Nigerian Government Wasting Time Looking for Foreign Investors – Peter Obi

The presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr. Peter Obi, has expressed the view that the efforts of the Federal Government to seek foreign investors abroad would be futile if the necessary business-friendly environment is not established.

Recently, there have been a lot of talks from the presidency about bringing in Foreign Direct Investments to stabilize Nigeria’s wobbling economy.

During the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, President Bola Tinubu told investors on the sideline of the event to feel free and safe to invest in Nigeria.

The calls for investment in Nigeria have been ringing against the backdrop of an unfriendly business environment – led by major factors such as forex crisis, insecurity, and rising inflation.

During the Nigeria-U.S. Executive Business Roundtable, the President outlined several measures he claimed to have implemented to enhance the confidence of the global investment community in Nigeria.

“Nigeria is an opportunity that is impossible to replicate or find elsewhere in any part of the world. We have brilliant young people who both innovate and consume on a large scale. Our entrepreneurial spirit is a major part of what makes our market totally unique, aside from demography.

“Nigerians build businesses and Nigerian businesses partner with other businesses to conduct larger business. There is enough value to spread around. Be careful of what you hear about Nigeria. You may be dissuaded out of a major opportunity that others will take up. We are here for you. We will give you all the support you need to succeed and succeed abundantly,” he said.

The measures mentioned by Tinubu encompassed the establishment of a conducive fiscal, monetary, and tax policy environment. However, his tax reforms are yet to be implemented.

While addressing an event in Enugu, Obi said that foreign investors could be compared to bees seeking honey. He added that a government lacking a clear vision and direction for the country is wasting its time by pursuing foreign investors abroad.

“I came back here and told someone that you don’t go looking for foreign investors. Anyone going around looking for foreign investors is wasting everyone’s time. Foreign investors are like bees and honey. If you put honey here, how the bees will converge, no one will tell you. After the G20 meeting, Emmanuel Macron, French president flew to Bangladesh because the country had just ordered 10 Airbus 350s, so he had to go and see them. If you look at all the economic analysis, go and look at where Bangladesh will be in 2030 and up to 2050. But no one knows where we are going to be.

“A deputy governor was asked why he didn’t go to school and he said it doesn’t matter. But he filled it. He was the one who said, ‘I went to this school’, no one forced you. If you knew that schools don’t matter, you would have said, ‘I didn’t go to school’, so that we would imagine your ingenuity as someone who didn’t go to school and was able to get to that level.

“We are now in a country where people say one thing and do something else. I asked a woman to stand on the queue and she told me that whenever she stands in a queue, she doesn’t get anything. This happened to me last year. After the tribunal decided our case, I called the woman and apologized to her. We had someone going round the world and saying that the election would be the best. It was from INEC that I heard what is called ‘real time’. Suddenly, he says he can do the election anyhow. Why didn’t you tell us this before the election, so that when we are voting, we can also behave anyhow?” Obi queried.

Obi’s take on attracting FDI into Nigeria has long been voiced by economic experts, who said that investors only look at the macroeconomic framework to decide if a country is worth investing in. Currently, Nigeria’s macroeconomic indicators are said to be significantly deficient in attracting foreign investments.