By Chris Ekpenyong

President Bola Tinubu’s Policy Advisory Council recently recommended different policy steps the President should take for the economy of Nigeria to be revived.

They are beautiful and great policies. I have gone through them step by step and I have seen possibilities in all.

As an entrepreneur, former lawmaker and ex-Deputy Governor of Akwa Ibom State, I will also make my suggestions to the President on areas that were not deeply touched by the advisory council.

I will limit my suggestions to three sectors I find very important. These sectors can help in rewriting the economic wrongs in Nigeria.

Paper mills

The paper manufacturing segment of the Nigerian economy is fizzling out by the day as the country has become a net importer of paper products and sliding towards a potential paper crisis.

Nigeria is faced with a dire paper crisis. This crisis is largely caused by two reasons.

One is the comatose state of the three integrated pulp and paper mills that were established in the country in the 1960s and 1970s. These paper mills are the Nigerian Paper Mill in Jebba; the Nigeria Newsprint Manufacturing Company, Oku Iboku; and the Iwopin Pulp and Paper Company. Only the Jebba mill still has a show of breath of life. The number two factor is that virtually no new investments were made in establishing new ones.

This parlous state has led experts that participated in a recent workshop on the paper industry, which was organised by the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) in collaboration with the Raw Material Research Council of Nigeria (RMRCN) to warn that a national paper crisis is looming. They claimed the crisis if left untamed, could metamorphose into a national problem that might put the price of papers beyond the reach of many Nigerians due to total reliance on imported paper products to meet the country’s domestic needs.

They, however, posited that the country could earn more revenue from paper production and export if all hands would be on deck to find lasting solutions to the already visible impending paper crisis by harnessing proven domestic sources of raw materials that abound within the country.

Most corn farms lie massive heaps of stalks about to be burnt. The farmlands in the northwest and southwest states especially

This practice causes emissions of carbon dioxide, a harmful chemical compound, into the atmosphere, hence contributing to global warming and ultimately, climate change.

But if not burnt, the heaps could follow through a supply chain ending in machines of paper-product manufacturers, who, currently, depend on imported wood-based raw materials, which constrain their productivity and profitability.

Heavy dependence on wood-based imports has seen Nigeria’s paper mills grounded for more than a decade. Crop residues, as well as other agricultural waste, could help revive the moribund paper mills.

Leveraging these alternatives means reduced deforestation, a key measure towards climate change mitigation and more jobs across a chain that involves suppliers of the residue.

The basic limiting factor is the raw material supply; the raw material supplied will be from two sides, we have the wooden part and the non-wooden part. From research, we can establish that we have enough raw materials, both from trees and materials that are not trees, which are non-wood.

Among these non-wood materials is agricultural residue.

In the area of crop residue, we have a lot of them wasting away. You can imagine the volume of sugarcane consumed in Nigeria. We can revive the paper mills with all this ‘waste’ since the unavailability of raw materials was a major reason for the collapse of the paper mills.

Government needs to take measures to stimulate growth in this area to restore jobs in production, agriculture, transportation, the publishing and education sectors and boost exports while conserving foreign exchange. The BPE should activate post-privatisation performance agreements. Many enterprises were given to unprepared firms. They should be encouraged to divest in favour of competent global players.

Liberalising policies, laws and regulations should be adopted to attract the best producers in the world as the country’s large population and the West and Central African markets present an alluring draw. The Universal Basic Education Commission estimates that under the National Book Policy, indigenous publishing companies were expected to print 100 million books for over 25.6 million students by 2016, a figure that has risen since then, while Nigeria’s resilient newspapers rely heavily on imported newsprint.

Federal and state governments should take extraordinary steps to protect forests from illegal loggers who are indiscriminately felling trees. South Africa accounts for over 65 per cent of pulp and paper production in Africa, followed by Egypt with 20 per cent. Nigeria accounted for a lowly 3.0 percent in 2015. Catching up with the rest of the world should be a priority for now.

Palm oil revenue

Economic growth and prosperity are central to long-term poverty alleviation for social and environmental sustainability. The oil palm industry represents one of the most effective avenues for poverty alleviation, food security and ensuring economic stability in Nigeria. The palm oil industry has the prospect of employing millions of unskilled and semi-skilled people. As demonstrated in other economies, with a proper focus on the production of commodities of large-scale commercial values, improvement in the production of oil palm can effectively mitigate the poverty level in Nigeria and especially in the Niger Delta region.

Faced with a serious revenue shortfall that has continued to impede the capacity of various tiers of government to meet some of their financial obligations, operators and experts in the agriculture industry say that repositioning palm oil production in Nigeria could be the tonic to significantly boost exports and earn foreign exchange and also create jobs.

For instance, at a time, Nigeria’s oil palm industry accounted for 35 percent of the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The industry also accounted for 25 per cent of total exports, contributing significant foreign exchange revenue.

*Ekpenyong, a former Deputy Governor of Akwa Ibom State and immediate past lawmaker representing Akwa Ibom North-West in the Senate, writes from  Gestric Integrated Farms, Obot Akara