The Nation Newspaper

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  • Why C/River led in budget transparency survey

    Not surprisingly, Nigeria’s material circumstance fell due for appraisal as the Civil Resource Development and Documentation Centre (CIRDDOC Nigeria), a consortium of civil society organizations in conjunction with the Department of International Development (DFID), presented its annual states budget transparency survey for 2015. The event which took place in Abuja penultimate week attracted the creme de la creme of the civil society, the public and the media. The report which focuses on the debilities in our budgetary system is a stark confirmation to Nigerians long confounded by the apparent discontinuities between official avowals and performance among Nigeria’s 36 states in 2014. According to CIRDDOC’s Executive Director, Oby Nwankwo, the Nigeria Sub-national Budget Transparency Survey 2015 was inspired by their partners and their works and hoped that the survey, in turn, would contribute to the impact of their initiatives and advance budget transparency in the states surveyed and the country at large.

    As the report noted, budget translates policies into programmes, such as those meant to provide vaccinations, textbooks in schools, and subsidies to farmers. In a contractual economic environment, budget transparency and participation are therefore essential to ensuring that the allocation of public funds is prioritized to reflect the needs of the public. Due to Nigeria’s centripetal fiscal arrangement, state governments have had the onerous task of prioritizing the allocation of scarce resources. Since states and local governments are closest in proximity to the people, the need for an open, transparent, and participatory budget and procurement process is critical to ending the misappropriation of public funds that could be used for development purposes.

    Unfortunately, the finding of the State Budget Transparency Survey 2015 is that the state budget transparency is deplorable. The report finds that in most of the states surveyed, the public does not have access to comprehensive and timely information needed to participate meaningfully in the budget process and to hold government accountable. The report frowns at this lack of transparency which, according to it, encourages inappropriate, wasteful and corrupt spending, and because it shuts the public out of decision making, it reduces the legitimacy and impact of anti-poverty initiatives. A state’s score and placement within a performance category is determined by averaging the responses to 51 questions on the State Budget Transparency Questionnaire related to information contained in the eight key budget documents that all states are required to make available to the public.

    In the end, the State Budget Transparency Index 2015 reported that over half of Nigerian states failed to provide adequate budget information to the public, opportunities for public involvement throughout the budget process, and publicly available information on the procurement process. According to the report, only Cross River, Ekiti and Lagos states under their immediate past governors scored above 50 per cent on the State Budget Transparency Index, meaning that, on the average, they published more than half of the eight key budget documents, they held consultations to provide inputs in budget formulation and public hearings on the budget, and they published bidding documentation and awards on procurement projects. Whereas Cross River led the pack of winners in the overall transparency index, Ekiti led in the provision of documents. On the assumed average, Cross River State took overall best position with 77 per cent score.

    It was another memorable outing for Cross River State whose mention of its immediate past governor Senator Liyel Imoke conjures up excellence as an elated Imoke was invited to the podium to explain his magic wand amid spontaneous ovations from the cheering audience as the occasion was beamed by the national media. This is not the first time the state is leading the pack among the 36 states. In 2010, Bekwara and Obubra local governments in Cross River State were scripted in gold on the global medical map when they recorded a zero infant/maternal mortality rate, thus attracting recognition by the United Nations, earning the state an award for meeting the Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5. Again, in 2013, the United Nations Development Project for Africa (UNDP Africa) declared Cross River State the best governed state in Nigeria. In the same (2013), the state won the Bill Gates Award for Polio Eradication. The Imoke administration also attracted a private sector giant, the United States-based General Electric, which is building its factory in Calabar and investing over a billion dollars in the state because of the investor-friendly policy of the state government under Imoke. The saying that adversity introduces a man to himself cannot be more apt as applied to Cross River State. Since the ceding of its 76 oil wells to Akwa Ibom State in 2008 thus removing it from the list of littoral states in the country, the Imoke-led administration resorted to prudent management of its scarce resources and transparency, as a survivalist strategy.

    This earned the former governor the appellation of “Mr. Due Process”. Relying wholly on Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) and the small allocation from the Federation Account, and without Derivation Fund, Imoke attacked excruciating poverty and underdevelopment head on in the state. While it is impossible to articulate the cumulative magnitude of his eight year developmental strides in one piece, this may actually be a factual aid to construe Imoke’s staggering achievements in Cross River State. Besides asphalting a network of more than 1,000 kilometres well developed, closely knit roads across the state, his government gave a face-lift to education. To accentuate his priority to education, not only did he build and renovate several schools across the state, he re-introduced scholarship awards for indigenes of the state to study at home and abroad. An attempt to encode some of his projects would definitely not exclude the inimitable ones among the lot. Urban and rural roads, Airport Bye-pass, Urban and rural Water Scheme, Tinapa Knowledge City, Monorail, the first fly-over in Calabar, Smartgov and Electronic Citizen Identification Scheme, easily come to mind.

