Is Nigeria on the road to becoming a failing or frailing State? How long shall we be wishful and optimists thinkers? Every road map of hope now looks like conspiracy to crash land the country. The hopeful indenturing smartness of the leadership only impoverished the masses, with geometric growth in interminable crises as a way of life. Living or leaving; believing or beholding ; investing or involving in Nigeria is now on balance of probability, predictably like the roulette wheel of chance and luck. Everybody thought that from 2003 Nigeria had set forth the right principle for building the ideal country we aspired to live in, with aspiration to live together in peace, prosperity and harmony, maybe through self-reliance. CARL GUSTAV JUNG never had a country like Nigeria in mind when he once said, “The psychology of the individual is reflected in the psychology of the nation what the nation does is done also by each individual and so long as the individual continues to do it, the nation will do likewise. Only a change in the attitude of the individual can initiate a change in the psychology of the nation”. Nigeria is (un)fortunate to have the resource potential in men, material and money to build a solid a socio-economic revolution in the world. We have somehow failed. All the strategy to help have failed, and has not escaped criticism from governments, agencies and academics. We have nobody to solve the simple problem- electricity and manpower development! Somebody with intellectual curiosity, discerning and observing in a different way our progress and development chart. All we need is someone that would combine, collate, correlate and intellectually analyse information to form more complex and useful products, goods and services to the benefit of the country. We need someone sensitivity to needs, attitudes and able to cope with variegated political intricacies of electricity and manpower development problems.
Over the past few decades, some African countries have seen the stunning transformation, have Nigeria transformed or transforming? Okay, maybe our present generation of leaders lack the will and leadership? If problem are solved, there are less complain. In the new global economy, electricity is never a central issue. In Nigeria, giant of Africa, electricity is the most important need. This is an area in which the immediate past governments have been fruitlessly active. While the Yaduas’ government is not yet or maybe) in a position to provide for this service, they should lead development in other areas. Agricultural development (if it has to be self-powered) should be accorded the highest order of priority. In the second order of priority, is security, which is in a class by itself, and the other items of the ‘seven point agenda’ should be regarded as belonging to the third order of priority (or deleted). Given the capacity and size of Nigeria’s market; the degree of urbanization; and the character of the labour force, the growth strategy of our economy should depend more on mobilizing under-utilized and non-utilized land, natural resources and labour by increasing the scale, volume and efficiency of our international trade. “Africa is rich in natural resources”, according to Obama’s recent comment while in Ghana, but the fact is that Africa is the richest continent on earth in natural resources, but despite abundance of these resources, we are still poor and underdeveloped. According to Artemus Ward, “It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us in trouble. It’s the thing we know that ain’t so”.
In addition, lack of production and trade strategies is one of our major problems; we produce a set of basic agricultural goods to satisfy the minimum requirements of the economy. For example, if four states each produce four different goods, first, the national markets tend to be small, leading to higher prices and monopolistic situations. However, if we employ simple sincere trade liberalization involving a specialization of production of one or two particular good in each state will result in lower prices and open opportunities for trade to the international market. In this way, our production costs are reduced; labour and productivity rises and surpluses are generated into our economy and smooth export.
Therefore, only global trade, created by opportunities and encouragement from developed world (who accounted for over 75% of the global trade) will allow for an enormous variety of resources. Today, even if the whole money in world is brought to Nigeria, the money cannot transform the country for the better; apart from corruption, the people lack intellectual capacity and capability to understand that traders rule the world! How I wish we open our blind(ing) heart’s eye and see the Why? When? and How North America and Western Europe are the geography and dominance of international trade, alone, the United States, Germany and Japan account for about a third of all global trade; while the G7 countries account for half the global trade. Painful. Why? Because Nigeria meets several conditions for trade to prosper: availability, transferability, and transactional capacity; at least let us be the real giant of Africa, and live up to expectation.
In Nigeria, for example, we have varied agricultural and forest resources that could provide a basic for prosperous agricultural development. I recently read there are more than 300 tree species in Nigeria, and about 50 of these are reputed to be commercially exploitable. A simple important way of utilizing forest resources to generate more income and employment for the country is to find through research, international new uses for our tree by-products and medicinal residues currently been allowed to waste. In addition, Nigeria’s problem that many have failed to realised is improved storage capacities, capability, and organised marketing. At present considerable qualities of good crops, including yams, cowpeas, maize and guinea corn and vegetables are lost each year due to lack of storage, and from insects and rodents. The establishment of cooperatively owned, private sector lead depots should be encouraged to serve as a buffer foodstuff during harvest periods to cushion the effect of seasonal varieties on the price levels. . Let Obama et al. force a fair trade share on Africa, instead of shouting good governance, good institution, and change partners (yes, we can).
Furthermore, even in a side talk, Nigeria could be reputed for an outstanding economy in livestock and fishing, studies have shown that various types of livestock in the country present attractive potentials for improved production for the international markets. The fish resources of the country are also substantial; all the private or public sector must do is research to determine the size. I had expected by now there would be hundreds of fishing terminal in Lokoja to facilitate the development of domestic marine fisheries, and fish products.
It is no new news that Nigeria is one of the richest countries in mineral resources. We are endowed with abundant of these resources in high quality. The demand for these minerals, some of which are yet to be tapped should be activated to meet world market. The ministry of mineral resources, thought very late, have started a good work in this regard. For example, in my state, limestone and marble deposits are of proved tonage of over 46 million and another 30 million interred. The product of a Marble Industry are too numerous to mention, to even its high quality powered calcium contact for livestock food processing. In addition, iron ore deposits are with overall total of over 250 million tons with about 60 per cent iron content! The only solution that will work is to lay down priorities for industrial projects every two-two months and initiate measures to achieve them, and most importantly, make all information available for people.
The government should also provide financial and manpower resources in promoting industrial research, and engage our “magazine” professors in the universities and polytechnics to a more challenging task in nation building. In addition, it might worth consideration by the government to increase consultancy services in agriculture, where on the spot services should be rendered to businessmen in each state in the running of their businesses. This consultancy should assist the businesspersons in the registration of their businesses, maintaining proper records of account, processing their application for small-scale loans and obtaining import licenses for interest businesspersons where applicable. Most importantly, massive cooperative merging of petty farmers should be encouraged.