This discourse began last week. In that outing, we tried to find out why our leaders choose to avoid solutions that are germane to our challenges. Why do they know the right answers and yet prefer to wait for time to restore order? What style should one call that? We wondered why President Bola Tinubu who spoke about “restructuring” while positioning himself for the highest office in the land isn’t talking about that many months after he got into office as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Isn’t the issue central to proper development of the country any longer?
We showed how playing the ostrich has become very costly, things grow from bad to worse, yet we hear our leaders tell us we are on course, nothing to worry about; we delved into an interrogation of the security situation. Again, under the Bola Tinubu administration, the conventional security forces have repledged to stamp out insecurity, at least bring it to the barest minimum but as things would seem, it wouldn’t be out of point to say the more efforts the government puts in this regard, the more it appears the challenge gets intractable. Killings in Plateau State and elsewhere keep telling us the path we have chosen isn’t the right one. Who cares to order a recheck? Perhaps some want but are hindered by a carefully woven system that easily “takes away” anybody bold enough to rise and challenge it. There are truths to be told.
A lot of spaces in the country are not protected, so much inhabited portions of land are ungoverned. Bring it down to security, prevention and detection of crimes one layer of security set up can never be enough to offer us ideal level of national security. It would not matter the personnel strength. A single centrally created and managed security system does not have would it take to offer comprehensive security. In every setting there are political, economic, cultural and social peculiarities relevant to effective society policing. Other nations realized this and took actions along the line and it worked. Imitation and then innovation isn’t a crime. We would have to do what others did, create different layers, state police, community policing and even large corporate entities should have their security set ups as well. Abroad where our leaders like to visit very often, despite the negative effects of capital flights, they know security personnel they see in their hotels don’t come from the government arm. Those are licensed security professionals formed by the corporate entities to enhance security around their business environment, but they work within the prescribed limits approved by government.
Our leaders know neighborhoods have their internal security arrangements with personnel bearing arms. We have been told different layers of security will produce far higher abuses. The question would be why would possible fall-outs be grounds for running away from sensible options? Sensible people build on errors. As solutions throw up new angles society through the government fight it by introduction of amended laws. If governors would abuse state police, as some envisage, why would that be a ground to jettison the option which has been tested in many other places and its efficacy established beyond doubt? The right approach would have been to anticipate possible areas of misuse and try to make laws to forestall anticipated possible occurrences. This is the right way to go. Not abdication of responsibility. A governor is best suited to manage security in his area. Not the man in far away Abuja.
We would have tried to highlight the inadequacies we have in posting officers from another culture and environment to supervise security arrangements in a totally «strange» place but we don›t have the luxury of space except to say it makes a mockery of sense and good judgment. Now insecurity is making nonsense of every sense our leaders try to make in offering the people protection. It is bringing the country to a state of near paralysis and here we are wondering what it is we are not doing right. The uncharitable ones in our midst keep advising we pump in more money as if throwing huge funds on challenges is a solution just on its own. Security architecture is crucial before other matters.
The other would be job delineation. Before we touch the very important issue of projects and standard, there is this pertinent question we need to ask and the question is, «why would the government in Abuja, the federal government to be precise, take jurisdiction over major streets in Aba, Lagos or Kano? What is the logic and what purposes is this kind of arrangement intended to serve? Why would federal government talk about primary health centres in wards from Abuja and teachers salaries in states?
Why would government at the centre take sole responsibility for national electricity supply, aviation, railway development and so many others like that? There are indications to devolve powers in this regard but the question still remains who mooted such idea in the first place? What was the objective? To bring development or to take near absolute control? Which one? Colonial masters left us with a pathway to sustain this kind of development. When they arrived our shores certain procedures were very clear in their heads. The first was political control, firm administrative hold and they came up with indirect rule. It worked for them.
