By Emma Ujah, Abuja Bureau Chief

With the raging controversy over President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s continued borrowing from both domestic  and external sources, the Managing Director (MD) of the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), Mr. Uche Orji, has counseled that such borrowings should be for investment in revenue-yielding projects, not consumption.

He spoke at the Businessday Breakfast Meeting on Macroeconomic Outlook: Innovation and Technology, in Abuja, Tuesday.

 According to him, as a nation, Nigeria should borrow like a rich man, to drive returns, not as a poor man who borrows to consume.

Fielding questions on the nation’s debt challenge, Mr. Orji said, “I have a very different philosophy to debt.

“I believe, as a country, if you want to borrow, you borrow big, you borrow to invest, you borrow to drive returns. 

“How many of you know the GDP of Malaysia?  It is about $380 billion.  How many of you know the foreign debt of Maylasia?  $200 billion.  GDP similar to Nigeria, about $384 to about $400 billion.  External debt is about $200 billion.  The difference, Malaysia invests that money in things that produce revenue.

“We shouldn’t borrow like poor men.  Poor men borrow to eat, poor men borrow to pay school fees, poor men borrow to survive.  Rich men borrow to invest.

“So our philosophy of borrowing has to change.  As a country, if we want to borrow to undertake gas industrialization. If we want to borrow to build 10 Indoramas and we want to go out to borrow $25 billion  or $30 billion why not?  Because those things will generate revenue.”    

Centre of Excellence

He also advocated for a Centre of Excellence to train Nigerian experts in various sectors, in order to drive the nation’s socio-economic development.

“I am advocating for a Centre of Excellence.  And I believe that the Centre of Excellence should be able to pull everyone else gravitationally up.  We must.  It could be privately owned or government- funded. 

“I don’t know what works, but I know what has worked elsewhere.  We don’t have the critical mass in most sectors at home.  You must have heard about people going to Canada.  Let them go.  It is important because, hopefully, one day, they will bring back necessary expertise to contribute to the economy of this country.   We cannot afford to compromise the base quality, but we have done so consistently.”

He cited the example of Taiwanese experts from Massachusetts Institute of Technology     (MIT) who returned to their home country and positively impacted on its economy. 

The NSIA boss lamented, “Since I left University of Port-Harcourt, I don’t know anybody who has completed a five-year engineering course in five years.  I may sound like I am frustrated by it.  But really I am frustrated by it. 

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“At the end, we are all going to suffer for it.  We are all going to suffer from half-baked doctors, we are going to suffer from half-baked engineers and we are all going to suffer from half-baked scientists. 

“We must solve this problem of inconsistent, poor quality education.  If we don’t, we cannot innovate.  If we don’t innovate, we cannot survive.”     

Mr. Orji was pained that after establishing an ultra-modern Cancer Centre in Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) his organization had to go as far as Egypt to source those to run the centre due to lack of local expertise.

In his address, the Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, regretted that for too long, “our nation has not effectively utilized the strong relationship between science, technology and Innovation and business.”

According to him, “Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) serves as the mother of business. It will be difficult for business to thrive without the effective deployment of STI. 

“Nations, with the largest economies in the world, are those that effectively deploy STI to nation-building. Hence, for business to grow faster in Nigeria, and our private sector to be stronger than they are today, we need to effectively deploy STI to nation building.”

The Publisher of Businessday, Mr. Frank Aigbogun, in his remarks, said that the meeting was organized to  

strengthen the position of  Nigeria’s STI in the quest to achieve a rapid national economic development.