The African Development Bank (AfDB) has stated that Nigeria needs to urgently activate its march to industrialisation to save the country from the looming danger of over dependence of crude oil earnings.

Professor Oyelaran-Oyeyinka Oyebanji, a senior special adviser on industrialisation at the bank, said diversification of Nigeria’s economy is the only viable way to survive the current global economic uncertainty.

He spoke on Monday in Okada, Edo while delivering the 22nd Founder’s Day Lecture of the Igbinedion University.

To respond favourably to the emerging challenges of the 21st century, it has become extremely important for Nigeria to diversify its source of earning Mr Oyelaran-Oyeyinka reckoned.

According to him, the country cannot progress unless it hastily industrialises its economy from the current overdependence on exportation of crude oil.

The economic expert who was the guest speaker at the occasion, regretted how all industries established in the early post independence Nigeria had become moribund.

He noted that nothing had exposed the danger inherent in the country’s reliance on the monolithic economy of petroleum exportation than the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic that crashed the price of crude oil at the global market.

“In pursuit of long-term recovery and sustainable development, Nigeria needs urgent economic diversification.

“Nothing is more poignantly demonstrative of the danger of over-reliance on a single or narrow range of commodities than the recent crash in oil price we saw in 2020 due to the COVID-19.

“Economic diversification entails a shift away from a single income source (oil and minerals) toward multiple income sources from an increasing spectrum of sectors, products and markets,” he said.

The academic said the South Korean economy, which was on the same pedestal with Nigeria’s in 1960s in spite of being non-resource based, had performed incredibly strong through export diversification whereas Nigeria hardly diversified.

“Nigeria got locked-in into petroleum export for export earnings to the detriment of value-added agriculture and manufactures.

“The result is a low contribution of the manufacturing sub-sector which fluctuates between five per cent to eight per cent to aggregate output in Nigeria compared with its peers in Asia (Korea about 39 per cent in the 1990s) is staggering,” he noted.

Mr Oyelaran-Oyeyinka also stressed the need for the country to invest in infrastructure, saying economic diversification requires investment in infrastructure as the estimate Nigeria’s infrastructure deficit stands at 100 billion dollars annually.

(NAN)