    Others include: International Convention Centre cited by CNN as one of the three architectural wonders in Africa, International Specialist Hospital, International Golf Course, the Songhai Farm Project, Model Schools, Port-side Industrial Park, Housing Estates, Mother & Child Free Healthcare Programme, GIS and Land Registration Reform, etcetera. The Imoke administration had placed the Annual Calabar Carnival on global annual tourism calendar. What is more, the transformation of the rural economy through lifting road access restrictions to rural entrepreneurial potentials remains legendary. Add to this, the transformation of the system of governance into the new digital age for efficiency and attainment of the optimum in the aggregation of potential revenue resources of the state, excluding oil.

    Above all, the establishment of strategic assets across sectors, namely: healthcare, education, agriculture, electrification, water, urban and rural transportation to regenerate the rural-urban economy, among others. Yet, this miracle cannot be divorced from Imoke’s strategic templates which included a creative facilitation of the flow of private investor money into the state’s unproductive assets to make them operational thereby lifting the state’s tourism economy. In fact, Imoke’s capacity for prudent husbandry of scarce resources was a mystery yet to be unravelled. The state’s star-like outing at the states budget transparency survey is therefore not a surprise.

    • Orjiakor is an Abuja-based public policy analyst.

  • Reforming the Nigerian Civil Service: My struggles, my pain, my triumphs (V)

    The first brutal fact I confronted when I joined the civil service was its complex operational frameworks, and unfortunately its pathology. I came in when the Nigerian civil service had already imbibed, to the fullest possible extent, the disenabling bureaucratic culture. The complex operational dynamics of every civil service system all over the world had begun to overwhelm our own system, and like we said in the last part, the system itself was not prepared for the challenge of change. The rule of the officials had commenced, and to borrow the title of Michel Crozier’s book, the Nigerian Civil Service became a ‘bureaucratic phenomenon.’ As it became immediately obvious to me, as the bureaucratic complacency became entrenched, and the official procedures became multiplied, the citizens became more excluded from democratic transaction, and became more disenchanted.

    From the mid-70s, the Nigerian Civil Service had already got a bad name.

    We all have experienced the red tape at one time or the other-the clerk painting her fingers while people wait impatiently on the long queue; the official who complicates a simple matter of getting a license because he wants a bribe; moving from one office to the other trying to track a file; the annoying list is endless. Peter Enahoro, the veteran journalist, considers the civil servants as trapped within their own institution: ‘Civil servants are also a compromise between incivility and servitude. They are inherently uncivil and economically servile. The civil servant is underpaid, which makes his service equivalent to servitude. On the other hand, the civil servant takes a razor-sharp tongue to work with him and will snap like the jaws of a crocodile at the least provocation. Thus, while he is not civil, he is a servant. It is a rare compromise.’

    It took me a while before I would begin to understand that the public service has a deeper professional pedigree than what we today see all around us at federal and state secretariats all over the country. By the time I had embarked on the doctoral programme, it dawned on me that the public service is actually a vocation, a deep spiritual calling that requires a deep service to the public. Of course, this is difficult to accept within the contextual bastardisation which Enahoro referred to as ‘uncivil servitude.’ But the simple question that would bring enlightenment is: where did we derive the concept of ‘public service’ from? And why ‘public or civil service’?

    The civil service, which predates the idea of modern government, derives essentially from a vision of ensuring social order from an administrative coordination of human affairs. Since its beginning in the ancient Egyptian society, the public service has been perennially faced with the urgent need of confronting the complex task of managing public affairs through the ingenuity and creative acumen of a manager who understands the dynamics of management and how it can be directed in a manner that impacts positively on the citizens of a state. Those that were chosen to serve the pharaoh, a demi-god in ancient Egypt, were required to go through a special scribal education that was partly a lesson in administrative responsibility, partly an induction into patriotic enthusiasm, and partly a cultural enlightenment.

    I had to understand Plato and Weber to come to a full realization of what service as spirituality means. The first time I read Plato’s Republic, as a young secondary school boy, it struck me as a fundamental political manifesto. It was a philosophical reflection on how to tame political disorder in a state. But Plato had a higher intention if his Republic would be better than Athens. Plato was convinced that if a state must work to deliver the goods to its citizenry and maintain harmony, it must also be strongly fortified by a cadre of managers and experts who know what they are doing. Plato definitely had more intellectual resources and political complexity than the pharaohs. And, still smarting from the judicial murder of Socrates in the hands of public servants, Plato knew that the depth of philosophical diligence must be reached if the Republic must have a public service that is true to the most fundamental principles of the state. And he deployed educational, psychological, metaphysical and epistemological resources to ensure that.