The next was economic exploitation. To get through they thought of economic bases so they had to develop ports along the Atlantic, in Port Harcourt, Calabar, Warri, Lagos and Koko, among others. They built railway lines from those points to the hinterlands. Vision, planning and execution. Check out the size of the country, the endowments, natural and human and what we could have made of it. Then the question will be why is it that only Lagos port is equipped and very functional? Why aren’t Calabar, Port Harcourt, Warri, Onitsha ports made very functional? Why? One is not thinking of exportation here but export enhancement activities. Activities around ports have huge capacity to promote industrialization, national independence and to tackle unemployment on a very large scale. Agricultural activities seem to be focused mainly in the core north. This shouldn’t be so, the whole country should be turned into thriving agricultural zones producing things in commercial quantities where they have comparative advantage.
Why are we not selling canned beef outside our country? What about tinned milk? We have arable land yet tomatoes is very costly in the country. Vegetables, cassava, yam flour and even wheat can earn us much needed foreign exchange. So what is removing our focus from these paths? When we talk about economic diversification, what exactly do we mean? Extraction of minerals other than crude oil?
Isn›t it embarrassing we are very obsessed with increasing price of petroleum products, yet the challenge of pricing is tied to our linkage to international market for a product we have the raw material in abundance in our country. We talk of importing and international pricing, international prices for a country that is not industrialized, where there are no jobs and where per capital income is terribly very low. So what type of economics make us talk so much of market forces and international pricing when it is very clear we have not climbed even the first step of the competitive ladder. Voodoo economics.
We have been taught by the oppressive Western world that there is nothing in borrowing especially if it is for productive endeavors. We hear our local agents of foreign economic experts claim loans enable countries to fast track development. They say kill corruption and borrowers are home. This is a lie from the pit of hell. Those hypothesis are contrived facts not truths designed to deceive and hold a group in perpetual servitude and it is working especially against Black people.
If there were any truths in the postulations, African countries won›t be at the low level of development they find themselves today. There is no kind of loans and grants they have not received in the last six decades of their existence as independent countries. A borrower is slave to the lender. This is a fact of life whether as an individual or in the life of a country. Those who say take loans are aware the borrower has very weak institutions. Their studies show them borrowers are just that borrowers, they lack what is needed most: organization.
Western countries know borrower countries especially in Africa don›t run a merit-driven system; empty heads, who subvert themselves attain the commanding heights of power, to run the affairs. These societies make their scholars captives. So charlatans run the system. They know the leadership class are well unable to save themselves let alone a country. When the Western world set up the Brenton Wood institutions, the intention was never to help unthinking nation-state development, that would be detrimental to their well-being. It was to force them into a trap that will keep them neither alive nor dead, barely alive to do rudimentary economic activities to produce raw materials for the industries in the industrialized world.
Loans reforce the new version of slavery. We see the results with us. Not development. Weaker institutions. Closed economy. Weak government controls and the most disgusting voluntary move into modern version of slavery in developed countries. Our citizens are no longer conscripted, they take all risk including boat crossing of the Meditereanean Sea to reach out to voluntary enslavement. Foreigners minus slave efforts including so over hyped “foreign investors” never developed any country. Citizens make right sacrifices to develop their space, making it attractive for foreign interest. This is the lesson of history.
Two issues are very important sound political philosophy that seek to create a vision and produce capacity to harness all strength available internally. We have not done this. And not ready from the look of things. The second would be a resolve to run a knowledge-driven system. This will provoke a merit propelled organization, people rise and fall by what they do. Taking responsibility. This is not in place and regrettably, there is no effort in this direction.
If we meant business about developing our space it will show in the emphasis we give to the development of particular kinds of human capacity and expertise. We talk of road construction yet we rely on foreign expertise raising the question as to why do we have tertiary institutions everywhere and faculties of Science and Engineering scattered all over the country. What do they teach them and why do our graduates come out looking like they never went to school at all. Big issues. These are the things we see and we wonder if truly we want our space developed. Do we?