SEVENTEEN years ago, as leader of the Jimeta Youth Progressive Association, I had a dream and a vision to see a better country; a country where more than half of its population would no longer be held down by poverty. I dreamt of a country where its graduates would have jobs waiting for them at graduation. A country where hard work provided results regardless of proximity to political power and wealth. I dreamt of a country where everyone, regardless of social class and level of income, has equal access to, decent accommodation, good education and health care. That dream was Vision 2019. The accomplishment of that dream would include driving structural, fundamental and transformational reforms that will serve to integrate us as a country from the North to the South and from the West to the East, uniting us across tribal and religious lines.
Nigeria is an economically integrated unit and not a political entity. The chief reason behind the amalgamation of 1914 was not to achieve a more cohesive and integrated political unit but was strictly to manage the several business concerns of the British Empire. Carefully study the rail lines built by the British and the road networks and you will notice that their infrastructural plan was to link sources of raw materials to major markets and points of extraction for export.
Most of the decisions they made were for economic and personal gains and very little was political. When the British played politics it was in the sole interest of the bottom line of the British Empire. Sadly, when they left, successive Nigerian leaders continued to focus on sharing formula of the little left of the economics in their care, while playing most Nigerians based on politics of identity rather than producing a wealth creation strategy that would tap from the productivity of everyone irrespective of tribe or religion. In their parochial minds, our leaders only sought to create a unified Nigeria by sharing its resources amongst the most prominent ethnic groups and failed to realise the unavoidable consequences of such lazy thinking. The consequence of course became the polarisation of Nigeria where mutual suspicion became the order of the day. Nigerians began to depend on identity politics to receive their dues as citizens. It did not take long before we started killing each other because of ethnic and religious differences. Identity politics resulted in people dressing to conform to the tribe of the person in power (president, governors) to receive favours. Meritocracy is now a foreign concept and we are left with a culture that places no value on hard work, excellence and discipline. The cognitive laziness and ineptitude of our leaders have resulted in the appointment of ‘one of the sons or daughters of an ethnic group as the go-to solution to any and every problem the group faces. The problem lingers on while the new member of the political elite quickly forgets the challenges their community faces. A country that works for only a few political elites is a country that is on the fast lane to nowhere.
I studied for 10 years the rise and fall of some 146 countries and identified the choices they made that either accelerated their growth and development or led them to poverty and economic and political instability. I carefully examined their foreign policy choices to see how those countries that succeeded shaped their engagement with the global community and the missteps of failing countries on the global scene. How countries like China, India, Turkey, South Korea, Singapore and Vietnam emerged to greatness from poverty and instability were of utmost interest to me. These countries were poor third-world countries in the 70s but had completely turned around their fortunes by the turn of the millennium, lifting collectively over a billion people out of poverty. If certain models worked in those countries, then they could work in Nigeria. But the leader of the country must show the courage to remove the economy of the country away from the hands of politicians and place it in the care of technocrats. For meaningful, inclusive growth and development to be achieved, the Nigerian state must guarantee the total and genuine independence of the Central Bank and the deregulation, privatisation and listing of the NNPC on global stock exchange markets. These two moves can by themselves galvanise the Nigerian economy as they would give foreign investors’ confidence to invest in our economy and, of course, make more funds available to bridge our huge infrastructural deficit, which is almost $1.5 trillion in value.
The needed reform should include the need for us to accept our sincere realities; ethnicities, religions, beliefs, values, traditions and cultures so that we can build the needed configuration that will respect and tolerate our differences, while we value our economic interconnectedness. It is important, as a people, that we should organise a council that will discuss and proffer the needed security solutions while addressing our political beliefs—a Council for Security and Political Affairs.
Through this council, we can be able to organise our entire 350+ ethnic groups, through their traditional leaderships, to discuss our issues, while we proffer solutions, collectively. The Council can help us recalibrate our social justice systems, which tallies with our realities, reconstruct our social systems while rebuilding our social contracts. This should have been the best way out to address all the challenges facing the country today, in the area of security and political development at the grassroots.
I did not think, seventeen years ago (nor do I at this time), that the crop of politicians we have possessed the capacity or the moral fortitude to deliver on these reforms that would move our dear country forward. They were concerned only about playing politics and protecting their parochial interests. They hardly could see beyond elections and their sole concern was to perpetuate themselves in office. Very few understood the 21st-century statecraft model and those that did lack the strength of character to drive home the needed reforms. There was always one political consideration or another, one constituency to prioritise for selfish, politically motivated reasons. There was always one ‘big’ man to be mindful of offending. The typical Nigerian politician wants to make omelettes without breaking eggs when the entire system needs shock therapy.
Nigeria’s mission should be to unbundle the system and make it work for everyone and not only for a select few. The conviction should allow us to work on the kind of policies we can propose for a country touted as the giant of Africa, yet barely taking baby steps in any positive direction. Nigeria had to leapfrog from a primary economy into a tertiary economy—a service-driven one, without passing through proper industrialisation. However, a service-driven economy creates only a few jobs even though the economy could be said to be growing based on its indices, like the GDP, but the growth does not translate into anything for the average person. It is a secondary economy that creates thousands of manufacturing jobs for people via a strong and stable industrialisation policy. It is only an industrialised economy that can lift millions of people out of poverty, not subsidies and incentives. If our country is to achieve substantial economic growth, our policies must be tailored to achieve this desired outcome.
Currently, the country spends less than 10% of its total GDP on the economy, yet it expects remarkable development. It spends over 70% of its revenue on recurrent expenditures and very little on capital projects. It invests extraordinarily little in key sectors like education, healthcare and infrastructure. The strength of the existing economy is dependent largely on the price of crude oil in the international market making it vulnerable to international price shock on a commodity we neither wholly-owned nor control, oil. This makes our economy swing in and out of recession, like an unregulated pendulum. We do have a litany of problems and there is a glaring lack of urgency to address them. One of our most pressing problems, bordering on a crisis, is our rapid population growth of 3% annually, for a population of 206 million people.
No one is thinking of the schools that will educate them, the hospitals that will care for them, the homes they will live in and the companies that will employ them. No one is planning for their arrival, nor organising and protecting the graveyard to bury them. We sit at the edge of a precipice worse than the one we have already been plunged into and if we do not act fast, we will drop even further and the future generations of Nigerians will hold us accountable for the country they may eventually meet.
And it’s on this note that I am aspiring to the Office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in the coming 2023 election. I chose the very centre of the Nigerian state, at the top of Katampe Mountain to symbolise that I am neither going to be the President for the North or the South, East or the West but the President of the Sovereign State of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
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