Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mallam Lamido Sanusi, has stated that Nigeria needs to improve on the quality of its leadership to be able to compete in the comity of nations.

Sanusi, who spoke at a public policy forum  in Lagos recently, pointed out that every micro-economic indices showed that Nigeria had been on the right path, but stated that the country needed to improve on the area of leadership.

Represented by the Deputy Governor in charge of Corporate Services, Suleimon Barau, the CBN boss said: “We can improve on our leadership because it happened to be an area of challenge that we need to improve on. We need to elect credible leaders. We have credible leaders but we need to hold them accountable. If we have a leader that is disciplined and who can set agenda and implement it and we hold them accountable given our potentials, we would be on top as one of the greatest countries in the world, at least in Africa”.

Earlier, the guest speaker at the forum, Dr. Alex Otti., who spoke on the theme: “Saving the Future: Challenges of a New Nigeria,” submitted that for Nigeria to attain its drive as a developed country, there was need to revitalise the industrial sector, alongside infrastructure.

Otti, who is the Group Managing Director/Chief Executive of Diamond Bank PLC, pointed out that the nation had business clusters in different regions in the past, especially in leather, textile, shoes, groundnut, among others, but lamented that the inability to sustain the cycle of investments, organisation, harnessing and re-investment in cluster infrastructure had led to the quick demise of these industries.

According to him, “nations compete to offer the most productive environment for business. Competitiveness depends on productivity, with which a nation uses its human, capital and natural resources” and explained that the sophistication of company operations and strategy determined the national and international desirability and demand for goods and services produced in that country.

He noted that Nigeria was ranked 147 out of 189 countries surveyed on ease of doing business, even as the country recorded low rating in the areas of electricity provisions, registering property, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and payment of taxes.

“It is difficult to do business here. The product and services that come out of this system will struggle to compete on quality or if it is right quality will struggle to compete on price. These are just some of the areas we need to pay closer attention to in order to build a competitive and more attractive economy in future,” he said.