PROTOCOL;
1. Let me begin by thanking all of you for honouring our invitation to this groundbreaking edition of the National Assembly Business Environment Roundtable (NASSBER). I want to especially thank the technical team lead by Professor Paul Idornigie, for their far reaching and very well researched report, our development partners DFID ENABLE project, the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG), the Nigerian Bar Association Session on Business Law (NBA, SBL) for collaborating with us to make this day a reality.
2. When the present National Assembly came to the saddle last year, we inherited an economy that was sliding precipitously and dangerously out of control due to our over reliance on oil. It is this state of things that the new APC government inherited. We set forth therefore to frame for ourselves a specific legislative agenda to guide our legislative priorities. Our agenda was conceived on the notion of a renewed national development imperative which puts harnessing private sector at the fulcrum for national growth and development. We were alive from the onset that to achieve this would require deliberate steps to redefine the Nigerian business and investment climate using lawmaking. It all starts with a comprehensive legislative review.
3. Our dear President Buhari has laid down for us the vision for a diversified economy away from too much dependence on the volatile oil, to ensure security of our people’s lives, block revenue leakages, create employment for our people, expand our people’s economic opportunities and close the gap on our infrastructure deficit. The National Assembly has in tandem made these the vision, the anchor-point of its legislative agenda but we know that being a mere agenda is not enough, that no mantra or talk can make this happen without commensurate purposeful action. We are determined to achieve our goal. Therefore, it would require that we remain focused, visionary and methodical. This is the fundamental of today’s engagement.
4. Distinguished colleagues, Honourable members and our invited Guests, the Federal Government of Nigeria, in the last 14 years has attempted to pursue far reaching reforms of the economy through deregulation and privatisation but this has not yielded the desired result as affected enterprises continue to underperform, unemployment continues to grow, business continued to fail in record numbers and the private sector continues to groan. Many have opined that the noticed failure has been occasioned by the failure of the government to work with the legislature to underpin the reform policy with institutional, regulatory and legal review on which the emerging economy will rest.
5. The Nigerian business environment is today running largely on obsolete laws, weak governance framework, fragmented regulatory structures bogged down by inhibiting practices with very weak accountability mechanisms.
6. This state of affairs was further illustrated in the latest World Bank Doing Business Report. Of the 189 countries reviewed, the 2016 Report places Nigeria on 179 in terms of ease of doing business, a key determinant of how a country is perceived in terms of attracting investment and conducting business. The report and other business review literatures are replete with evidence of how obsolete laws, regulations and inhibitive institutional structures are limiting Nigeria’s quest for better business environment and investment.
7. How deep this problem runs, was until today, unclear. It is the need to methodically deal with this and create a new architecture for businesses to thrive in Nigeria that necessitated this project. It is for this reason that we are gathered here today. The National Assembly has launched this special economic and business environment roundtable to further interrogate this report, validate its conclusions, get the buy-in of key stakeholders in our business environment including the organised private sector, key government agencies and policy makers, regulators, the media, the civil society and other stakeholders.
8. For us as lawmakers, our democracy is deepened and our lawmaking enriched with greater citizen’s participation, consultation, engagement and involvement. The roundtable engagement is a unique one. This will be the very first time aside public hearing engagement, the National Assembly will be involving engaging the private sector, public sector robustly in a policy or law making process. We have gone this route because we believe that if we deliberately involve and continuously engage our people in law making, the edicts and policies we make will be greatly enriched and accepted having been a product of collective consensus.
9. Again, we have placed premium on this engagement as a continuous means of measuring the impact and application of the laws we are making. The lack of this level of engagement in the past may have helped create the situation we have today, where laws with significant investment and business implications are left un-reviewed or modified for as long as in some instances 60 years, creating this deluge of obsolete and fragmented regulatory, legal and institutional structures that have held back the economy generally today.
10. That we have undertaken this route is testament to our avowed mission to bring lawmaking back to the people. We have invited all our key stakeholders in the economy to participate in this roundtable discussion so that we are all converged on the right trajectory to make doing business in Nigeria much more competitive and rewarding as we as give our people the necessary space to compete, innovate, create wealth, employment and participate much more actively in the deployment of infrastructure.
11. It is my hope that we will quickly turn the report coming from this roundtable into bills which will form the important next steps. The National Assembly will be waiting to receive the outcomes of this roundtable within the next one month. We hope that the bills arising from here will thereafter be drafted and ready for legislative processing shortly afterwards. On our part, the National Assembly is determined and ready to immediately implement this report as part of its legislative agenda. This we will do purposefully, courageously and deliberately.
12. The National Assembly will work assiduously to pass the bills in the shortest possible time. That is why the final report from the technical team was ready and presented on the 29th of February, 2016, in less than a month and both Houses of the National Assembly are working seriously as is demonstrated today. We must all however work together to create public awareness to fully harness our efforts.
13. May I now formally welcome you to this inaugural National Assembly Business Environment Roundtable.
14. God bless you, and God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE
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