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As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reveals that South Africa may overtake Nigeria as having the biggest economy in the continent, members of the Organised Private Sector of Nigeria (OPSN) have said the information is not surprising and long overdue. They lamented that policy summersault of past governments, with regard to fiscal and monetary policies and perennial challenges in the country’s macroeconomic sector were reasons for the retardiness in Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth.

Specifically, the OPSN, which comprises of five business membership organisations, Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA), Nigeria Employers Consultative Association (NECA), the Nigerian Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (NASME) and Nigerian Association of Small Scale Industrialists (NASSI), unanimously stated that Nigeria had been a sleeping giant for some years now, with no value addition to the country’s economy.

Recall that the Fund had projected that South Africa was set to briefly overtake Nigeria and Egypt as the continent’s largest economy next year. According to the Fund’s World Economic Outlook (WEO), South Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is forecast to reach $401 billion based on current prices in 2024, compared with Nigeria’s $395 billion and Egypt’s $358 billion.

However, the IMF report indicates that South Africa is expected to only hold the top spot for a year before it once again loses it to Nigeria, and then fall to third place behind Egypt in 2026. While IMF data shows Nigeria’s economy has eclipsed South Africa’s since 2018, the nation’s for- tunes have nose-dived along with a decline in production of oil and it has been grappling with runaway inflation and a plunge in the value of the naira.

Speaking with New Telegraph in Lagos, the past President of Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), Babatunde Ruwase, a board member of Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Dr. Madu Obiora, and Director-General of MAN, Segun Ajayi-Kadir, all emphasized that government’s policy summersault, in terms of fiscal and monetary policies, poor power supply, exchange rate depreciation and other prevailing economic factors, had stunted the progress of Nigeria’s GDP growth in yhe past years, without positive inputs in the economy.

According to Ruwase, the debasement of Nigeria’s GDP during the former President, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, as the biggest in Africa ahead of South Africa was not properly conducted in all ramifications. He explained that Nigeria was only placed ahead of South Africa because of her large population, saying that the same population was now a burden to the economy with high unemployment and other challenges.

The former LCCI president said: “South Africa’s economy is a solid economy than ours despite whatever challenges they are facing like power supply. But at least, they are an industrialized nation because there are active production goingon there. “However, Nigeria sitting as Africa’s biggest economy all this while is a farce in all ramifications, because what is the essence of being called the giant of Africa, without your aggregate population not feeling the positive impacts of the so-called biggest economy in the country as a people?

So, we are just giant of Africa by mouth not as an industrialized economy.” Speaking further, he blamed the previous administration of President Muhammadu Buhari for plunging Nigeria’s economy further, after taking over from ex-President Jonathan. He said that the country’s economy slid to the lowest ebb during President Buhari’s administration. In his response, the MAN director-general explained that it was very obvious that government’s policies had plunged Nigeria’s economy backward with the inherent challenges in the country’s macro-economic.

Ajayi-Kadir stated that the instability in the country’s economy coupled with the massive depreciation in the country’s exchange rate and others, had shown that Nigeria’s GDP could not be compared with that of South Africa, adding that if care was not taking, Egypt too in no distant future may overtake Nigeria, pushing Nigeria to third place position. He said that Nigeria’s economy being import dependent could not sway in Africa, where there is heavy reliance and dependent on importation of foreign goods, without the development of the local market and patronage and consumption of made-in-Nigeria products by its people.