THE Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr. Olusegun Aganga, runs matters under his watch with mere words. After practising for years, he must believe his duty is done once he is able to make a speech. He began this gambit as Minister of Finance and has extended it to his current office.

His call for the diversification of the Nigerian economy as the 6th convocation lecturer of Bells University of Technology, Ota, Ogun State, could confuse anyone who does not know that Dr. Aganga has been in government since 2010, as Minister of Finance , then Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment.

According to him, “We need to diversify our economy. We need to go back to the good old days when the proceeds from cocoa were used to build the Cocoa House in Ibadan. We must improve the standard of what we produce and export.

“If we must compete, we must acquire the necessary skills, we must provide an environment where there is finance for the private sector. We cannot be competitive if we do not link innovation with industry.”

We are wondering who would do these things which apparently bother the Minister. Is he expecting the graduating students to diversify the Nigerian economy? Would it be the lot of ordinary Nigerians, who do not make policies? Was the Minister indicting the government he is serving and earlier governments?

What is wrong with the current economic policies for him to recommend a return to practices that are over almost 60 years old? How as a Minister has he influenced economic policies to reflect the “cocoa days”? How do we return to the “cocoa days”? Who would return us to the “cocoa days”?

The present government has a transformation agenda; Dr. Aganga prefers the economic policies that built Cocoa House. He should know that major components of the “cocoa days” economic policies, he advocates, were regionalism and the control the regions had over their resources. Is he suggesting Nigeria should return to that path? Has he canvassed his new economic thrust at the Federal Executive Council?

What roles does the former Managing Director with Goldman Sachs, Chairman of the 2010 Board of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, a scholar at University of Oxford and the University of Ibadan, a Fellow of Association of Certified Chartered Accountant, ACCA, of the United Kingdom, play in directing Nigeria’s economy?

When a serving Minister speaks the way Dr. Aganga did in Ota, he scares Nigerians about the prospects of the economy. The Nigerian economy has needed diversification since 1960. Nigerians thought those with hefty portfolios like Dr. Aganga have been doing just that.