Agenda for All Round National Development

PERSPECTIVE

By Gbenga Olawepo

It is a happy homecoming for me 30 years after I spoke at Oduduwa hall as a guest of the OAU Students Union. It was at the height of the advocacy for mass action by Nigerian students who were being galvanized against the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) of the military administration. The National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), and other mass organizations were up in arms against the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) as a development path for the Nigerian Economy and State. Naira was just exchanging for 7 Naira to a Dollar, which we found most unacceptable, little did we know that the Naira would exchange for N360 to a Dollar someday.

Though slight progress has been made since the advent of democracy in Nigeria in between 1999-2015; Nigeria in all intents and purpose still remains a country classified as “Underdeveloped” making the question of an “Agenda for all round National Development” topical and germain.

With 62% of the population living below 2USD a day, and considered poor, with life expectancy of 51 years, and over 40% illiterate population, bedevilled with a parlous infrastructure such as poor electricity distribution, poor road networks, and dilapidated health infrastructure, the underdevelopment profile is in bold relief.

Though by the sheer nature of superiority of democracy over autocracy, Nigeria made some little gains between 1999-2015. Such gains where almost completely wiped off by 2015 July-2016 when the nation’s economy started contracting leading to her worst economic recession in 25 years -2.4%.

Just for the records, some of the remarkable gains between 1999-2015, were average life expectancy in Nigeria was increased from 46years as at 1990 to 51 years, telephone use increased from 400,000 to 100,000,000 million lines, the economy posted an average annual growth rate of 6% consistently for 15 years leading to the expansion of the GDP to 510 billion USD in 2013. The Nigerian economy thus became the largest economy in Africa over taking the economy of South Africa. However the above gains especially in the economy fronts was so little to match the rate of poverty and underdevelopment of the country, fragile  and unsustainable. In 2016 the bubble busted and the economy moved to a negative growth only to be reflated by massive external borrowings. The massive loans taken could only achieve a sluggish growth of 1.5% compared to a huge external debt which quickly grew to about 18 billion dollars in 2 years from a low figure of below 2 billion USD as at May 2015.

We are still waiting for outcome of various studies to show us the impact of what has so far happened to the Nigerian economy and society, since the economic recession of 2016. Current data from the Federal Bureau of statistics are horrifying and the indicators horrendous. FBS statistics reveals that unemployment picked from 6.3% in 2015 to 18.6% by 2017 an increase of 300%. Worst still among the youths, it is a record high of 36% little wonder why there is so much upheavals in the land. Therefore a platform to interrogate the Agenda for all round development of Nigeria, to fashion out a sustainable strategy for growth and development so that the country can live in peace, stability and prosperity cannot be more relevant than now.

Once again, Great Ife has proved truly great for creating the platform for this important discourse.

What is Development?

Development has been defined in multifarious ways by scholars of different shades. In the 70s a tribe of scholars of African Sociology and Economics led by the Guyanist scholar of Africa descent Walter Rodney were pre-occupied with this subject matter; they were known as Development and Underdevelopment theorists.

Walter Rodney in his seminar work “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” examined development at the individual level as “increased skills and capacity, greater freedom, creativity, self-discipline, responsibility and material wellbeing”.

Walter Rodney like his later disciples, Samar Amin, Bade Onimode, Nzogola Ntalaja et al, applied their interrogation of the subject-matter of development beyond the individual to society, and the economy and also adopted models of interpretation of history and characterization of different epochs of development. In the Economic realm, Rodney opines that “A society develops economically as its members increase jointly their capacity for dealing with the environment. This capacity for dealing with the environment is dependent on the extent to which they understand the laws of nature (science) and the extent and manner in which work is organised”.

We must however inform that apart from the development theories other Schools of thoughts such as modernist school, also at one point or the other examined these same concept of development and constructed their own modules.

For the purpose of this lecture, we shall stick to a safe zone by looking out for what is now universally acceptable for measuring development.  – The tables of indices developed by the United Nations Development Project (UNDP) as indicators to measure development, this is the Human Development Index (HDI).

Apart from economic growth the United Nations developed a number of indices through which development can be measured from country to country. According to the UNDP the Human Development Index (HDI) was created to emphasize that people and their capacities should be the ultimate source of accessing the development of a country not just economic growth.

