For a Nigeria’s new political economy
In spite of the recent launch of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan, what ails Nigeria is more profound and fundamental to be addressed by saying what has been said several times, only modified by the temper and mood of any of it authors.
Politics and power struggles among factions of the elites have been the dominant driver of public life, since the country attained independence in 1960. Because of these dominant factors in Nigeria’s public life, a vicious civil war has been fought while the State structure has gone under-numerous mutations to accommodate the insatiable appetite for power and political control of the elites.
Ordinarily, politics should reflect the persistent search for an economic framework that best serve to improve and enhance the quality of life of the whole population. Structures of political organization and institutional frameworks are not end in themselves but serve to search and promote appropriate economic order that enhance optimal productivity and sustainable economic activities that bring and add value to the common wealth and give commensurate returns to all members of the active population.
Politics in Nigeria has not functioned to trigger relentless drive for a search of appropriate economic framework to unlock national productivity and unleash value creation; which is the definitive aggregate of national wealth.
Against the background that in the over six decades of the dominant trend of politics and power struggle, no enduring economic framework has been put in place. The continuous dominance of more partisan politics and power struggle are most likely to produce the result further of melt down of the economy, with consequences of untold hardship for our people.
Therefore, any meaningful recovery of Nigeria as a functional State must focus exclusively on economic modernization.
When the political framework is streamlined and made more inclusive to accommodate all views, dedicated to the patriotic project of reconstructing Nigeria, all efforts shall be channelled to economic modernization. The imperative for economic recovery and sustainable growth would be to focus exclusively on industrialization and agricultural modernization. The preliminary stage of actualizing the task of industrialization and agricultural modernization would be to turn the informal six geo-political zones into geo-economic zones, with a quick census of their respective resource endowments. With an overview of the resource -endowment of each geo-economic zone, relevant industrial facilities shall be deployed to feed on the resource availability and inputs from the respective zone. Meanwhile, the Central bank’s policy of depleting the foreign exchange reserves to defend the naira has hit a brick wall as is neither sustainable nor even desirable. The only way to create value and reflect it in our currency is to take the worn out slogan of diversification of the economy seriously. This slogan is the most sensible economic thing, as it has been uttered by almost every government Nigeria has had, but the associated planning, hard work and sacrifice that would accompany it has remained the Achilles heels, of successive governments.
Government’s current determination to invest in transportation infrastructure is a step in the right direction, but the transport infrastructure will fall into decay and dis-use, except it is accompanied by a regeneration of productive activities through industrialization. Enhancing production capacity through massive industrialization and agricultural modernization and a network of transport infrastructure have been the perfect combination; through which nations in recent history have jump-started their economy.
In pursuing the task of such huge magnitude, Nigeria government should dispel the myth of privatesector development as the only paradigm to achieve sustainable and inclusive growth and development. In fact, the experience of Rwanda and Ethiopia, both victims of longdrawn civil war, has proved that the serious business of national development can only be achieved by a strong State that not only hold the ring and ensure fair play but itself a determined fair player.
Since the return of civil rule in Nigeria, nearly two decades, the mantra of private sector-led development has held sway, but very little to show for it.
If private sector-led development has subsisted for nearly two decades without appreciable results, persisting in it, is a mere ideological folly that has no practical results for the well-being of Nigeria. The simple fact is that in Nigeria’s context, in which development must feature certain priority areas, there would be no alternative to the viable leadership and direction, only to be supplied by a strong State, with efficient, reliable institutions, and effective mechanism.
Nigeria’s political economy of the past sixty decades have not induced Nigerians to fulfil their manifest destiny as a great people, and to this extent Nigerians must embrace new things and challenges to realize the country’s huge potentials, locked down by the ineptitude of leadership.
As John Stuart Mill, argued that a people may be unprepared for good and efficient institutions but an open discussion of it, is a necessary part of their preparation, so Nigerians must see their future in breaking through the trammels of conventional and received wisdom and think, the unthinkable, if this country and her people would fulfil their destiny.