In 1960 whilst at the
Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology my father Olasupo Aremu
Ojedokun rebuffed the counsel of his cousin Oladejo Alamu Ojedele who pleaded
with him:
“Ema loo Eko, ani ema lo ekoo.”
He joined other
students to demonstrate against the Anglo-Nigerian Defence Pact. The response they received from the police
encountered on their way to Lagos was unexpected brutality, it manifested
itself in stifling fumes from the teargas they fired. .........
Today the same Nigeria that has emerged presents a distorted but legalised distribution of power brought about
by a warped social system, backed by strong-willed and corrupt political
class. Yet, we stand at a moment of
great challenge and opportunity. All
around Nigeria and its diaspora are voices being reclaimed, breaking out in
rhythms, chorusing in high decibels with one sound, that of change. Nigerian people want simple things: An
economy that serves the efforts of those who work hard, a national security
policy that addresses the threat of Boko Haram and makes our cities, towns and
villages safer, a politics that is centered on bringing people together across
the various divides to work for our common good. This is the minimum we demand, the basic
request we make for it is the change that the Nigerian people are entitled to.
The
reality, however, is that our nation is at war with a confounding enemy whose
name is corruption, our economy is in turmoil from the excesses of the
recurrent expenditure and the abuses prevalent in our governance. The healthcare system is broken and only
accessible to those who can travel abroad.
On healthcare I am struck by how almost all our elected and ‘selected’ leaders
fly abroad every year for treatment. Government schools
fail to provide opportunities to many of our children. Across the land, families are paying record
prices to fill up their shopping baskets and many Nigerians worry whether they
will be able to raise their offspring in safety and security.
But these
challenges were not bound to happen, they are the consequence of flawed
policies and failing leadership. As the
world has transformed, the thinking of our leaders has remained ossified in time
with the absence of new thinking. The
first few years of this new century should have been our moment, the time when
our leaders turned adversity into opportunity, launching us to the next phrase
of our development. This should have
been the time when bold and visionary thinking challenged conventional wisdom
and took us down a pathway of development and innovation.
Instead,
our history is cluttered with white elephants and corruption on a monumental
scale. I imagine what Nigeria could have
achieved if we were united and worked together.
The last half-century of our independence has been a failure of our
leadership rather than that of Nigerian people.
I believe that we can change course and that we must, and I project into
the future an optimism that seems foolhardy but comes from the hope that after
darkness emerges light – ‘Post tenebras
spero lucem’. This is certainly not
the first time our nation has faced grave crises of confidence but each time,
our people have found the strength to call out together and address our
challenges. This moment cannot be
different, and this time demands more urgency.
Working together we can restore some sanity to our body politic, we can
perfect our federation and work towards a more worthwhile union by asking unthinkable
questions of ourselves. But to bring
about profound change we must be prepared to countenance some of the ideas I am
expounding in the chapters to come.
To develop
my narrative further I proceed into some background of the Nigerian chaotic
economic planning and a series of questions using anecdotes to prise them open.
I am aware that the implementation of
medium-term “development plan” has
been the major framework, which Nigeria has relied upon to restructure the
economy since independence. Four national development plans were launched
between 1962 and 1985. The First
National Development Plan, 1962 - 1968 sought to put the economy on a fast
growth path, by giving priority to agricultural and industrial development, as
well as the training of high level and intermediate manpower. The Second National Development Plan,
1970-1974, was launched after the civil war, primarily to undertake
reconstruction and rehabilitation of the infrastructure damaged during the war.
The Third National Development
Plan, 1975-1980, was designed under a more favourable financial condition of
huge oil revenues, which accrued to the nation from the mid-1970s. It
emphasised diversification, balanced development and indigenisation of the
economy. However, a significant portion of
the plan was not executed because of unanticipated financial and executive
capacity constraints. Thus, many key projects were carried over into the Fourth
National Development Plan, 1981-1985.
The execution of the fourth plan was also adversely affected by the
unexpected collapse of the international oil prices soon after its inception.
Thus, the volatility of the oil sector largely determined economic policy
direction as well as the financial capacity to execute public investment
programmes.
The adoption of the Structural
Adjustment Programme (SAP), initially for two years (July 1986-June 1988), was
the major response to the dwindling oil resources, macroeconomic policy
distortions and the increasing need to diversify the productive base of the
economy. The economy witnessed a number
of policy reversals between 1988 and 1989 in an attempt to cushion the adverse
effects of the belt-tightening measures implemented in 1986 and 1987. Consequently, some of the gains of economic
adjustment in those two years were gradually eroded. From the start of the 1990s, the government
shifted the instrument of economic transformation from the five-year plans to
the three-year rolling plans, as they were more flexible and amenable to
periodic reviews. However, there was no
appreciable improvement in the performance of the economy since the
commencement of the rolling plans thus necessitating further economic
reengineering for sustained growth.