The HDI indices therefore include GNI per capital, Health (Life expectancy), Knowledge, (Education, School enrolment etc.).

HOW DOES NIGERIAN FARE UNDER THE HDI?

GNI per Capital:

Nigerian per capital income as at 2016 was 5,438.9 USD 1/3 of the worlds average per capital income. In comparative terms to Asian countries and other middle-income nations who were perhaps at the same level of development with Nigerian at independence in 1960. Nigerian per capital income is disappointing. Here are a few example. Thailand 17,786 USD Chile 24,584 USD, Turkey 26,453 USD, Iran 20,030 USD and Mauritius 21,628 USD. Any reasonable development plan for Nigerian must therefore hope to increase GNI per capital by 7 folds within the next 10-15years in other to achieve a level considered at per with middle income countries.

HEALTH AND LIFE EXPECTANCY

Though we have earlier observed some important improvements in life expectancy in Nigeria from 46.1 years in 1990 – 53.1 years in 2015, the country’s life expectancy record is still depressing compared to Liberia 61 years, Niger 61.8 years, Sudan 64.1 years, and Rwanda 66.1 years and far apart from Cuba’s 79.1 years, Norway’s 81 years and 79.2 years in United States. All the African countries mentioned have gone through sustained civil wars, some pogroms, some civil wars combined with outbreak of epidemics, but still have better life expectancy figure compared to Nigeria.

EDUCATION

While Nigerians in diaspora remains the most educated set of immigrants in percentage terms compared to their various host communities, at home illiteracy level is still as high as 46%.

HDI Ranking

Based on all indices measured in 2016, Nigerian ranked 152 of 188 countries measured in UNDP 2016 Human Development Index (HDI). It fell below Kenya and some other African countries in the West African Sub-Region.

The data from Federal Bureau of Statistics have been equally as damning on the performance indicators on Sustainable Development goals in Nigeria just as the UNDP HDI report. As they “say figures do not lie”.

In the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’S) baseline report 2016 Published by the Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) most of the indicators are woeful, particularly as it affects the young and the youths. Current data indicate that Nigeria has never so ignored her young people as much as it’s currently doing.

Let us review some few data here: 36% of Nigerian youths are currently unemployed. 20% of youths are currently not in any employment, education or training. They are completely hopeless. For children too, even though not so much is done for them through public policy or family; the adult in the world extract so much from them in terms of forced labour. The FBS study indicates that 47.1% percent of children between ages 5 – 17 are engaged in some form of unpaid labour or the other. It is tragic that our country has become less caring and more vicious in the abuse of her younger population.

WE CAN CHANGE THE NIGERIAN STORY.

Distinguished Guest, Ladies and Gentlemen despite the above negative indicators in Human Development Index (HDI), I remain optimistic about Nigerian development trajectory when we tap and build on the energy, creativity, imagination and the industry of everyday Nigerian which is the most important asset that Nigeria possess beyond her Oil wealth and Natural resources.

As we pointed out at Imperial college London in November 2015 “It is due to the hard work and industry of the ordinary Nigerians the nation’s greatest asset that Nigeria attained a GDP rebased of 510 billion USD in 2013 exceeding that of South Africa to become the biggest African Economy even in the face of her Parlous infrastructure. The fit was a result of the toiling of small scale entrepreneurs who continue to create value without adequate electricity, cottage food processor, without affordable financing, farmers with the scantest of state support artisans, bold and imaginative business men and women, dynamic financial managers, young innovators, creative artist, hardworking professionals and intellectuals.

Credible international consulting groups such as Price Water Cooper share in our optimism. According to Price Water and Cooper Nigerian economy will grow to be the 9th largest economy in the world in 2050 based on very dynamic key drivers of the economy that has to do with the strength of Nigerians people, the size of her market and less with excellence in governance. Below are some of the key drivers that offers possibilities for rapid investment and growth of Nigeria.

1. Nigeria has a robust middle class which according to Standard bank reportedly grew 6 folds between 2000-2010
2. Nigeria has a large market of potential consumers of modern goods and services. This consumers have an attractive profile for investors and manufacturers they already have acquired the discipline to pay for consumption through savings and earnings and have low household debts.