    But it is to Max Weber that I must give the intellectual credit for the groundwork that reveals the public service as a vocation. With his theory of the modern bureaucracy, Weber outlined the specific relationship that ought to exist between the public servants and the government. His sociological legacy consists in giving us the template for what he called the ‘ideal-type’ bureaucracy which can serve as the rational basis by which ‘actual type’ bureaucracies, public or private, can be assessed for the rational attainment of the goals of the organisation.The idea of bureaucracy, for Weber, is based on the notion of legal-rational authority; an authority which employees recognise as legitimate. The framework of the legal-rational authority privileges written rules and procedures. Each position in the bureaucracy has its duties and rights, which are clearly defined; rules and procedures are laid down to determine how the given authority is to be exercised. Bureaucracy therefore promises a stable organisation, despite the fact that its incumbents come and go. Weber’s ideal-type bureaucracy emerged as neutral, hierarchically organised, precise, continuous, disciplined, strict, efficient, reliable and ultimately inevitable in contemporary society. The bureaucracy was to become technically the most efficient form of organisation. And in Weber’s sociological, Plato’s philosophical and the pharaoh’s cultural vision, the public service was to become a vocation.

    And the first condition for such a vocation is that the public servant must be apolitical in a manner that shields him or her from political patronage that could colour his or her administrative judgment. This is what Joseph Schumpeter meant when he remarked that ‘bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it.’ As history has shown, it is a very short step from administrative service to administrative dominance by officials. As vocation, the public service was to be a spiritual calling, a profession that would consume the affections of those committed to it. A profession becomes a calling or a vocation when it becomes integrated within an ethical framework and is therefore attached to larger vision and purpose beyond itself. It is in this sense that a bureaucrat is ‘called’ to serve the state and a purpose beyond him/herself.

    Beyond the rigid intellectual framework of my doctoral dissertation, I did not need to look to pharaonic Egypt, ancient Rome or 18th century Prussia to encounter those who are public servants par excellence-Nigeria had its own golden era of public service professionalism whose foundation was laid by die-hard public servants: Simeon Adebo, Jerome Udoji, Sule Katagum, S. O. Wey, Ali Akilu, Allison Ayida, Phillip Asiodu,  Ahmed Joda, Ime Ebong, Yetunde Ighodalo, Francesca Emanuel, Tejumade Alakija, Gray Longe, Shehu Musa, to name just a few. All these worked tirelessly to reproduce a functional and ethically responsible civil service in post-independence Nigeria. Chief Simeon Adebo’s service credential is all the more incredible because he had no special original calling into administration; he was a graduate of English! Yet, he came to a deep understanding of his vocation as more than just an employment. Adebo would definitely understand Abraham Maslow’s contention that ‘Duty cannot be contrasted with pleasure, nor work with play when duty is pleasure, when work is play, and the person doing his duty and being virtuous is simultaneously seeking his pleasure and being happy.’

    Unfortunately, these same professional civil servants who laid the foundation of what we now regard as the golden era of public service in Nigeria watched perplexed as the civil service they had built was overwhelmed by incipient bureaucratic pathology. Before their very eyes, their civil service was demoted from being one of the celebrated civil services in the Commonwealth to become an extremely degenerate structure that could no longer transform policies into infrastructural frameworks. It was this civil service that I made the decision to join in the late 80s, and that decision transformed my entire personal and professional lives.

     

     

  • Reforming the Nigerian Civil Service: My struggles, my pain, my triumphs (V)

    The first brutal fact I confronted when I joined the civil service was its complex operational frameworks, and unfortunately its pathology. I came in when the Nigerian civil service had already imbibed, to the fullest possible extent, the disenabling bureaucratic culture. The complex operational dynamics of every civil service system all over the world had begun to overwhelm our own system, and like we said in the last part, the system itself was not prepared for the challenge of change. The rule of the officials had commenced, and to borrow the title of Michel Crozier’s book, the Nigerian Civil Service became a ‘bureaucratic phenomenon.’ As it became immediately obvious to me, as the bureaucratic complacency became entrenched, and the official procedures became multiplied, the citizens became more excluded from democratic transaction, and became more disenchanted.

    From the mid-70s, the Nigerian Civil Service had already got a bad name.

    We all have experienced the red tape at one time or the other-the clerk painting her fingers while people wait impatiently on the long queue; the official who complicates a simple matter of getting a license because he wants a bribe; moving from one office to the other trying to track a file; the annoying list is endless. Peter Enahoro, the veteran journalist, considers the civil servants as trapped within their own institution: ‘Civil servants are also a compromise between incivility and servitude. They are inherently uncivil and economically servile. The civil servant is underpaid, which makes his service equivalent to servitude. On the other hand, the civil servant takes a razor-sharp tongue to work with him and will snap like the jaws of a crocodile at the least provocation. Thus, while he is not civil, he is a servant. It is a rare compromise.’

