were impossible and unimaginable tasks but legend has it that Hercules achieved them 

[4] For me, Bola Tinubu needs to basically grow Nigeria’s GDP to about $2trn from its current $400bn over the next two years. He needs to create about 10m jobs annually and has to get something like 10% economic growth every year for at least the next five years 

[5] Were I in his shoes, I would do something audacious like create a Jurassic island and somewhere like Eta Oko off the coast of Lagos State and bring back dinosaurs. Yes, you heard me, I would create a genuine Jurassic Park and redefine the phrase tourism 

[6] How many Nigerians know of Nigersaurus, a genus of rebbachisaurid sauropod dinosaur that lived during the middle Cretaceous period, about 115m to 105m years ago. Its remains were discovered in the Elrhaz Formation in an area called Gadoufaoua, in the Republic of Niger. Fossils of this dinosaur were first described in 1976 but it was only named Nigersaurus Taqueti in 1999, after further and more complete remains were found and described

[7] The genus name means "Niger reptile", and the specific name honours the palaeontologist Philippe Taquet, who discovered the first remains. Like all sauropods, Nigersaurus was a quadruped with a small head, thick hind legs and a prominent tail. Just imagine the tourist potential of us opening up a Jurassic Park of Nigersaurus dinosaurs 

[8] Now, a team of researchers recently found what seems to be DNA in a 125 million year-old dinosaur fossil. Alida Bailleul, a palaeontologist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and her colleagues found the biomolecules in a portion of cartilage from a Caudipteryx specimen. What this means is that we now have the DNA to artificially manufacture dinosaurs

[9] Bola Tinubu needs to bring these scientists to Nigeria to create dinosaurs for our Jurassic Park 

[10] Everything points to the fact that we have the technology to clone dinosaurs in a laboratory. Just imagine where the Nigerian economy would be in 10 years time if we were home to the world’s only Jurassic island. I think our biggest problem is that we are too scared to think the unthinkable!