Scarce opportunities for youths’ greatest existential risk facing Nigeria—Afrinvest boss
The Deputy Managing Director of Afrinvest Limited, Victor Ndukauba, has revealed that “The greatest existential risk facing this country today is its youthful demography and the potential damage that this segment can wreck, given the lack of opportunities for self-expression and actualisation (employment, housing, etc).”
Reacting to the recent five-year outlook by Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU), which envisaged that continuous socio-political upheavals and severe economic difficulties remain a danger signal to Nigeria, he said “The greatest challenge facing the Nigerian economy today is one of poor productivity, primarily driven by structural impediments including lack of basic infrastructure (energy – power & fuel, transport, etc). The pains imposed by a big (central) government that acts more as a hindrance than as an enabler to business and commerce means that urgent reforms are required. Whether the piece meal approach to trying to fix these (modest steps taken towards improving ease of business) will have the needed impact remain to be seen (more like just hope).”
According to him, the easy way out is for Nigeria to learn from India, in terms of reforms.
He recalled that “India gave the world an example of what it means to embark on major reforms with the launch of the harmonised tax system only a few days ago. We are paying a lot of lip service to our challenges with different interest groups subverting the efforts of government & by so doing, “cutting their noses to spite their faces.”
