Olu Ajakaiye

Olu Ajakaiye is a Nigerian economist, development policy expert, and professor. He is the Executive Chairman of the African Centre for Shared Development Capacity Building (ACSDEV), a former Director-General of the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER), former President of the Nigeria Economic Society (NES), and a consultant to the World Bank. His work focuses on macroeconomics, poverty reduction, development planning, public finance, and economic policy in Africa. Quotes Let us therefore not be under any illusion and say the market will do it. They have to make sure they provide the market, whatever it takes, including stealing from other countries. The developed systems that we have now were as a result of resources taken from here, and they are ahead. Their government didn’t say we would be nice guys, we would not go and steal. They carried our people, young people, valuable people, and they now established the first world. When the economy was growing in a fictitious way — I regarded the growth of 2010 to 2014 as fictitious. Why is it fictitious, it is growth that is driven by government just deploying oil revenue into the economy. The structure remained dis-articulated and we are actually deceiving ourselves in a very interesting way by saying the economy leaped-frog; we have now got to a stage where we are arrived, because in advanced countries, service sector is now dominant. They call it tertiarisation of the economy. Our economy was prematurely tertiarised, and this was the harbinger of poverty. I always tell people, when you go to Europe where their economy is already tertiarised, do you see anybody running after you in traffic to sell you recharge card? Do you see anybody hanging pure water in front of you? Do you see people running 140? That is our tertiarised service sector. External links OLU AJAKAIYE Category:Living people Category:Economists from Nigeria Category:Academics from Nigeria