President Muhammadu Buhari has said that the current crash in crude oil price amid the coronavirus epidemic has presented the country with an opportunity to diversify her economy.
Speaking at a roundtable summit, Buhari agreed with discussants that over-reliance on crude oil revenue was the bane of the Nigerian economy and a way out would require the efforts of the private sector.
“The onset of the coronavirus in December 2019, which has spread to over 100 countries, is having a significant impact on global growth as well as commodity prices such as crude oil, which has dropped by over 45 per cent since January 2020.
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“These external challenges have only served to reinforce the importance of ensuring that Nigeria is self-sufficient in the production of strategic goods.
“They have also highlighted the fact that we need to implement measures that would enable growth in other sectors of our economy and reduce our dependence on earnings from crude oil. For these objectives to be achieved, the vital role of the Nigerian private sector cannot be disputed or overemphasise,” he said.
Meanwhile, in the same vein, the President of the Senate, Ahmed Lawan, stated it’s high time we looked critically, and think strategically on how to develop Nigeria.
Lawan spoke while playing host to members of the Council For New Nigeria, who visited him in his office, saying that. “We must begin in earnest to fashion out ways by which we can grow beyond oil.
“We have a challenge of oil price that is not good right now but what about countries without oil? There are countries that do not have oil yet are making progress.
“May be this is the time to start thinking of how to take people out of poverty in a country without oil, so that we will not say because the oil price has gone down we cannot do anything,” he added.
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