Abuja – An Abuja based lawyer, Mr Joe Emenaha, on Wednesday said only a production-based economy could create wealth and guarantee food security in Nigeria in 2017.
Emenaha, in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja, decried the stagnancy of the nation’s economy since independence, saying that it was time to drive a productive economy.
He also called for an economic action plan aimed at not only promoting production, but recovery of lost values of patriotism and dignity of labour.
“The cure and most effective palliative to Nigeria’s self-induced recession is action, action and action, and less and less idle talk and self condemnation.
“We must go back to the primitive and tested way of production, no matter how insignificant it may seem.
“Even, if it means producing a pin, let it be so. No nation can really exist without being productive,’’ Emenaha said.
He decried spate of corruption in the country, saying that it was responsible for the poor state of the nation’s economy.
According to him, corruption, which is the bane of Nigeria’s progress, is synonymous with ethnicity and religious dichotomies.
“Development and progress are not easily made in places being pulled apart by ethno-centric forces,’’ Emenaha said.
He called for total reorientation and change of value system in the country.
Emenaha identified greed, tribalism, religious bias and corruption as some of the challenges that had hindered progress.
Emenaha decried the value system that promoted dependence on foreign or imported goods, saying that no nation could survive under “a consumerist economy’’.