By Benson Ewedafe
Nigeria’s dwindling economy was on spotlight at the epoch Conference put together by the Association of Maritime Journalists of Nigeria (AMJON) in Lagos last Thursday, with the theme: Rebuilding Nigeria Economy Towards Viable Trans-Border Trade’ drew attention to crucial issues.
According to the President of the noble association, in his opening remarks, Paul Ogbuokiri, therefore underscored the need to look inwards towards rekindling Nigeria’s economy, as in the early days of the country’s independence, focusing more on Non-oil trade.
While speaking further, he said the theme of the conference was deliberately selected owing to the poor state of Nigeria’s monolithic economy which requires speedy solution to lift the country out of crisis situation.
He however expressed concern over the nation’s unfavorable balance of trade occasioned by over dependence on oil and the apparent lack of concern by relevant authorities.
“Now the shock has become permanent because our crude oil has become encumbered,
“large portion of it now goes into payment of debts acquired and squandered by politicians while the other portion of it is being stolen by powerful people.
“We are therefore left with little or no foreign exchange to finance our necessary and unnecessary imports” Ogbuokiri informed.
He applaud the efforts of President Bola Tinubu’s administration towards solving the nation’s economic problems while emphasizing that non-oil exports holds the key to the nation’s Economic progress particularly with regards to intra- African trade.
He praised the collaboration between Nigeria and it’s neighboring countries in facilitating transborder trade stressing that such relationship would help identify bottlenecks and proffer solutions for ease of trade, he said.
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