  III.            The infrastructure deficit of the country is both a challenge as well as an opportunity for investment. Out there in the global market according to Oxford economist and PricewaterCooper, there is about 78 Trillion USD globally to spend within Ten (10) years looking for infrastructure market to domicile. Nigeria’s hunger for infrastructure investment and with a high record of IRR (above 18%) makes it a natural destination for massive investment if simple bureaucratic hurdles that have continuously impeded investments can be dismantled.

To be added to the above strength of the Nigerian nation is the nation’s resourceful diaspora community these community of scientist, intelligentsia, innovators, professionals, footballers and Entrepreneurs are adding golden pages to the Nigeria rising story. In 2013 foreign remittances picked as much as 21 billion dollars to Nigeria, mostly coming from the Nigeria diaspora. The diaspora community will continue to form a major pillar in the architecture of Nigerian Socio-economic development. Even in the face of many other negative stories all over the world educated Nigerians are doing well and making the nation proud. The Imafidon twins Paula and Peter broke the world record in mathematics by passing the Cambridge exams at age 8, being the youngest ever to do so. Dr Victor Olalusi who scored 5.0 GPA in the faculty of clinical sciences at the Russian national medical university in 2013 is arguably the first in the world to do so. There are numbers of Americans of Nigerian decent such as Emeka Echeruo founder of hopstop.com purchased by apple at a price of 1 billion USD, who are doing the nation proud in the ICT world. Young Nigerians at home and abroad are proving their exceptional brilliance; 24years old Oluwatobi Olasukanmi won the Williams Charleny prize for the best first class law at the University of Cambridge. Nigerian youths are not just strong and energetic they are bright and brilliant and they compete well anywhere in the world.

The crisis of Nigeria underdevelopment as we have highlighted above can only be confronted and resolved with a bold agenda and plan aimed at changing the present economy structure of dependence, it must be revolutionary massive and contain the following elements:

i).      It must aim within 10 to 15 years to expand the GDP by seven fold in order to be able to provide the needed resources to end poverty and underdevelopment on a sustainable basis.

ii).     The New Nigeria Economic Development Plan must aim to encourage Domestic Capital Formation as a source of financing development rather than dependent on revenue from primary products such as oil and solid minerals. Giving present structure of international trade, the more developing countries export primary products, the less value they get. The revenue from exports proceed is usually so little that sometimes, they compete with revenue of just one corporation from advanced countries of Europe and America. Sample-for all the fuse about the high oil receipts in 2013 in Nigeria, about US$50 billion, it compares only with the revenue of Disney world, which was US$47billion. Even if no cent was stolen from the oil receipts it will still be inadequate to finance any meaningful development that a country of 180million population requires.

iii).    The New Nigeria Economic Development Plan must prioritize investment both from public and private investment in foundation industries that will imbue the Economic with the technical capacity for industrialization and manufacturing. These include immediate priority investment through joint venture financing in iron and steel, machine tools, chemicals, aluminum, glass, plastics and petrochemicals. These industries will help accelerate the process of ‘Domestic Capital Formation’ as they are industries directly connected with the production of Capital goods.

iv).    The New Nigeria Economic Plan must sustain Nigeria as an open economy that encourages private entrepreneurship for both foreign and local investments side by side with State investments in projects linked to the production of capital goods and infrastructure.

In order to sustain these essential features of Nigeria economy as an open society, the current relapse to the regime of impunity must be rolled back to the more positive administrative practice that respects the sanctity of contacts, a practice which encouraged Private Sector investment in the economy at the dawn of democracy in 1999 and the succeeding fifteen years after. This is important because, whereas business can handle corruption, business cannot cohabit with impunity. Impunity and political blackmail of business hurts economy more than corruption.

iv).    The New Nigeria Economic Plan must promote Innovation, Secure Proprietary and Copyright in order to make burgeoning ICT sector witness rapid expansion. Protection of copyright will also promote increase scientific research and its commercialization; it will spur innovation in science and arts.

v).     Agriculture must be linked to Manufacturing and Industry. Currently, over 70

% of employed hands in Nigeria are engaged in one form of agriculture or the other compared to about 2% of Americans. But the total productivity of these 70% engaged hands in Nigeria’s agricultural sector is less than that of 2% of Americans.

