This descriptive, foreign investors, has refused to leave our development lexicon. It is the magic solution each successive leader waves at us, telling us it is the magic tonic we need to get economic independence and the good life that flows from it. We have so much been told about foreign investors, regaled with what they can do but no one in our country can say he or she has good reason to believe the tales and that is why they appear hesitant or uninterested.
Those who claim to know them only point to their experiences in faraway places. These people don›t waste time to point to South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Why have these «beings « refused to come to Africa or come but fail to reproduce the economic miracle often tied to them has been a story too difficult to tell.
Now the validation which western-trained economists and their non-imaginative imitators often strive to derive from pointing to the already named locations is lost by the fact they hide some truths in the bid to sell a mirage to us as the truth. The biggest truth Western economists don›t say and won›t tell anyone is that the infusion of external capital in those mentioned places wasn›t based on economic realities. Rather, political uncertainties, especially the fear of rapid expansion of socialism and communism from Russia and China, made the creation of a «buffer economic zone» of utmost importance for the West that held tight to principles of private initiative.
The desire to showcase the beauty of capitalism ensured the «miracle» within the capitalist prism those locations turned out to be. If not for that Hong Kong and Taiwan for sure would only have witnessed economic growth to the extent China grew. Russia, China, Japan, Germany, United States, Spain we can go on naming, grew economically to become giant countries in our modern era. That much everyone agrees on, so it is beyond argument but «Foreign Investors» as we have been fooled to believe weren›t the driver of their economic transformations. The pull was by way of internal energy released in the most deliberate and determined manner.
Albert Einstein was right when he said new challenges cannot be solved by a glue to old processes. A look into the history of each nation would throw up very useful insights. One thing certain to be discovered would be a latency of vision and corresponding ability to push the collective to the attainment of set goals, be it in the transformation of agricultural practices and patterns, road construction, urbanization, industrialisation, marketing and reward for labour. Everything drew life and strength from the peculiarity of experience and shared vision of the future. This unfortunately isn’t the path we have chosen. We have no vision.
Anyone reading this piece, who knows our development path should please write in and the picture would get space here. Our leaders since independence have turned all of us into lazy drones. The majority of the citizens don›t have an idea about the beauty in labour, yet we expect our country to be like America and Europe and all good things to drop for everyone on our doorsteps. When this is not the case we migrate to developed settings where we think gold is picked from the streets but we end up picking menial jobs and having to work nearly all round the hours in one day. That is the difference from what we do here, making development a very tedious task into a thing of play.
Remember every one of our governments since independence not only made and still makes a sing-song of this economic strategy. Our officials in addition have always taken it as a good excuse to fritter away scarce foreign exchange earnings on frivolous trips abroad in the guise of going outside our shores to scout for “foreign investors.” Unfortunately, the strategy has remained a mirage and the so-called “Foreign Investors” have remained largely elusive. As observed much earlier it has become as if these guys are some elements from space who wave their flags in various world fora and disappear.
It is almost as if they don›t like our climes, by which we mean the black world. We guess they ought to hate our kind of arrangement where no one appears to take responsibility, yes deeply loathe settlements bereft of sanity, order and justice. No sane man would make money and then go dump it into the ocean. Nobody, because this would be the height of insanity. It could also be these investors are hard of hearing, or else they ought to have flooded the African continent, especially black Africa with the abundance of natural resources and a very high population that should be a plus because of the market opportunities it offers.
As I already observed, since independence, we have been on our knees begging and pleading with these foreign investors. I will take recent examples in the last three months. President Bola Tinubu had hardly been sworn in when he took a dash to the United Kingdom, he didn’t tell us what it was he was going to do but on stringent calls for explanations, a bewildered populace was told he had gone to discuss with a group of British business community. We were told economic revival was the priority and he wanted “to hit the ground running,” as they currently like to say.
He was barely back when he left again for France to attend a business seminar organised by a sub-unit of the United Nations. President of a fully independent country attending a seminar. This sight has always been such a pathetic one to behold, especially for those of us who earnestly desire that the black man would begin to take steps to bring honour to himself. Yes, honour is built up, many others say it is earned. None is wrong. Where you are, the events you attend and the quality of utterances all add up to determine the amount of respect and regard one gathers. When leaders who should be at home to work choose to roam the world aimlessly, something subtracts from their dignity. The same thing would happen when the President of a country can spend all six days or even more like we saw in the days of President Muhammadu Buhari outside his country. Sane heads do worry. Nelson Mandela knew about these hence he chose to stay in his country and treat himself whenever he was sick. There is no honour for a beggar let alone one perpetually hungry. He would be avoided. This is the lesson we don’t know.
Last week President Tinubu returned from a visit to India where he met with investors from that country as attended World G20 meeting, he had to stop in the United Arab Emirates where he went to beg for for two things: lifting of visa ban on Nigerians and resumption of flights to the country by that country’s national carrier. Government officials claim the President cut other deals possibly economic agreements.