    It took me a while before I would begin to understand that the public service has a deeper professional pedigree than what we today see all around us at federal and state secretariats all over the country. By the time I had embarked on the doctoral programme, it dawned on me that the public service is actually a vocation, a deep spiritual calling that requires a deep service to the public. Of course, this is difficult to accept within the contextual bastardisation which Enahoro referred to as ‘uncivil servitude.’ But the simple question that would bring enlightenment is: where did we derive the concept of ‘public service’ from? And why ‘public or civil service’?

    The civil service, which predates the idea of modern government, derives essentially from a vision of ensuring social order from an administrative coordination of human affairs. Since its beginning in the ancient Egyptian society, the public service has been perennially faced with the urgent need of confronting the complex task of managing public affairs through the ingenuity and creative acumen of a manager who understands the dynamics of management and how it can be directed in a manner that impacts positively on the citizens of a state. Those that were chosen to serve the pharaoh, a demi-god in ancient Egypt, were required to go through a special scribal education that was partly a lesson in administrative responsibility, partly an induction into patriotic enthusiasm, and partly a cultural enlightenment.

    I had to understand Plato and Weber to come to a full realization of what service as spirituality means. The first time I read Plato’s Republic, as a young secondary school boy, it struck me as a fundamental political manifesto. It was a philosophical reflection on how to tame political disorder in a state. But Plato had a higher intention if his Republic would be better than Athens. Plato was convinced that if a state must work to deliver the goods to its citizenry and maintain harmony, it must also be strongly fortified by a cadre of managers and experts who know what they are doing. Plato definitely had more intellectual resources and political complexity than the pharaohs. And, still smarting from the judicial murder of Socrates in the hands of public servants, Plato knew that the depth of philosophical diligence must be reached if the Republic must have a public service that is true to the most fundamental principles of the state. And he deployed educational, psychological, metaphysical and epistemological resources to ensure that.

    But it is to Max Weber that I must give the intellectual credit for the groundwork that reveals the public service as a vocation. With his theory of the modern bureaucracy, Weber outlined the specific relationship that ought to exist between the public servants and the government. His sociological legacy consists in giving us the template for what he called the ‘ideal-type’ bureaucracy which can serve as the rational basis by which ‘actual type’ bureaucracies, public or private, can be assessed for the rational attainment of the goals of the organisation.The idea of bureaucracy, for Weber, is based on the notion of legal-rational authority; an authority which employees recognise as legitimate. The framework of the legal-rational authority privileges written rules and procedures. Each position in the bureaucracy has its duties and rights, which are clearly defined; rules and procedures are laid down to determine how the given authority is to be exercised. Bureaucracy therefore promises a stable organisation, despite the fact that its incumbents come and go. Weber’s ideal-type bureaucracy emerged as neutral, hierarchically organised, precise, continuous, disciplined, strict, efficient, reliable and ultimately inevitable in contemporary society. The bureaucracy was to become technically the most efficient form of organisation. And in Weber’s sociological, Plato’s philosophical and the pharaoh’s cultural vision, the public service was to become a vocation.

    And the first condition for such a vocation is that the public servant must be apolitical in a manner that shields him or her from political patronage that could colour his or her administrative judgment. This is what Joseph Schumpeter meant when he remarked that ‘bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it.’ As history has shown, it is a very short step from administrative service to administrative dominance by officials. As vocation, the public service was to be a spiritual calling, a profession that would consume the affections of those committed to it. A profession becomes a calling or a vocation when it becomes integrated within an ethical framework and is therefore attached to larger vision and purpose beyond itself. It is in this sense that a bureaucrat is ‘called’ to serve the state and a purpose beyond him/herself.

    Beyond the rigid intellectual framework of my doctoral dissertation, I did not need to look to pharaonic Egypt, ancient Rome or 18th century Prussia to encounter those who are public servants par excellence-Nigeria had its own golden era of public service professionalism whose foundation was laid by die-hard public servants: Simeon Adebo, Jerome Udoji, Sule Katagum, S. O. Wey, Ali Akilu, Allison Ayida, Phillip Asiodu,  Ahmed Joda, Ime Ebong, Yetunde Ighodalo, Francesca Emanuel, Tejumade Alakija, Gray Longe, Shehu Musa, to name just a few. All these worked tirelessly to reproduce a functional and ethically responsible civil service in post-independence Nigeria. Chief Simeon Adebo’s service credential is all the more incredible because he had no special original calling into administration; he was a graduate of English! Yet, he came to a deep understanding of his vocation as more than just an employment. Adebo would definitely understand Abraham Maslow’s contention that ‘Duty cannot be contrasted with pleasure, nor work with play when duty is pleasure, when work is play, and the person doing his duty and being virtuous is simultaneously seeking his pleasure and being happy.’

