Research experts on Monday expressed worries over Nigeria’s inflation of 17.33 per cent and unemployment rate 33.3 per cent amidst rising national debts.
Speaking during a virtual meeting on institutionalisation of research and development in infrastructure development, the experts stressed the importance of infrastructural development to economic growth.
A lecturer at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Prof. Muhammed Usman, in a presentation, said, “In 2009 and 2013, Nigeria invested a paltry $664 per capita per annum in infrastructure, representing three per cent of its GDP, compared with an average investment of $3.060, or five per cent of GDP in developed countries.”
Usman noted that the situation had widened the country’s infrastructure gap and had been a major impediment to economic growth.
The Chief Executive Officer, Nigeria Economic Summit Group, Mr Laoye Jaiyeola, who chaired the meeting, noted that infrastructure was a major hindrance to the country’s competitive development.
Jaiyeola said one of the challenges facing the private sector was infrastructure, adding that the country needed funds annually to finance infrastructure if it must get out of the rocks.
The Executive Secretary of TETFund, Prof. Suleiman Bogoro, said the fund was reviewing a report of the draft executive bill on the establishment of the National Research and Development Foundation earlier received from the RDSC.
Bogoro said he was in contact with the leadership of RDSC and other relevant stakeholders for the purpose of offering informed advice on the final document that would leave his desk and proceed to the education ministry for it to be considered as a document worthy of being taken to the Federal Executive Council.
The TETFund boss commended the committee for traveling around the country to come up with “the information that reminds us of the gaps to, indeed, tell us what we need to do to close the gap between Nigeria and the more advanced nations.”
In his remarks, the Chairman of RDSC, Prof. Njidda Gadzama, stressed the importance of infrastructure.