In the early 2000s, a comprehensive
economic reform programme was initiated to fast- track economic growth. Central
to the reforms was the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF), 2003 – 2005,
which provide a macroeconomic framework to strengthen fiscal management and
improve the planning and budgeting of public expenditure to curtail abuse and
mis- allocation of resources[3]. What became apparent was during the Babangida
and Abacha regimes all pretentions of following a development plan were
abandoned.
The powerful and narrow sectional
interests have been the bane of Nigeria. I understand that when the initial
plans for Nigeria’s principal container port, the Tin Can Island Port which
handles about 5.75 million tons of cargo each year was laid, it included rail
lines, however, by the time the port was completed the rail lines had been
expunged! What modern nation builds a
seaport without and rail links? The
other port at Port Harcourt, a transshipment port located 66 kilometres from
the Gulf of Guinea along the Bonny River in the Niger Delta, handles about
815,000 tons of cargo each year and has a railway connection but it is not the
commercial nerve centre.
When the old Western Region built
24-storey Cocoa House at one time tropical Africa’s tallest building, all the
materials and cement used to build, it came via rail links because the road
network could never have coped. Yet,
when we built the Federal Capital Territory Abuja with a land area of
713 kilometres square we relied entirely on road links from Lagos to Abuja
to transport all the materials needed, the limited road network was never going
to be able to cope with the multiplier effects of so much traffic. Today we wonder why we do not have any good
roads. The limited rail infrastructure
we have, we have allowed it to be degraded through years of neglect of both the
rolling stock and allowed the right-of-way to seriously reduced the capacity
and utility of the system.
Nigeria
with the largest road network in West Africa and the second largest south of
the Sahara, roughly 108,000 km of surfaced roads in 1990 has had a history of
poor maintenance. In 2004, Nigeria’s
Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) began to patch the 32,000-kilometre
federal roads network, and in 2005, FERMA initiated a more substantial
rehabilitation. However, this has not
kept pace with over use by the powerful interests who we allowed to lay siege
to the Nigerian economy. What of
electricity? Have you wondered why most of the funds invested in the sector
make no difference? It is the powerful
interests that benefit from lucrative generator sales that conspire to make
nothing work. The stark analysis of the
sector reveals Nigeria had 5,900 MW of installed generating capacity, however,
the country was only able to generate 1,600 MW because most facilities have
been poorly maintained. The country has
proven gas reserves and around 8,000 MW of hydro development has been
planned.
The same
extends to the scandal of the refineries where most of the refineries are not
working or under utilised because of sabotage by powerful interests. It simply
pays the few entrenched interest that Nigeria does not work, they thrive and
get rich on the misery of the many.
Whilst Chief Asiodu’s own central
thesis of the problem with Nigeria traces it to the Murtala/Obasanjo purge of
the Civil Service in 1975. He suggests
that before purge, from after the civil war
Nigeria grew at 11.5 percent per annum.[4] That if we had sustained 10 percent per annum
for 20 more years, today the per capital income of Nigeria would not be less
than 20,000 dollars. He makes a
comparison with Malaysia that is reputed to have borrowed palm oil technology
from Nigeria and is now so far ahead of us.
He claims that many countries overtook us because, we destroyed the
civil service; we abandoned the plan of 75 years which was the emphasizing of
capital and intermediate products, agro-allied industry, petrochemical, which would
have given us a very serious developmental pyramid.
I suggest
we need a government that makes it its fundamental objective to govern in the
interest of the many and not the privileged and powerful few. This would mean challenging and taking on the
powerful interests that have ground our nation to a halt. But we need a process that compels our
government to take on these interests.
It would require an active imagination, which allows us to think outside
the box and contemplate the unthinkable.
I propose a process, which allows the powerful interests to render a
full and honest account of their crimes and receive amnesty on the basis that a
degree of restitution is made. The next
chapter grapples with the details of such a process one that needs to be free
of government manipulation and interference.
Whilst
this book presents this as a choice, a way forward, the reality is the Nigerian
situation is unsustainable it cannot go on as before and time is fast running
out for the present crop of leaders. I
have carefully considered the option of a truth and reconciliation process
because I want my nation to avoid a schism that would make that of Ghana a
kindergarten play, the process I offer remains the last hope for a peaceful
resolution of the peculiar mess we find ourselves in, the risk is to ignore it
and the peril that may follow.
[1] Du
Boulay, Shirley (1988)., Op. Cit., pp. 174-5.
[2] Ramachandra, Vinoth, What is
Integral Mission? Available at:
http://www.micahnetwork.org/library/integral-mission/what-integral-mission-vinoth-ramachandrahttp://en.micahnetwork.org/integral_mission/resources/what_is_integral_mission_by_vinoth-ramachandra
[3] Mordi, Carles N O et al (2011) The Changing Structure of the Nigerian Economy, Central Bank of Nigeria
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