    Unfortunately, these same professional civil servants who laid the foundation of what we now regard as the golden era of public service in Nigeria watched perplexed as the civil service they had built was overwhelmed by incipient bureaucratic pathology. Before their very eyes, their civil service was demoted from being one of the celebrated civil services in the Commonwealth to become an extremely degenerate structure that could no longer transform policies into infrastructural frameworks. It was this civil service that I made the decision to join in the late 80s, and that decision transformed my entire personal and professional lives.

  • Soyinka’s intervention against kidology: A reader’s appraisal

    The Kongi of Africa, himself the inimitable Wole Soyinka, has sneezed polemically again. He has given the community of readers and those committed to a life of the mind another somewhat meaty matter to engage with – InterInventions: Between Defective Memory and the Public Lie – A Personal Odyssey in the Republic of Liars (2015).

    Needless to say, it is a philippic, a withering put-down complete with the appurtenances of raging polemics and the ubiquitous tropes of humour, satire, sarcasm, innuendo and irony, which markedly distinguish the God of Baroka, Eleshin Oba, King Baabu, among many other fictive beings. As in other blistering discourses, in the book(herein referred to as InterInventions) Soyinka does not spare those who (un)wittingly drew his caustic ire. He also remains a polemicist of undiminished excellence.

    In his carefully planned voyage in what he calls the Republic of Liars – a republic where damaging and ignominious mendacitiesare festooned with apparels of truths -, Soyinka specifically names individuals who he claims have joyously violated the sanctity of truth. The named spinners of untruths have not been out to express their opinions of his actions and inactions, he argues, but have been inventing lies about him and passing them off as truths in public spaces. He informs that such kidology (the art or practice of making people believe something which is not true) does not only affronts him, but it also contaminates the public mind. And because of the gravely hurtful consequences that do result from the inventions of lies against, about and to people, it becomes unavoidable that the veneer of truth cast on the mounds of lies be viciously ripped up.

    And so with the unmistakable precision of a medieval archer Soyinka in InterInventionsgives the corpulent balloons of lies a fatal pinprick and demonstrates no restraint bulldozing the magnificent edifices of fibs in the public sphere. His argument is that since a person who lies to, against, or about you has no respect for you and does not care a hoot about what becomes of your image or the pain inflicted on you, in debunking their lies you must not do so using lavender language. This evidently accounts for the scurrilous and offensive descriptions Soyinka meanly gives of the eight personalities he contends are archetypes of public liars on account of the things they said and wrote about him. It appears Soyinka is saying that not one of the eight – Chinweizu, AdewaleMaja-Pearce, Peter Pan (Enahoro), OlusegunObasanjo, AbiolaOgundokun, Major Salawu, Gbenga Daniel, and OlagunsoyeOyinlola – has a redeeming grace.

    In addition to refuting the lies of his anti-heroes, I am of the view that Soyinka equally derives happiness and peace of mind from the hearty laughter his satiric and humorous depictions of his subjects elicit in the reader. The observation of the psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud, adds ballast to the foregoing conclusion: ‘[B]y belittling and humbling our enemy, by scorning and ridiculing him, we indirectly obtain the pleasure of his defeat by the laughter of the third person’. The contemptuous portrayals are done in a way that deflates the egos of his traducers and diminishes their valuation in the republic they reconstruct with base falsities and outright half-truths.In beaming a searchlight on the motivations behind the actions of ‘the greatest public liars’ he has ever known, Soyinka critically questions their character ‘as leading – or recognised – figures of society’.

    It is interesting to note that Soyinka in the book does not claim to be an Island of truth. He may not be afflicted with defective memory, a crippling disease ravaging the denizens of the Republic of Liars, but heencourages others to highlight and respond to any gap they observe in his chronicle. Hear him: ‘If I am wrong, then those who feel close to public figures trapped in such existential nightmare [amnesia] should assist others by releasing their own versions into the public arena’ (16).

    As a public intellectual who understands the importance of enriching public knowledge, Soyinka challenges all of those he features in InterInventionsto respond to his damning claims against them. Soyinka gives such challenges that no person of honour or integrity can afford to ignore. On page 35 he eggs on Chinweizu; on page 40 and 45 Peter Enahoro gets more than a nudge to gush; and on page 126 he crossly demands that Prince Oyinlola, the last-minute entrant into the lying contest in the Republic of Liars, ‘must be put to the strictest proof to substantiate several outrageous claims he made in recent press statement’ against him (Soyinka).

    Certainly, Soyinka cannot be entirely correct in his fulminating assertions against all of these people. I do not think it will be proper to alloweniOgunhave the last words. The writing back of those concerned will also help to enrich public discourses. The reading public awaits their responses, flaming or not.

