Nigeria Will Stop Depending On Oil Revenue Soon – NEPC

The Executive Director/CEO of the Nigerian Export Promotion Council, NEPC, Mr. Segun Awolowo has come out to say that Nigeria will soon exit its dependence on crude oil revenue.

He recently revealed this while briefing State House correspondents after meeting behind closed doors with President Muhammadu Buhari at the presidential villa, Abuja.

According to him, given the steps being taken to improve the non-oil exports in the country, he expects Nigeria to stop depending on crude oil revenue in the next 10 years.

He added that in the next decade, Nigeria can get $30 billion in terms of non-oil export notwithstanding the effect of the current COVID-19 pandemic.

His words, “But more importantly, we must just continue, we must increase production and productivity all across the two sectors that the zero oil plan is postulating for the country and then we get out of it.”

“We cannot run an economy that 90 percent of our earnings is from crude oil. It is just not working and that is what we are seeing through out the years when we went into first recession when the world oil prices stood worldwide.”

“We need to move again from just raw materials, we need to look at the entire value chain and that is where you create jobs and that is where you earn more money.”

“So ten years time frame we are looking at to get to $30 billion but we must be consistent, we must invest more in the non oil sector than looking for oil.”

“The situation had dire effects on exporters, some shut down plants, some laid off people thereby increasing the numbers of unemployed population. Mr President rescued the situation with his approval of the new EEG scheme.”

“The entire world is now raising a lot of concerns about the long-term devastating impacts of oil and focusing on climate change. The unpredictability on oil prices will not stop. First 2008, oil price crashed due to global financial crises; then in 2014 oil price crashed due to shale over production; then in 2020, oil price crashed due to COVID.”

“We have seen a return to a positive GDP growth in last quarter of 2020. We have now seen strong recoveries in Agriculture (growth of 3.4%) and Services, and those sectors put a lid on 2020 declines.”

“We have achieved a lot, but we continue to get requests from all the States for Export programmes. And these initiatives touch the grassroots, women, youths, creates hundreds of thousands of jobs.”