          It must therefore be a central objective of the New Nigeria Agricultural policy not only to increase productivity through State support such as provision of extension services to small holders, finance at low interest rate on individual and cooperative basis; but also to link agricultural sector directly to industry and manufacturing in specifically designated zones and Economic clusters, where Agriculture is integrated with industry. Increase agricultural productivity will have meaning within the economy and that agriculture will cease to be a business just to produce for the stomach but also, to produce vital raw materials for industries and the manufacturing sector; the most effective way to create employment

vii)    The New Nigeria Economic Plan must seek to transform the Nigeria Economy to a manufacturing Economy from agrarian economy and change it from an economy that is based on production of primary products. Currently, according to FBS record, manufacturing accounts for 9.43% of Nigeria GDP while it provides as low as 0.3% of employment. Transferring the economy to a manufacturing will entail a number of policy incentives, such as creating a fiscal environment and collaborative monetary policy that will allow promoters of manufacturing concerns to access finance at single digit rate and ensuring available power to reduce manufacturers’ energy costs. Ultimately, Nigeria needs to grow the manufacturing sector in such a way that it will account for 30-40% of her GDP and be a major employer of labour. China is already an example of how an agrarian economy can be transformed into a manufacturing economy. As at 2015, manufacturing accounts for 40% of GDP of China. As at 2005, the manufacturing sector was also responsible for 11% of total employment. In India, the Industrial Sector accounts for robust 25% of GDP.

FULL EMPLOYMENT AS A POLICY OF ACHIEVING GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT.

As earlier observed, unemployment is at an all time high in Nigeria, at national level, stood at 18.6%, this is a recipe for an unending chaos. Full employment through value creating jobs is not just a social policy to help the needy but an economic policy to continuously sustain economic growth for a strong population with disposable income, is a key driver to attract investment into new ventures, industries and infrastructures. Economists such as Lord Maynard Keynes, who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer in England, understood clearly the role of creating employment in bailing out a depressed economy in other to stimulate growth. It must be a policy of the New Nigeria Economy to stimulate employment in Agro-Allied industry, ICT, Manufacturing, infrastructure, solid minerals extraction, not just for exports but linked to the needs of local industries.

RESTRUCTURING PUBLIC FINANCE, AND THE FINANCIAL SECTOR FOR A GROWTH LED STRATEGY.

In order to direct available finance in the country for key task of industrialization; the country must prioritize available finance for modernizing the country’s infrastructure.

The trend in which 80% of revenue in the nation’s budget has been disproportionately consistently applied to recurrent expenditure; whilst capital expenditure takes the back seat at 20% must be discontinued

To begin with, it must be the goal of public finance to allocate 50% of revenue to capital expenditure.

Secondly, there must be a complete change in the budgeting system from the current envelope system where annual budgets are merely a repeat of previous year sectorial allocation with variations, accounting for inflation. Budgeting must become NEEDS-BASED, driven by national economic priority, based on a new plan to build modern infrastructure, make the needed social investment for the country and industrialize Nigeria.

Thirdly, another element of financial reform that Nigeria needs to undertake is to ensure banking and financial sectors make capital available to the real sector of the economy. Whereas, monetary policy formulation is within the competence of the Central Bank which has autonomy over this matters, the necessary coordination between the fiscal and monetary Authorities must be generated to allow the new reform, which must also include bringing down the present unsustainable lending rate to a single digit. At 17.5% – 25% lending rate in the Nigeria financial market, no meaningful industrialization can take place as industrialists and manufacturers from other countries take money for business for as low as 4%. In Malaysia, prevailing lending rate is 4.9%; China is 4.35%; India is 9.45%; South Africa is 10%. Nigeria must move within the single digit band.

REMOVING BOTTLENECKS TO PROMOTE INVESTMENTS IN THE ECONOMY

As previously observed, the high interest rate of return that investment posts in Nigeria plus the size of the market should naturally recommend the country as a perfect investment destination. But the ability to attract massive private sector investments both from Nigerian and foreign investors has been limited by unnecessary hurdles investors face in trying to obtain permits, licenses, approvals etc. Paper works in Nigeria take more time than even the time developer spend in building infrastructure that the nation desperately needs, whilst it was the good intention of the drafters of the constitution and various legislations to provide autonomy to many regulatory agencies to protect them from unnecessary interventions, the autonomy granted have in most cases been turned to protection for administrative incompetence, which has continuously impeded the ability of the country to net needed investments. These particular problems have acquired international notoriety. Whilst some progress has been made through the initiative of the office of the Vice President of Nigeria between 2016 – 2017, the progress made in the ease of doing business needs to be more rapid. At the moment in Nigeria was ranked 145th out  of 190 countries in the World Bank ease of doing business report in 2018.

