How Nigeria can maximise Okonjo-Iweala’s WTO

 

 “Nigeria stands to benefit by encouraging and pushing more trade, becoming a bigger part of the multilateral trading system and to do that Nigeria has to produce more, add value to products and export more. Right now, Nigeria has 0.26 per cent of world trade and 19 per cent of African trade. You could see that as very small but you could also turn it around to see that it has a big opportunity to make use of what has happened with the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement”

– Director-General of World Trade Organisation, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, on Monday, March 15, 2021.

The Director-General of the World Trade Organisation, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, is in Nigeria on her first official visit outside of Geneva where the WTO is located. She resumed duty as the seventh DG of the 26-year-old organisation on March 1, 2021. She’s the first woman and first African to occupy that exalted position. Nigeria’s brand ambassador who mostly dresses in traditional ankara fabric with a complimentary headgear arrived Nigeria on a five-day working visit last Saturday, March 13, 2021. I was rarely privileged to discuss the import of her official visit on Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria network news at noon and 4pm on the day of her arrival.

On Monday, March 15, 2021, she visited the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), and also held meetings with the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Otunba Niyi Adebayo; Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama and Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed.

Okonjo-Iweala is one of the top-three Nigerians representing the country’s interest at the global scene. The other two are Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank Group and Mrs. Amina J. Mohammed, who is the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations and Chair of the United Nations Sustainable Development Group. Incidentally the three of them are former ministers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Okonjo-Iweala was twice Minister of Finance and coordinating Minister for the Economy, and also had a stint as Foreign Affairs Minister, Amina was a former Minister for Environment while Adesina was a former Minister of Agriculture.

These individuals are worthy ambassadors of Nigeria. Adesina did so well in his first tenure that despite opposition from the United States of America under former president Donald Trump who called for a probe into an alleged unethical conduct, Adesina was cleared of any wrongdoing. Amina has also been coming home frequently to explore areas she could be of help to her native country. Okonjo-Iweala whose candidacy was sponsored by Nigeria has returned home to show gratitude and made some commitments to help her country. Is Nigeria ready to receive the support?

Business Day, March 15, 2021 reported that Okonjo-Iweala made a number of commitments and offered some counselling as well. Among the commitments made are:  Assurance that the WTO would support Nigeria with capacity building and technical assistance, to improve the quality of the products for export as well as work with entrepreneurs and producers to ensure that the country’s products can access other markets in the world. She also disclosed that the organisation would particularly support women entrepreneurs and help them access the international market working with the Nigerian Export Promotion Council.

In her words, “We want to support women entrepreneurs because we have a part of the organisation called the International Trade Centre that has the capacity to train women entrepreneur and help access the international market working with the Nigerian Export Promotion Council. And we’ve already started that with people who are processing Shea butter and Sesame seed where Nigeria is one of the world’s largest producers. Those are some of the areas.”  She also revealed that the WTO would work with other international organisations that have access to more finance such as the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Bank and even the International Monetary Bank to help Nigeria solve some of the deficits with respect to infrastructure and other areas.

Part of the advice to Nigeria is on renewable energy. According to her, the world is moving in the direction of renewables and the country should move with the tide. “We have to advocate and migrate to other types of activities. Nigeria must think fast on how to join the movement and I support the minister in transiting from fossil fuel but we must advocate and be willing to migrate. We have a diversified economy that can actually benefit us if we invest in it, not just in goods, or agriculture, but also services”. Another advisory was her call for zero tariffs for medical products and supplies.

The finance minister while hosting the WTO DG requested assistance in the areas of gas emission and bio-economic resources. According to Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, “Our gas emission in Nigeria is very minimal compared to global emissions. We have these assets and we have not tapped into them to aid our development. We want you to support us and we have it in our agenda in COP 26 to campaign for gas to be classified as transition energy even if it’s for a limited period of 20yrs. We also want the WTO to support us in looking at how Nigeria can leverage bio-economic resources. It is not new we have been too dependent on fossil fuel and crude contributes significantly to the extent that whichever way the market swings to, that’s the situation we will find ourselves and it is unhealthy.”

All said and done, we need to hold Okonjo-Iweala to her commitments but we also need to be ready to take advantage of those promises. The government needs to do more on the ease of doing business. Nigeria’s products must be competitive in the international markets. This is only possible if manufacturers and entrepreneurs generally are able to access land, credit facilities, export and import goods with ease, while corruption and multiple taxation are also looked into. The reason some foreign products such as textiles, rice and poultry are cheaper than the locally produced goods is because of the reduced cost of production abroad.

If Nigeria will also improve trade internally and externally, the issue of insecurity must be speedily resolved. Banditry and kidnapping are militating factors against ease of doing business. Likewise, the dearth of social amenities. Rising cost of utilities such as petrol and electricity will make Nigeria’s products and services more expensive and unaffordable locally. If they are exorbitant locally, nobody will be able to export them at a profit. Other factors which negatively affect ease of doing business are high cost of transport due to bad road network and lack of mass transit like train. It is however heart-warming that the Federal Government is already addressing the issue of railways and fixing federal roads. Though this may take a long while to materialise, the subnational governments should also key into infrastructural development in order to ease the cost of doing business in Nigeria.

Finally, Nigeria must lash on to electronic commerce better known as e-commerce and electronic learning known as e-learning. We are in the era of digital economy and Nigeria government must create an enabling environment for that to thrive. Imagine the quantum leap in the revenue of Internet service providers and virtual communication networks such as Zoom, Skype, and Cisco, due to COVID-19 pandemic. Many Nigerians did not know that mobile telephone companies, Internet service providers, electronic learning platforms are actually experiencing exponential increase in revenues due to lockdowns and shutdowns which make meetings, learning and working to go virtual. Rather than banning cryptocurrency, the Central Bank should find a creative way to regulate it. My appeal to Okonjo-Iweala is to strive to make international trade fair!