Can Nigeria Turn Macroeconomic Stability To Jobs? | Business Incorporated

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:04]Macroeconomic stability creates the opportunity. Structural transformation converts that opportunity into jobs, productivity and long-term prosperity.

[00:00:13]Is Nigeria there? How stable are we? Can we transform that stability into jobs?

[00:00:20]Senior economist with NESG, Dr. Faith Yoha joins us now to tell us this about Dr. Good afternoon. Welcome to the program.

[00:00:33]I think you should unmute Dr. Yoha. I can see your lips moving but I can't hear you.

[00:00:39]>> I will mute it.

[00:00:40]>> Great. Yeah, I can hear you now.

[00:00:42]>> Can you hear me now?

[00:00:43]>> Yes. Yes, I can hear you. So, um, we saw the numbers, macroeconomic numbers looking good. Applause to President Tinubu and his administration. Um, but of course the Middle East has disrupted that. Well, we know that. I mean when it comes to macroeconomics the data said that the economy is stable but translating this to jobs seems to be where we are stuck or are we not But looks like there's another disruption on the line. But I'll just speak on so macro instability macro stability um is a necessary condition or however is not sufficient to deliver sustainable um prosperity. Um stability alone does not automatically translate to jobs. Um does not create jobs.

[00:01:38]Neither does it improve productivity or transform um living standard. In realist um view um economies grow sustainably when we can produce more when we can process more export more and create higher productivity um that drives jobs across critical sectors. So what we have seen in Nigeria in recent times is that Nigeria's growth remains um structurally challenged and the reason is because growth is concentrated in um sectors that are not um generating jobs they are there are sectors that are low in employment and particularly when we look at um extractive industries and part of the service um sectors while sectors um with strong strong labor absorption such that such agriculture and the manufacturing are actually lagging behind. They are underperforming. When you look at the growth rate for these um sectors that are really job elastic, you see that their growth rate is below 5%.

[00:02:43]The economy is not expanding significantly in those areas that can create large scale decent job and when I say decent job I mean high level employment um visa v high level of poverty. So we are we have jobs however that jobs have not led to prosperity especially in the life and standard of living of people. So it is important to deepen um to deepen domestic value chain um it's important to also stimulate um industrial activities.

[00:03:16]>> Yeah. So how do we do that? Um do we need another set of reforms? Do we work with the reforms which this administration has started?

[00:03:27]Okay, thank you very much. Um, what we then need to do is um structural transformation. We have currently achieved stabilization which is beautiful in terms of statistics.

[00:03:38]However, we need to transform our productive capacity. We need to move from being just a consumptiondriven um economy into a productiondriven economy. Um there there are a bit of there are three or five things that are really happen that we need to do in terms of structural transformation.

[00:04:00]First we need um investment in infrastructures particularly power transport logistics and even digital connectivity. A high production and logistic cost remains um um um remains one of the challenge of businesses especially when we talk about MSMES who are the backbone of the economy and this high production cost and logistics reduce economic competitiveness. The next point around um how do we unlock productivity is about achieving regulatory and institutional reforms, streamlining approvals, reducing bureaucratic um bottlenecks, um driving rule of law and justice, reducing corruption and strengthening the ease of doing business. They are critical for unlocking productivity and driving structural transformation. Also we need to also look at cobbing insecurity. We need to um increase access to finance for specific sector specific productive sectors that are high in job creation especially agriculture and manufacturing who needs um um affordable long-term finance and need expansion expansion and mechanization. Finally, Nigeria must prioritize human capital development. We must prioritize innovation and skill alignment to sector to support productivity productive sector in an increasingly technologically umdriven environment.

[00:05:39]>> All right. Uh Dr. Ya, thank you so much for sharing those tips with us. We certainly hope that this set of reforms will bring these expected productivity and jobs. Thank you for your time on the program.

[00:05:52]>> Thank you for having me.