The Chairman, Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS), Dr Zacch Adedeji, has called for a paradigm shift from dependence on raw material exports to innovation-driven economic growth.
Adedeji said embracing ideas, innovation and complex product manufacturing remained the pathway to sustainable growth and national prosperity.
This is contained in a statement issued by his Special Adviser on Media, Mr Dare Adekanmbi, on Thursday.
Adedeji spoke while delivering the maiden Distinguished Personality Lecture of the Faculty of Administration, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun.
The lecture, titled ‘From Potential to Prosperity: Export-led Economy,’ urged Nigeria to rethink growth through economic complexity, rather than producing more of the same goods.
He said Nigeria had a high-tech oil sector and low-productivity informal economy, lacking “a vibrant, labour-absorbing industrial base that bridges higher complexity.”
Adedeji noted that Nigeria’s export drive stagnated between 1998 and 2023, adding only six new products to its export basket from 2008.
“Because of our current position, the Harvard Atlas concluded that we are positioned to exploit very few diversification opportunities,” he said.
He urged Nigeria to study countries such as Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia, South Africa and Brazil to understand success and failure patterns.
“We are not looking at numbers in a vacuum, but at strategic choices nations made over the same twenty-five-year period,” Adedeji said.
He explained that success followed a consistent path defined by deliberate strategies to build economic complexity.
“When the stories are combined, the divergence is clear: Vietnam built resilience through trade, while others remained resource-dependent,” he added.
Adedeji identified three lessons for Nigeria, stressing that avoiding the resource curse alone was insufficient without building productive capabilities.
“Vietnam integrated into global value chains, becoming an electronics assembly hub and borrowing technology to build domestic know-how,” he said.
He noted that Nigeria remained largely a raw material supplier rather than an active participant in global value chains.
“We must realise productive capabilities are not permanent; South Africa and Brazil show industrial advantages can be lost,” Adedeji warned.
He said over-reliance on resource extraction discouraged long-term industrial development and sustainable competitiveness.
“For Nigeria, reliance on natural endowments is not just stagnation, but regression in a global economy rewarding knowledge,” he said.
Adedeji said President Bola Tinubu had begun rebuilding the economy to support innovation, production and long-term resilience.
“The journey from potential to prosperity is long, but with the right resolve, it is one we can finally complete,” he said.
