New Year Reflections on Nigeria (II)
Who must our government INSPIRE? Evidently, our government must inspire the entire citizenry by the quality of leadership provided (visionary, responsive and transformational). In practical terms therefore, our government must, through the services it provides, the incentives and opportunities it creates for the stimulation of growth, real employment and productivity inspire in the citizenry the readiness for trust, partnership and collaboration. It must inspire the entire citizenry through the cost, sacrifices and denials seen in our leaders. Those visible incentives, sacrifices and denials ultimately result in savings for us, leading to the next question on utilization, maintenance and management of those physical and human capital that are our national assets. Without this mentality, our investment will only be fragmental, misaligned and wasteful. We must prevent the mistakes of the past in our culture of public management.
Who must we INVITE? The reality of public management and provision of public goods and services suggests that big government is no longer suitable to achieving result while government cannot do it alone. Gone are the days that economies of scale are predictably positive and manageable and public needs limited. The bigger the size of government, the more elaborate the hierarchy and processes and the more cumbersome, wasteful and costlier in getting things done in public interest. The option for our government is to relinquish those areas of less national strategic importance and seek partnership and collaboration with private sector providers and foreign investors with requisite expertise and financial strength, and whose stake in the our economy transcends profit but includes a commitment to national growth and development.
What must we INCREASE? This question relates to what we produce with our human capital assets and in which we have comparative advantage. Our experts and technocrats in various analyses presented facts that clearly suggest that even though we are classified among the oil-rich nations, we are still oil-impoverished per capita when compared with many other OPEC members whose production capacity outweighs ours in spite of their lesser population. A resource whose production process, distribution and marketing does not engage a substantial percentage of our population and does not guarantee us much comparative advantage in the world economy cannot be said to be in our ultimate interest. The paradox of oil production and dependence in Nigeria is that while it is enriching a leaking treasury, it is metaphorically stifling productivity and employment in the real sector of our economy. This is not to advocate the shutting of our oil-wells but a call to rethink our economic diversification agenda. When we advocate diversification, we must be shifting focus to saving and investing our oil earnings while also concentrating on sectors with higher comparative advantage and greater prospects of employment generation, productivity and selfsustainability for us.
What must we IMPORT? At a time we talk of our industries being on the throes of death, producing below installed capacity, diverted to merchandising of imported items or have closed shops to relocate to other countries, our ports are wide and welcoming for all sorts of commodities while our borders are very porous, our taste for imported items down to tokunboh and over-used braziers and pants from least expected countries like Vietnam and Myanmar have only increased. We have to be objective in admitting that being a net importing nation has only encouraged conspicuous consumption with less employment generation. We collectively have to reach an understanding that our imports must be of those things that grow and add real value to our capacity rather than being dependent on others for everything. We must moderate our consumption of what we do not produce.
What must we INHIBIT? This question is easily answered in the previous explanation of what we must import. Our government must discourage through strong deterrence strategies commodities and items that prevent the growth of our local industries, introduction of incentives and subsidies to sectors that are not immediately profitable and attractive to local entrepreneurs who must necessarily be protected, regardless of the globalization garbage talk.
What must we INVENT or INNOVATE? We must be sensitive to the two demands of inspiring research and development and growing our local industry. Our government must therefore encourage invention, investment and patronage of technologies appropriate for our development stage. It is indeed absurd for us to be importing hand pumps and simple grinding and shelling machines fabricated in India while similar ones produced by our hard working technologists rot in the roadside showrooms.
What must we IMPROVE? In any reform initiative, it is inevitable that that some vulnerabilities and negative externalities will arise. They are the price we must pay if reform must be productive. We must therefore improve on our social security deliverables to mitigate the impact of reforms and widen the arena of dialogue and communication to imbue trust and confidence that the evidently harsh and painful decision is temporary.
In what must we INVEST? The answer is in everyday discourse, but which we have been rather slow to address as we engage in conspicuous consumption while enhancing the productivity and improving employment in other countries from which we import or who dump everything they produce on Nigeria. We must necessarily invest in infrastructure and human capacity development for us to be competitive in today knowledge economy and be selfsustaining in most of our needs. However, it is not sufficient to provide the infrastructure and develop human capacity without establishing effective and efficient legal and regulatory frameworks that will ensure their sound, equitable and judicious management distribution. Let us make no mistake. There are still many harsh and painful policy decisions we will still have to make and endure at all levels of our national life if we must reach the land of our dream.
Dr. Solanke wrote this piece from Lagos.