After the euphoria, mostly at government circles, that greeted the commemoration of Nigeria’s 59th independence anniversary, time is now to sit back and do some introspection intent on highlighting obvious pitfalls that dot our country’s growth and development.
In our view, the best and quickest way to do this is to place Nigeria side by side with other economies that have had similar experiences but have risen above obvious challenges to seemingly and relatively unassailable heights. China readily comes to mind here.
In 79 years, China has molted its communist past for state capitalism and has, in the process, lifted millions of its citizens out of poverty in a generation. The country has also developed many cities within this period.
China is the world’s most populous country and, according to a demographic research group in 2017, there are 102 Chinese cities, apparently the size of London, Lagos, Abuja or Port Harcourt. Each city has over one million people in the urban area.
Conversely, after 35 years of military rule, Nigeria returned to full scale democracy but has, according to Tanko Yakassai, missed the road. The country risks becoming a criminal project because of its style of politics and electoral process which are mere fraudulent activities.
As a country, Nigeria is characterised by an over-centralised government that is excessively bureaucratised and remains accountable to no one; to no idea or dream unlike what obtains in China.
The immediate fallout of this is that, unlike China, millions of Nigerians have plunged into poverty without hope of where the next meal will come from. A recent report by the World Poverty Clock says Nigeria has overtaken India, a country with a population that is seven times larger than Nigeria’s, as the country with the most people who are extremely poor.
The report adds that 86.9 million Nigerians, representing nearly 50 percent of its estimated 180 million populations, are living in extreme poverty, meaning that, with a major population boom, Nigeria will become the world’s third largest country by 2050, and its problem will likely be worse.
It deadens the feeling that in the midst of this extreme poverty, virtually all state-owned assets remain dead capital because of what is clearly an inordinate attachment to an era of commanding heights which China is abandoning or may have abandoned completely.
To make matters worse, while millions of Nigerians starve and, in extreme cases, die; and despite all evidences of failure and incompetence, the federal government still lives in self-delusion, thinking that it is a good manager of the economy.
Evidently, unlike China, Nigeria is on a “forsaken road to nationhood and development”. It needs some redemptive steps to find its way out of the present quagmire it finds itself.
Humphrey Orjiako, Nigeria’s former Ambassador to Switzerland, is of the view that “over-centralisation of power is a cardinal culprit in stymieing Nigeria’s prospects for economic growth and development, as well as an important factor in decelerating her pace of advancement to nationhood.” We cannot agree more.
We find it appalling that the federal government, in 21st century Nigeria, does neither believe nor attach importance to human capital development contrary to the view held by Charles Chukwuma Soludo, an eminent professor of Economics.
Soludo, appointed recently by the federal government into its newly constituted Economic Advisory Council (EAC), says human capital is Nigeria’s new resource. But the question that agitates the mind in this direction is, where are the schools, hospitals, teachers, and the doctors to develop the capital?
The simple answer is the frustrating reality that all of these professionals have migrated, and many more are still migrating, to Canada. And, to us, this is the crux of the matter that should worry any serious government. We urge President Buhari to see beyond big government and face the reality of our time.
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