A former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Mr Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), has called for a compact economic team to get the country out of the current financial crisis.
Agbakoba said in Abuja on Sunday that the country’s economy was currently in depression and needed an economic team to get it out of the woods.
“The obvious thing is that the Nigerian economy is in depression, although there is an argument whether it’s a depression or a recession.
“Right now, we need to see an economic team. There is no Chief Economic Adviser. The National Economic Council chaired by Vice President Osinbajo is too large so, we need a more compact team.
“What is needed is for the president to quickly articulate his economic philosophy with some clarity.
“I think he started off by being highly statist; he felt that state control was the underpinning philosophy,” he said.
He said that the role of the Nigerian lawyer was to use the tool called development law, being the application of law to economic analysis.
Agbakoba expressed concerns with the difficulty being encountered to get mortgages in Nigeria.
He said this was an aberration as the rule required that once a person had a job, that person should also have a house.
“Can you imagine if everybody who had a job automatically had a house, the real estate sector will boom and that is just one sector.
”What we do to unlock it is have a strong mortgage system, create a legal framework for a strong mortgage system in which if you want a loan, you can’t carry your house to the bank but take your documents,” he said.
He noted the need for an import substitution policy, saying that the country was importing way above its exports and producing too little.
“This is a country that produces next to nothing, a country that imports everything and exports too small; so we need a very strong import substitution policy.
“This means stop importing and in its place, create the work here. All of this means you need very strong lawyers to play a role in designing the legal processes,’’ he said.