These are some of the latest disturbing activities said to be undertaken on behalf of our country. Now any one of us could close his or her eyes and estimate what it has been since we got statehood about 63 years ago and the cost on our psyche, dignity, economic development and personal development. Good products are almost self-selling. If Emirate Airlines would repatriate their huge earnings from the Nigerian route so easily they would be the one begging their home government to quickly settle any problem with us not the other way round.
Beggars have no townsman, we have been told. People hardly desire to be friends with a beggar let alone offer respect. It may surprise only a few that the United Arab Emirates is one of the zones that has no respect for blacks in all ramifications. Their terrible blows to the black people in that country are commonplace, given even on a first-hand information basis.
An Arab country? What is behind the effrontery? Simple answer: knowledge – what they know about us and black settings in general. They know we lack vision, they are aware that as a collective we have no love or craving for introspection. What is more, from what they see they have become convinced our leaders hardly make time to think about our society, its current condition and sustainable solutions. We exhibit ad-hoc moves and impulsive reactions most of the time. These fellows do know of the high level of passivity plaguing the people. They are appalled we don’t query our leaders and hardly request accountability. They know we are not serious people. They know our deep cravings for a good life but at the expense of the sweat and sacrifice of others. They know we have no shame, so even when pressed and abused we will still come begging. This is the tragic part of the story.
How do visas to the Emirates and their flights into the country help our development in the most institutional form? The balance of trade is not favourable, and it can’t be given that we produce nothing for sale abroad except crude oil. The management of which we have been unable to provide local expertise. So United Emirates opening their door to us ends up helping them. It can enhance migration of mainly layabouts whose activities outside end up complicating our already destroyed image. In all this UAE gains. Apart from high fares which deplete our foreign reserves they have cheap labour. We return to the main issue for the day.
Some of us troubled by development in our society have taken time to read through the developmental history of the nations we call the first world today. We found out that one thing common to all of them would be the fact each of them got up by internal nationalism. Leadership was selfless and sacrificial. They trained citizens to be nationalistic and very sacrificial. Many paid the supreme price so it might be well with their countries and coming generations. The kind of country they wanted wasn›t a matter of guesswork or chance. The endpoint was clear and the rules pointed everyone to his or her responsibility. Development is the responsibility of the nationals or citizens. It is pure fallacy to hang or hold on to the belief that foreigners or foreign investors will come in and suddenly a country will begin to experience development with much-needed economic independence.
That mantra is neither here nor there. It is a decoy sold to us by neo-colonialist economists that has no foundation in reality. It is a prescription designed to misdirect and stall a genuine march to a progressive kind of transformation. This is why we must be wary and tread with great caution. The concept of foreign investors is based on very unsound prepositions and arguments. It has lasted this long in our national life due to failure to reason. We have been hook-winked to believe it even when points underlining it aren›t correct.
This should be clear. It is sensible in the least to beg a business to please come, take my land and set up your business. Inherent in this approach are weakness, manifest inability and clear loss of direction. It is something not conducive at all and should be discarded today not tomorrow. If our economic indices have been worked up to positive looking one wouldn›t have to beg anybody to come do business. Naturally, they would be attracted. Business people are like butterflies to nectar, always attracted to wherever they smell or see «good». This is the first point and a very crucial one. Investors will move when the «natives» have paid enough price to keep the ground “wet”.
Let me not waste time dwelling on the negative else we spend so much time talking about political instability, effects of unproductiveness, insecurity and undue social tension. There are objective conditions that must be in place before foreigners begin to stream in. The entity must show a sense of bonding. Unfortunately, this is lacking in most parts of the black world where group conflicts are prevalent. The benefits of unity can›t be fully captured by words or quantified. The world must see a resolution to transform into nationhood.
Equally vital in this would be vision. Vision in this regard is destination: What do we want the people and country to look like in the outcome? Then, there must be pursuit. We begin with farming on a very large scale, this will achieve food security, and provide materials for allied industries and export. We task local ingenuity to begin to produce basic needs, We start with the low-hanging fruits, producing clothes, matches, pins, toothpaste, irons for pressing, buckets and so many others, of course trying to take advantage of markets in our subregion as first step to larger world markets. Curtail the penchant to hop into any available plane and off we go into other parts of the world. Reckless movement wastes foreign exchange.
When we begin, every manufacturer and trader will begin to take us seriously. Entrepreneurs will know there is something to gain. No pleading is needed. There will be a peaceful atmosphere arising from people being gainfully engaged and able to afford basic needs. When this is the case the urge to fall into crime will greatly diminish. Of course, on a higher stage, the country will earn income which would make the national currency not only strong and competitive but one that would naturally attract business on its own. Now we beg Emirate Airlines to please return to our space but the beggars, in this case our leaders, aren›t sure if there will be enough foreign exchange to enable them to repatriate their gains which often is huge.
Foreign investors are good but they are not the first line forces in the transformation of a country. The change begins and is sustained by the «natives». If it weren›t so we needn›t beg at all before our space would have been flooded with these agents we claim have the Midas touch. The change we want must begin with us. Marcus Garvey said something we should take to heart: «The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind.»