Stakeholders have advocated for a transition to a more production-based economy for Nigeria to achieve its $1 trillion economy target by 2030.

They announced this at the Nigerian Society of Chemical Engineers 33rd Fellows Conference in Abuja on Friday.

The guest speaker, Banji Oyelaran-Oyeyinka, noted that achieving a $1 trillion GDP requires sustained annual growth through productive industrialisation and innovation.

Mr Oyelaran-Oyeyinka, who is also the senior special assistant to the president on industrialisation at the African Development Bank Group, said Nigeria aspired to attain a $1 trillion economy by 2030.

He, however, said the President of Nigeria recently expressed only the desire to achieve seven per cent annual growth.

Mr Oyelaran-Oyeyinka said, “To determine Nigeria’s right GDP per capita growth as it moves from a GDP of 243 billion dollars to one trillion dollars, we need to accumulate an additional $757 billion. Let us assume a steady annual growth rate for three scenarios: 10, 15, or 20 years.

“Results show the following: If we are to attain $1 trillion in 10 years, the growth rate will be 14.7 per cent , in 15 years, 9.6 per cent, and in 20 years, 7.3 per cent.”

Mr Oyelaran-Oyeyinka said that  if Nigeria could arrive at the president’s aspirational seven per cent, the nation would achieve a $51 trillion economy in about 23 years. He explained that growth was synonymous with industrialisation, adding that since the mid-1980s, Nigeria has been deindustrialising, however.

“It has become our lot to see ‘Made in Nigeria’ as inferior. This habit has foisted on the nation a ruinous pathological dependency,” he stated.

According to him, Nigeria’s overdependence on oil has transformed it into a “consumption economy” that rewards imports, neglects domestic manufacturing, and exposes the country to global market shocks.

Mr Oyelaran-Oyeyinka, therefore, urged the government to prioritise sectors with strong growth potential such as agriculture, light manufacturing, leather, textiles, and petrochemicals.

These sectors, he said, have natural and human resource advantages and can generate strong backward and forward linkages. He criticised the chronic neglect of strategic industries like steel, citing the failure to operationalise the Ajaokuta and Delta Steel complexes after decades of promises.

Mr Oyelaran-Oyeyinka identified lithium mining and processing as a key opportunity for Nigeria’s industrial diversification, adding that Nigeria has high-grade lithium deposits in Kaduna, Nasarawa, Kogi, Kwara, Ekiti, and Cross River states.

He urged the government to develop a strategic framework for local lithium processing, rather than exporting raw minerals.

The president of the Nigerian Society of Chemical Engineers, Bayo Olarewaju, expressed concern over Nigeria’s reliance on a consumption economy and called for the establishment of a unified engineering research council to synergize experts from various engineering disciplines.

This, he said, was to drive indigenous innovation and industrialisation. He said that sustainable development should begin with self-reliance and local production, noting that dependence on foreign products had kept the country economically vulnerable and technologically backward.

Mr Olarewaju, therefore, called on young engineers to take up the challenge of rebuilding Nigeria through innovation, research, and collaboration.

“It is not enough to complain. We must put our heads together and act. Japan and China did it; we can too. Nigeria must rise again through the work of its engineers,” he said.

(NAN)