    Of equal importance also is the challenge Soyinka throws at the media and the general Nigerian public. Lean and/or defective memorydoes a lot to encourage the flowering of lies as truths. It is the reason ‘the average Nigerian mind’, according to Soyinka, becomes a ‘heaving hive of riotous fecundity […] straining to give birth to the next monstrosity of a lie’ (5). While the media is expected to considerably improve its record-keeping capacity and be more than just purveyors of claims and counterclaims, the public too ‘has a responsibility to itself not to be mentally lazy or succumb to facile propaganda’ (31). Nigerians must cast off the cloaks of docility and gullibility which continue to make them victims of contemptible and dehumanising lies easefully hurled at them time and again by those who rule them. Nigerians must be profoundly critical in their reception of the words and actions of their leaders at whatever level. They must quit being lovers of easy answers and discontinue the culture of taking the words of secular and spiritual authorities at their face value.

    More specifically, our young people must cease being reflectors of adult society’s lies and prejudices. I argue that part of the reasons the National Youth Service Corps’ objective of fostering national unity has been floundering in the last one decade can be located in the deep-seated prejudices laden in the vacant and barely educated minds of both Northern and Southern corps members. On different social media platforms, our young people respond to socio-political issues not through critical, structured thinking, but of course through the abundance of the mind-limiting propagandas and lethal falsifications they have uncritically received. To this group of Nigerian, Soyinka’s exhortation is apposite: ‘[S]top rushing to inherit stained, tarnished and rhetorical standards. […] Find your own feet, adopt and address your own urgent and relevant causes.

    Since the book being appraised here thematises kidology of ‘staggering impudence’ in the public space, I hold the view that the continual claim of successive Nigerian rulers about the unity of the country should be considered as a demeaning and insulting lie. In contrast to the sickening claim of Nigerian rulers and many a Nigerian about the indivisibility of the country, events in the country from 1960 till date starkly show that the oneness and unity of Nigeria is a ruse. How come that some of the hugely avoidable deaths recorded in the country were directly caused by the sword of unity? Why is the country convulsed from time to time by the clangourous dins and threats of secession?

    If the decimating scourge of kidology has not completely creamed off the better part of our humanity, I think we must manfully confront our worst fears and have a serious debate on whether the many nations of this country want to remain as one entity or break up. We must boldly face our fiercest demons and do something about the fraudulent ‘we’ in the opening paragraph of ‘our constitution’. What we have today as one, indivisible country is a humongous LIE, at best a republic founded on and sustained by lies, lying rulers, and acquiescent followers! Borders are not cast in iron; they can be redrawn – ask them in Ukraine.

    As I coursed through the 136 pagesof Soyinka’s engagingly polemical, relentlessly stinging, and profusely critical harangue on the ruinous impact of public lies, I paid attention to his perturbing lamentation on the slow pace of the wheel of Justice in Nigeria.

    Finally, the Republic of Liars of Soyinka is patriarchal through and through. It is the reason we do not read of one single belle who fobbed him off. If you excuse the sordidness of InterInventionsidioms and the overdramatized emotional explosion of its author, you will appreciate the rationale behind the dismantling of the superb structures of kidology crowding the public space.

     

    • Ademola writes from Bodija, Ibadan,

    Oyo State.

  • Lagos and the miracle of ‘little things’

    The world has always been waiting for this-that ‘common’ touch that calms frayed nerves; that little, extra spice that adds the needed flavour to the soup which satiates the palate of hunger and that powerful pace that breaks long-held sprints record. There is of course, that potent push from Mother Muse that gives life to latent dreams. But few leaders have identified that secret ingredient which makes the difference. And fewer still can bridge the gap between political precepts and pragmatic performance

    Such little things may not be as profound as the efforts of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), the third President of the United States of America who was the author of the Declaration of Independence.

    Interestingly, one of the new set of political leaders in Nigeria who has started to exhibit  such admirable trait of caring for the needy and the most vulnerable members of our society is Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State. This is a deliberate effort to fulfill his mandate to the people, as he obtained from the effective feedback mechanism during the tour of 20 LGAs covering 37 LCDAs.

    For instance, as events have unfolded over the past six months his administration has bought ambulances for all the public hospitals in the state, paid the aggrieved medical doctors their outstanding salaries and the long-suffering pensioners. He has similarly lent helping hand to victims of disasters including motor-accidents, fire outbreaks and mudslide in addition to diffusing governance to those at the lower rung of the Lagos society.

    Specifically, for the health sector, the governor has commissioned 20 Mobile Intensive Care Units (MICU) and 26 Transport Ambulances one for each of the 26 General hospitals. He has also approved the recruitment of more paramedic staff and special medical coordinators to guarantee 24 hours service. Besides, he has upgraded General Hospitals and constructed a Medical Park fully equipped with quality drugs and new mobile X-Ray machines. Indeed, empirical evidence attests to the fact that since the ambulances were made available deaths related to emergency situations have drastically reduced.