The time has come to dismantle the bottlenecks through a coordinated reform prowess that will be collaborative between both the executive and the legislative. The desired change in the regulatory system of the various sectors of the economy must reduce waiting time on licensing and permits to 90 days and not 2-3 years, as is current practice. It must also make regulatory agencies accountable in the performance of their duties as autonomy now means literally, lack of accountability.

PRIORITIZING INVESTMENT IN ELECTRICITY GENERATION, DISTRIBUTION AND TRANSMISSION.

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen; Building an industrialized and modern economy will be impossible without simultaneously directing national energy to rapidly increasing electricity generation, distribution and transmission. The current national electricity generation capacity of about 6,000megawatts is too little a capacity for any meaningful development compared to South African’s generation capacity of more than 40,000megawatts capacity. Nigeria need to aim for over 160,000MW capacity within Ten (10) years to be at per with South Africa per capital generation, and also eliminate current inefficiency in electricity distribution and establish a fair and consumer friendly electricity tariff that will as well be cost recoverable to attract an estimated 200billion Dollar investments from both private and public sectors for the next Ten (10) years.

As enumerated earlier in our paper on “Facilitating Resilient and Sustainable Infrastructural Development”, there must be “Administrative and Regulatory” reforms to eliminate bureaucratic bottlenecks in the power sector, quickly to make the needed investment to flow into the sector.

MAKING SOCIAL INVESTMENTS THE SOUL OF OUR DEVELOPMENT AGENDA

Nigeria as a country has been pulling apart because of rising incidence of poverty, squalor and unemployment. Inequality and The attendant misery have been rising, occasioning massive social instability and insecurity.

An agenda for development cannot just concern itself with expanding GDP and raising infrastructure expenditures alone. But must focus on pin-point targeted expenditure on health, education, the youth population and investment in social services.

The reason why Nigeria is experiencing massive social upheavals is not just because it has low income per capital but due also to the fact that available income is not being applied averagely for the welfare of all. Various African countries with half Nigeria’s income per capital post better development indicators.

As we have observed elsewhere, “The social problems are not going to abate except Nigeria invests immediately in the welfare of the people. According to a recent study by the African Development Information Centre, by 2030, Nigeria’s population will grow to about 210 million; 70 million of this forecast population will be living in North- Eastern Nigeria where there is currently an extremist insurgency; 35 million of which will be under the age of fifteen and would not have received any form of formal education. This is alarming!

We must invest now to bridge the social divide by making primary and secondary education completely free of all cost with feeding and welfare support at primary school levels. This must be a federally financed program worked out with local authorities for effective implementation. Free education must be entirely free indeed without hidden cost such as examination fees and cost of uniforms.

The quality of educational and health institutions must be upgraded through the recruitment of qualified professionals, training and retraining of existing hands making available needed equipment and infrastructure and improving productivity and output through a scientific audit system that ties reward and emoluments to performance.

Nigeria must quickly introduce a comprehensive program of accessible, cost-free and qualitative health service coverage for all Nigerians. Nigeria can afford these programs right now as we are already spending billions of dollars managing the social upheavals that are caused by decades of ignoring the welfare of the people especially the young and the vulnerable”.

CONCLUSION

Ladies and Gentlemen, the task before patriotic Nigerians who have assigned to themselves the role to see a new, modern, economically developed Nigeria with a prosperous population living in peace and security is daunting but achievable!

This great nation Nigeria has seen many national challenges in the past resolved by the determination of her people. Our forbears overcame colonial rule by the share power of their determination, organisation and faith in the future. Our generation paid the price to rescue the established Nigerian Democracy after independence from the jaw of military autocracy. The task at hand is to ensure a prosperous democratic Nigeria for all, where the country’s’ resources and talents will be applied for all, regardless of ethnicity and religion.

Olawepo, an oil industry business player, gave this lecture at the College of Post-Graduate Studies, OAU, Ile-Ife, recently