President Bola Tinubu seems to be modelling his unfolding economic agenda and strategy on those of former President, Olusegun Obasanjo. Obasanjo started a flurry of international engagements soon after he was sworn in 1999, mainly to secure debt relief or outright debt forgiveness.

He felt that as an international eminent person and fresh out of a politically-motivated imprisonment, he would elicit sympathy from foreign investors.

Not much came of his best efforts until he returned home and started doing the right things. He appointed, perhaps the best economic team in Nigeria’s history headed by the illustrious Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

Within a record time, he was able to execute his historic debt swap with the Paris Club, whereby Nigeria paid about $12 billion to wipe out our $32 billion debt stock. He laid the foundation for an economic boom and our evasion of the 2008-2010 economic meltdown. Indeed, Obasanjo’s foundational work eventually catapulted Nigeria to the biggest economy in Africa by Gross Domestic Product, GDP, in 2013.

It was not until Muhammadu Buhari came to power in 2015 that Nigeria not only lost ground in our ability to fund our foreign exchange needs, the debts started climbing again. As of the first quarter of 2023, the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, indicated that our external debt had skyrocketed to over $42.6 billion, up from $41.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022, an all-time high.

Unlike Obasanjo whose emergence posed no controversy, Tinubu’s has been stiffly challenged in the Election Tribunal. He certainly does not have Obasanjo’s mammoth international image. Tinubu is surging forward with his hunt for foreign investors, fully confident that the removal of petrol subsidy and other policies which are still up his sleeve will attract the investors. His recent economic missionary trip to India for the New Delhi G.20 meeting appears to have yielded positive results.

However, we want to remind him that charity begins at home. Experts believe that hunting for foreign investors while our domestic investors have not been given enough rope to prove the fertility of the Nigerian economy may end up attracting more of hustlers than the real, strategic investors we need.

Having knocked millions of small and medium-scale businesses off their perches with the ruthless implementation of the petrol subsidy, Tinubu and his team must quickly apply the palliatives needed to re-ignite domestic investment. A number of sectors, such as our educational, health, energy, agricultural, security, criminal justice, anti-graft, and financial affairs need emergency measures to rebuild a battered system and instil confidence at home and abroad.

Any economic evangelism that does not excite or firmly plant our domestic investors and diaspora elements at the forefront of the recovery effort will misfire. Foreigners should share in our prosperity, not hijack it.

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