    It would be recalled that before his predecessor left office, salaries of medical personnel were withheld for months because the members took part in the  national strike called by the National Medical Association(NMA).This caused some avoidable friction between the government and those with the constitutional mandate to promote and protect the people’s healthcare. But Ambode in his characteristic prompt response to issues bothering on the citizen’s welfare has risen to the occasion. This has rejuvenated their sagging spirit and boosted their morale and performance. Now, the doctors, nurses and other medical practitioners are smiling and so are we.

    So also, is the timely intervention of governor to reverse the ugly drift of pensioners who had served the state meritoriously but were left in the lurch. To ensure that those who served the state meritoriously retire to smile he approved the payment of N2.2billion to 658 retirees from the Civil Service, Local Government, SUBEB other agencies and parastatals. The unique Retirement Benefit Bond presentation is the 18th consecutive one since the inception of the Contributory Pension Scheme.

    This prompt payment of their terminal benefits, running into billions of naira, soon after he took the reins of governance has pulled many of them out of the ignoble pit of poverty. Before then several of them had died while queuing for what rightly belonged to them. Those still surviving were left to stew in penury and made to regret putting in their best while in service.

    The clear message this noble gesture has sent to those in the employ of the government is significant. It has no doubt enhanced their confidence, that they would be adequately rewarded for their energy, time and other resources when they eventually take a bow. This new paradigm has oiled the government machinery for greater productivity and efficiency. One interesting feature of Ambode’s governance style that has appealed to people is demystifying leadership. Now we know that it is meant to benefit the people rather than any avaricious political class. The story is told of one Mr. Olamide Akinsola, a twitter user who wrote a proposal, dropped it at the office of the governor without going through anybody of influence in the corridors of power. To his pleasant surprise he received calls with regards to his letter eight days later.

    All these ‘little things’ may not be gigantic white elephant projects but more like streams that flow into River Niger they have the cumulative capacity to irrigate our arid desires.

    Welcome to a bright new dawn of limitless possibilities.

    • Ajanaku is the Senior Special Assistant, Media and Strategy to Lagos State governor.
  • Running the economy without oil

    Running the economy without oil

    There were two major national problems our military rulers managed poorly. First was the enormous wealth that came our way in the oil boom of the early 70s. One martial ruler said his headache wasn’t money: It was how to spend it whereupon the country under him took upon itself the Father Christmas role. We gave and gave to African countries that were not as oily endowed as we were. When we could no longer locate the needy in Africa we turned to shores outside the continent.

    There was that distant Caribbean island. One of the reports on the matter said we paid the salaries of that country’s civil servants when the government couldn’t oblige their servants. Was it a loan? Was the money paid back with interest? Or we gave it to them not hoping it will be returned?

    After that era, another military leader came into the scene. He also enjoyed economic prosperity, engendered by the then Persian Gulf War that made Nigeria’s crude oil much sought after. His own problem was that despite applying all the political and economic strategies that big money could afford, a socio-politically ailing Nigeria failed to stabilize. And so he threw up his arms in despair and said the country had defied every solution in the books. Many astute observers wondered what became of the wise counsel of the galactic cabinet of his junta.

    Now in our day, in the period that would soon pass as the post-oil age, there is another challenge: what do we do without oil wealth? Can we manage the country and its teeming population with depleting wealth from crude? Is it possible to run this huge economy without the black gold?

    Those who have a keen sense of history, those who know what played out in the days of the old Western Region under Chief Obafemi Awolowo wouldn’t beat about the bush to answer those questions in the positive. They would tell you offhand that if he and the premiers of the other two regions developed their areas without oil in their days, Nigeria today would also thrive without oil, if we had the right leaders with bold and resourceful ideas.

    Oil wealth is receding, incapable of matching fiscal policy while there is a massive pressure on our rulers to sustain the machinery of government and to meet the yearnings of those who enabled their existence in our democratic process. So our leaders and their partners in industry are expected to move with lightning speed and walk away from oil as a base for development. We must think out of the box. Doing so means generating wealth from ideas such as countries without oil are doing and moving their societies into the league of leading nations of the world, far ahead of those with oil weapon which is now proving inadequate.

    Lately, we have seen this movement of idea power put to work in Ogun State. Faced with a bleak future for oil revenue and a rush of social and economic migrants from Lagos and other peripheral states, the administration of Governor Ibukunle Amosun has had to initiate creative strategies to raise good money to fund gigantic projects and meet the needs of the state’s burgeoning population. He is beating a retreat from resting on the rickety base of oil economy.

    Amosun resorted to the bold and imaginative step of what the government has since described as the Homeowners Charter project. It entailed a drastic discount in the process of acquiring the all-important Certificate of Occupancy for landed property in the state. It will cost close to N600, 000 to possess it. But in the arrangement initiated by Amosun, a property holder will pay less than N100, 000.

