I’ll fight obstacles to business competitiveness, investments, Tinubu tells Nigerians

President Bola Tinubu has assured Nigerians and investors that he will fight every obstacle that impedes business competitiveness in Nigeria in 2024.

In his New Year message, Tinubu said he would not hesitate to remove any clog hindering “our path to making Nigeria a destination of choice for local and foreign investments”.

Since his ascendancy as the president of Africa’s most populous nation, Tinubu has made enormous policy changes in his quest for economic recovery.

The policies, introduced in the past seven months, have had a sweeping impact on Nigerians in various proportions.

In addition, Tinubu – within the period — had embarked on foreign trips to engage the international investment community on Nigeria’s readiness for business.

Addressing Nigerians on January 1, 2024, Tinubu said having laid the groundwork of his administration’s economic recovery plans within the last seven months of 2023, “we are now poised to accelerate the pace of our service delivery across sectors”.

“Just this past December during COP28 in Dubai, the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and I agreed and committed to a new deal to speed up the delivery of the Siemens Energy power project that will ultimately deliver reliable supply of electricity to our homes and businesses under the Presidential Power Initiative which began in 2018,” he said.

“Other power installation projects to strengthen the reliability of our transmission lines and optimise the integrity of our National grid are ongoing across the country.

“My administration recognises that no meaningful economic transformation can happen without steady electricity supply. In 2024, we are moving a step further in our quest to restart local refining of petroleum products with Port Harcourt Refinery, and the Dangote Refinery which shall fully come on stream.

“To ensure constant food supply, security and affordability, we will step up our plan to cultivate 500,000 hectares of farmlands across the country to grow maize, rice, wheat, millet and other staple crops. We launched the dry season farming with 120,000 hectares of land in Jigawa State last November under our National Wheat Development Programme.

“In this new year, we will race against time to ensure all the fiscal and tax policies reforms we need to put in place are codified and simplified to ensure the business environment does not destroy value. On every foreign trip I have embarked on, my message to investors and other business people has been the same. Nigeria is ready and open for business.

“I will fight every obstacle that impedes business competitiveness in Nigeria and I will not hesitate to remove any clog hindering our path to making Nigeria a destination of choice for local and foreign investments.”