The rhetoric around self-sufficiency in rice, textiles, automobiles and every other thing we need in Nigeria is reaching manic levels and we think Nigerians should understand that resisting free trade is a dangerous policy.
We have watched with growing unease supposedly intelligent people take to the airwaves arguing against importation and why shutting the borders is a patriotic duty. At conferences, some of the first questions asked anyone with a novel idea or product is why are they not manufacturing in Nigeria?
Hameed Ali, Comptroller General of the Nigerian Customs has incorrectly insinuated that China attained economic greatness because it shut its borders to the world for 40 years. China’s most recent experiment with a closed economic system began in 1949, when the communists took power; it failed woefully, resulted in famine and the death of millions until 1979 when it gradually changed policies and began to trade with the world.
It’s unfortunate that many Nigerians are swayed by this rewriting of history, it appeals to sentiments. Simply checking Wikipedia, however, would set records straight.
We agree on the need to grow Nigeria but demonising free trade will not help us any more than it did in 1984. It will only set us back.
No country in the world, not even the economic superpowers, produces all that it needs. Last year, machinery including computers and electric equipment worth $753 billion accounted for 29 percent of total imports in the US.
Our leaders have a terrible habit. China, Russia, India, and all the countries they use as examples to validate their failed ideas, import goods and services they can’t provide locally; sometimes from us (they also paid dearly when they closed their economies).
Data shows the folly of deterring free trade. In the first 9 months of 2019, Vietnam imported from Nigeria goods worth about N11.6 billion while Nigeria imported goods worth about N2.8 billion from the Asian country according to data from its Customs.
Vietnam bought our cashew nuts and liquefied petroleum gas while we imported, handbags, purses, umbrellas, suitcase, headgear, textiles and garments, and phones. While they bought from us what they need to produce other things, we merely bought headgears and gadgets.
We do not win points for rejecting their rice; we should rather pray they don’t reject our gas someday. Apart from the fact that we depend more on Vietnam than it does on us, we risk alienating ourselves due to a misunderstanding of self-sufficiency.
In the late 1970s, Deng Xiaoping began to reform the Chinese economy; opened it to international trade and investment. Peasants were granted rights to farm their own plots, improving living standards and easing food shortages.
Today, China is seeking global economic dominance through the Belt and Road Initiative and the Silk Road: massive infrastructure projects that will connect half of the world’s population. China also has the largest number of neighbours (14) sharing its 22,000km land borders.
China has had to close some of its borders mainly due to border disputes rather than curbing imports. If China closes its borders at all, smuggling or incompetent Custom officials won’t be the reason.
Yet in 2019, Buhari and Hameed are prescribing, the pernicious policies China renounced to become an economic power. We understand the limited worldview of many in government today, brought up in the era of the Cold War. Well, the world has since moved on and even Russia is a democracy, however, warped. Buhari and his socialist co-travellers must re-educate themselves and at the very least listen to the counsel of people with a better grasp of economics.
