Ighodalo: China’s 1983 per capita income was half of Nigeria’s — now it’s five times bigger

Asue Ighodalo, the chairman of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG), says Nigeria must learn lessons from China to improve its economy and livelihood of citizens.

Speaking on Monday while delivering the welcome address at the 26th edition of the Nigerian Economic Summit, Ighodalo said China’s per capita income is now five times that of Nigeria despite the fact that Nigeria’s per capita income was double that of China in 1983.

The summit is themed ‘Building Partnerships for Resilience’.

“As easy as it would be to explain away our continuing decline with the words “global pandemic”, I would challenge us to bear in mind that while the Nigerian economy is expected to contract by nearly 5%, the Chinese economy is on track to grow by over 1%, this year,” he said.

“This is despite China being the epicentre of the pandemic, with almost twice as many cases and four times as many deaths as we experienced. The Chinese economy, in fact, has not contracted since 1976.

“In 1983 Nigeria’s per capita income was double that of China, and today, despite its population, China’s per capita income is over five times that of Nigeria.”

Ighodalo said China has shown Nigeria what a “serious nation can do when it looks back on its history, resolves never again to fail its citizens, and forges forward with a sense of urgency, discipline and purpose”.

“They put behind them the failed ‘Great Leap Forward’ policy that caused tens of millions of Chinese deaths and fixed their eyes forward on the task of becoming a global superpower,” he explained.

The lawyer advised that Nigeria should not copy and paste the Chinese model, instead, copy the Chinese spirit.

Ighodalo urged that the pandemic should not be used as an excuse for failing to forge ahead given that the lives of Nigeria’s 200 million population are hanging in the balance.