In the Beginning
For a long time, the theme songs of economists, nouveau politicians, pseudo intellectuals even the proverbial man on the street was the debate “that no nation can survive or excel on a monoculture infantile industrial complex” (what was ephemerally referred to as toothpick-economy).
There was reason to hope in the halcyon days of the Colonialists up till the emergence of the foreign educated political elite.
The structure then was built largely on agriculture with focus on food sufficiency and benchmarking best practice in cash crop production, becoming veritable foreign exchange earner for the regions and ultimately the nation Nigeria. A crop of middle men and merchants were locally grown on this staple of emergence of big commercial ventures all over the country.
Sunset at Dawn Stealthily like a thief in the night, our commerce began to nosedive almost in tandem with the discovery of the black gold –oil. A definite spell on us; we took into the height of curses. The modes of operations and logistic have been steadied in reverse gear for some years. Forever in broad daylight, under our unguarded, uncaring and totally corrupt system in governments, a lot of money has changed hands with policy makers, fuelling the death of commerce.
We are indeed a nation of anything goes powered by greed of our people mostly in the civil services.
We left what worked for the untested waters of infamy and wholesale racketeering. Our commerce is atrophied, spiralling into the abyss, thanks to the officialdom of corruption kingdom: Nigeria is not just corrupt, corruption is officially Nigerian.
That is what is asphyxiating our economic growth unabashedly; but do they care? Absolute no! In most sane societies, the nation’s interest comes first, in all things at all times. But Nigerians have a price; first lesson every foreign investor learn. Any wonder things are falling apart steadily.
The Wolves are our Shepherds: It all begin with wrongheaded policy initiatives either by square pegs in round holes or maladroitly tainted government policy package with unplanned for domino effect, negating our growth.
This always spread economic virus that negatively impact our commerce pushing hard working entrepreneurs on downward spiral. When the economy catches cold and everybody start sneezing but wrongly diagnosing the economic flu and other ailments as bad luck, curses and afflictions of enemies, most especially Step-mothers spells.
Meanwhile, the perpetrators of such dastardly economic policies (the wolves) are smiling all the way to the banks worldwide in coded but we’ll sealed world. Nigerians love to make money; earning money is the ethical culture of very few.
Unveiling the enemy within These men, saddled with financial regulatory positions are the supposed referees but their corruption indexes appear higher and factored in at all times, smoothly. The harangued business men have no choice but to factor in this unhealthy cost to this troubled economy. It all usually starts from the stable of governments economic policy makers; the ubiquitous gods in Civil- Services, disciples of greed amassing obscene wealth unseen with very long, efficient and deadly exploitation of your sweat in mind always. They are bloody parasites, that suck life out of us feeding fat on others genuine intense struggles to feed their families.
This is sadly so, but truly, this has become a despicable national culture, trending always. The more you look at these species of Nigerians, the less you see. They are the constant winners who are usually lobbied to death by economic saboteurs, who share their religion of avarice.
They are the quiet- storm, yet the volcanoes destabilising our economy at every ounce of tremor. In fact, they are the preferred ‘honourable men and women.’ Their fingers are crawling and calculating all over the national budgets, to a programmed or destined self-aggrandisement.
They load it to the hilt in favour of their kinds .The army of no do-gooders hovering around like vultures to prime their interest in our yearly budgets all the time.
They usually win and often times, they are the unseen faces and treacherous hands that murder most dreams and make lives difficult for others. Clearly, our economy, precisely our commerce is now powered by new kids in town. This ordinarily should be good news if the next generation commerce has young Nigerians on the driving seat.
But they have invited other ravenous wolves in the name of economic- liberalisation and game changers.
They have all securely invaded your neighbourhood, warmly welcomed by you, like aliens from planet mars and dictate the pace of our commerce for better or worse now.
Our collective national interest should have been factored in often times but the uppercrust-creams amongst of us, that counted privileged,usually stands settled at all times.
The Face of the Future Welcome to new faces of buying, selling and services which are mostly owned by South Africans, Indians and Lebanese from telecoms to petty trading and the Chinese are hot on their heels. All over Lagos and around the country, I heard, there is a steady reckless investment now, in plazas, malls neighbourhood shopping centres all these in a comatose commerce, crawling economy backed and guaranteed by prayer warriors.
Trust Nigerians, once it started you can’t stop replication and copycats. All shades of funds, life savings, willed-funds, retirement benefits and all goes into building and in renting such properties. Such investments are for long terms only, not a June-July abracadabra; stop expectations of a breakthrough in such investment after a year or two; that is not in tandem with realities on ground; it just hardly happens.
The competition is fiercely growing steadily, and the big boys have entered the market,
The present looks gloomy but i envisioned, a revolution gradually brewing. It is a revolution spear headed by angry ill tutored generation deprived of opportunity to take over the Nigerian business clime usurped by the voracious wolves in government and their collaborators in the banking world. The new commerce is not the e-Commerce of the developed world or multi faceted integrated agricultural corporations of the developing world, the manufacturing conglomerates of the Asian tigers are ways ahead of us, why we are busy floundering in muddy shallow waters of self aggrandisement at the expense of our country.
The system will not auto correct, the society need men of goodwill and valour to pointedly address our traducers in government and their associates to strategically focus on our youth and take back the commanding heights of our nation economy from those who have subjugated us and are working towards keeping the nation economy in their cleavages in perpetuity.
The time to rise and rebuild the nation with the finest of our young generations - north, west, east or south is now. We are a nation morally paralysed, dying to be restructured, fiscally and morally awakened to move this nation forward.
Omisore is the convener of Voice of Reason