Nigeria, Feb. 3 -- Over the years, Nigeria has made concerted efforts to structurally engineer socio-economic development, hinged on its natural endowments. This drive has seen the country focus on sectors in which it has inherently defined comparative advantages: oil and gas, agriculture, and light manufacturing. The logic underpinning this approach is firmly rooted in neoclassical economic theory, which posits that countries maximise welfare by specialising in sectors where they possess relative efficiency advantages. Unsurprisingly, this concept has featured prominently in Nigeria's industrial policies since independence, culminating most recently in the National Industrial Revolution Plan (NIRP).

Yet, despite decades of policy alignm...