With just a little push, Nigeria would have been able to show itself a blessed nation; but it is the lack of that essential push that has left us the way we are – impoverished!
Nigeria’s development process is not only disturbing but also pathetic – a country with all the natural and human endowments that nature can provide, yet more than 70% of the population live in abject poverty.
The missing link is to be found in our unwillingness to develop industrially. Virtually all the things we import were originally produced by us and exported. Sadly, we export crude oil and import fuel and petro-chemicals; we export cotton and import textiles; we export raw cocoa and import processed cocoa products; we export iron ore and import steel; and we export alumina and import aluminum products. That’s doing business in the reverse.
This is where we think that the much touted idea of diversification from oil to agriculture in Nigeria must be clearly defined in terms of industrialization so that it does not translate to a situation where we would export all our cassava tubers and import the garri produced from them.
The moral message from Nigeria to the foreign countries is clear: take our raw materials to your place; employ your people to process them; and we will come and buy them as soon as they are processed.
This writer was in the House of Representatives Committee on Transport that visited various countries in the summer of 1981. In the Netherlands, we were taken to a Company that refined only crude oil from Nigeria; and the refined products were also exported exclusively to Nigeria.
We are also quickly reminded that even at the most elemental level, there is perhaps a spell on us not to enjoy what we produce until it completes its merry go-round. In a sense, Uhunmwode Local Government Area of Edo State is the fruit-basket of Nigeria; but if you want to eat those sweet oranges from Ehor, you better go to Kano.
For some time now, those clever businessmen from Kano come to Uhunmwode to buy up orange trees in entire plantations and they come to harvest in due season. As for the pineapples, everything produced in Uhunmwode is sold off while the same Uhunmwode producers proceed to Oregbeni Market in Benin City to buy the part they want to eat.
The Nigerian economy is now in a sad trajectory mainly because of our knack for foreign goods. In the beginning, our founding fathers planned the economy in order to fast-track development and move thousands of Nigerians out of poverty.
At that time, development plans mapped out schedules for building various types of hard and soft infrastructures such as roads, communication networks, schools, hospitals, etc.
Apart from the import substitution and export promotion policies; and the pioneer industrial schemes, the establishment of Oshogbo Machine Tools Factory, Ajeokuta Steel Mill; etc., were concrete efforts to lay the foundation for an industrial take-off. Because of the demonstrated serious ambition to become a productive economy, the domestic currency of that era remained strong against most convertible currencies.
The ascendency of crude oil in Nigeria’s development calculus altered all that. That was when the oil boom that was supposed to be a blessing became the oil doom that was more of a curse.
As a result of our lackadaisical attitude towards industrialization, the unemployment and underemployment rates remain embarrassingly high. Even after the unbundling of the power sector, electricity supply has not improved an inch.
Rather, things are getting worse and the real sector remains virtually in a comatose state. In the immediate past dispensation, even where the economy was said to be growing at the rate of about 6 percent, the rate of unemployment rose to about 28 percent and even higher among youths.
We moved away from agriculture which is a renewable asset and moved into oil, which is a wasting asset. We failed to realise that it is perilous to finance national development solely on oil revenue, when the price of oil and the quantity we could produce were purely outside our control.
See where planlessness has led us? For too long, Nigerian leaders were simply rent seekers. The bulk of the nation’s imports were for consumption instead of capital goods that could aid further production. Certainly, there is something fundamentally wrong with our system.
Our immediate past Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, told us that Nigeria spends N1 billion daily on rice importation – amounting to about N360 billion annually. Besides Nigeria spends N217 billion for the importation of sugar; and N97 billion annually is spent on the importation of fish.
In 2015 alone, Nigeria’s total import amounted to N16.42 trillion while her exports barely hit N9.72 trillion. The continued depletion of our foreign reserves plus the ever growing army of unemployed and under-employed youths are some of the prices we pay for our appetite for foreign goods instead of local ones.
If we are to get out of the woods, there is really no alternative to industrialization. Government must tackle squarely the issue of infrastructure, particularly power supply. If we were to have 18 hours of electricity supply a day, growth would be enhanced; jobs would be created; and we would immediately be on the path to economic recovery.
No economy ever grows on generators with the concomitant high cost of diesel and petrol. The advanced economies we try to emulate have power supply for 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So their factories can plan and operate two or three shifts daily, thus creating jobs.
Again, for its welfare content and job creation, government must invest on housing for its people. Between planning and execution; between building materials and their handlers; between contractors and site workers; between food and water suppliers; between defaulting contractors and even the judiciary, the housing industry provides one quick-fix that can immediately re-invigorate the entire economy.
By Hon. Josef Omorotionmwan
E-mail: [email protected]
