Loveth Okoli
Dr Olisa Agbakoba, ex-President of Bar Association (NBA), has disagreed with liberal trade canvassed for Nigeria by the Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
WTO boss had during her visit to Nigeria called for the promotion of liberal trade policies by opening her borders for free flow of goods and services
Agbakoba said in a statement: “My admiration for Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is huge but to advise us to continue to be import dependent is not correct policy advice at this time.
“Nigeria has no current Trade policy and Dr Okonjo-Iweala seems to promote liberal and open borders. The problem is that we will remain consumers of imported products and cannot develop our economy to boost production and give jobs to the over 25 million unemployed.
“While we must balance import policy with local production policy, we must heed the warning of wise economists that we cannot develop unless our trade policy is designed to promote local industries.
”I hesitate to compliment Trump’s America First trade policy but Trump understood the need to protect the US by discouraging over dependence on imports.’’
Nigeria produces crude but imports petrol. We produce cocoa but import cocoa powder. We have Tin, Gold and Iron but import the finished products in billions!
“We closed our Benin border to imports and made 12 billion a day internally. It was a strong trade policy to produce rice locally that has made us near self-sufficient.
Now, we are growing tomato, corn, beans, etc. because we are discouraging imports, he said in a statement posted on his twitter handle.
Nigerians be wise. We must support made-in-Nigeria. I propose we adopt a new trade policy with strong trade laws to protect our ailing economy. Nigeria will be transformed by a made in Nigeria Trade policy.”