    Late in November in Abeokuta, the state capital, when he presented C of Os and Building Plan Approval to some 1000 more of the Home Owners Charter beneficiaries, Amosun alluded to a major advantage of the scheme: employment generation.

    Now I add four more: Home Owners Charter reduced crime in Ogun through its direct and indirect employment of the youth; it raised more funds for the mammoth capital development projects going on all over the state; it brought security of property ownership in Ogun; finally it enhanced the owner’s mortgage loan potential.

    Now oil revenue hasn’t played a role in all these. It’s been the result arising from a sheer stroke of an idea. Just as it was when the illustrious leader of the sprawling Western Region of Nigeria Obafemi Awolowo didn’t have oil money but still performed wonders under a cocoa economy. He was creative with what he had to introduce free education for his people. It was the same enterprising mentality that made him build the Western Nigerian television station in Ibadan, which was reputed to be the first in Africa.  In the North, it was Ahmadu Bello working without oil but relying on imaginative programmes who built the groundnut pyramids to develop his region. And in the East, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe employed a coal industry to raise a solid economic base for the Eastern Region of Nigeria. In all these instances it was the spirit of creativity that performed the magic.

    What Amosun has also achieved with the Home Owners Charter scheme represents a spark from the realm of creativity. It has as we have seen ledto ripples of other life-giving projects to the benefit of society.

    What he and other men and women of ideas in our midst are teaching is that the country can be run on the wheels of ideas and enterprise in this age of dwindling resources from oil as we rely on science and technology rather than on the brawny oil regime.

    Government and stakeholders in education and youth training programmes in the society must draw appropriate lessons from the Ogun state’s Home Owners Charter initiative. Let us beat a retreat from an all-tutorial diet that glues our kids to the classroom all their lives in school. Vocational and entrepreneurial exposure must no longer take the back seat. Theory must go side by side with practice.

    If we pick the fields of agriculture and solid minerals for instance and toss in the bubbling creativity of our inexhaustible human resources, backed by the advanced tools of science and technology along with the right leadership, I can’t imagine Nigeria being clubbed in the log of poor countries or among the so-termed developing nations. Nor can we again be in the Third World.

     

  • The new shared economy

    The new shared economy

    The popular saying used to be that big fish would eat small fish. This has since changed significantly in the light of recent happenings in the global economy; UBER, until recently a relatively unknown company out of Silicon Valley in California employs 160,000 drivers today, and is adding an average of 20,000 drivers every month. This transport services disrupter is now valued at $41b. Another obscure company with similar roots, AirBnB, has over 1.5m accommodation on its platform, and is now valued at $25b. Upwork, a platform that connects businesses with freelancers have gone from zero to $1b revenues in just five years and projects to reach $10b in the next five years.

    The new disrupters are not confined to just North America and Europe. China’s foremost e-commerce business, Alibaba’s recent listing on the New York Stock exchange broke all records with a valuation of $170b. DiDi Kuaidi, a Chinese transport platform is pooling over eight million drivers and serving 10 million commuters every day, in a consumer to consumer model.

    Here in Nigeria, CWG Plc, has seen a record uptake of six million new accounts on the Diamond Y’ellow Account platform, a mobile banking product that it white labels, and recently launched in conjunction with MTN and Diamond Bank, targeted at MTN subscribers.

    The new saying today is that fast fish will eat slow fish. Nimble, highly innovative companies are taking advantage of ubiquitous broadband and smartphone penetration to push business models that ride on providing virtual products over a virtual channel, thus pushing transaction velocity to the limit, and securing a bigger slice of the pie in the process. These companies, primarily in the technology industry are rapidly disrupting long standing businesses in a model that would not have been possible as early as a decade ago, and racking up huge valuations in the process. Welcome the Czars of the new sharing economy, also sometimes referred to as the gig economy, or the on-demand economy. WhatsApp, founded in 2009 already handles 10 billion more messages a day than the SMS global text-messaging system, and was recently acquired by Facebook for $19b.

    This new business model is simply meeting a pent up demand of consumers. Today’s customers demand to have their products and services delivered to them wherever and whenever, and do not necessarily want to cut a cheque or reach for their wallets to pay. They usually bank online and are less likely to have paid a visit to their banks in the past one month. Disrupters such as Apple seem to have heard them very clearly and working round the clock to provide a seamless payment solution. ApplePay currently serve users of IOS devices who have registered their credit or debit cards. It is used to pay for goods at shops that have near field communication (NFC) readers. Apple is now developing a peer to peer option, which puts it directly in competition with more established players such as PayPal. It is not only Apple that is circling around Pay Pal’s lunch. Samsung has a similar product, and Google used to have Google wallet.

    It seems that Cloud Computing has finally come of age, as these disrupters typically deliver their platforms over the cloud. Oracle has started offering cloud services including databases. Microsoft’s only growing business is her cloud services. Amazon’s only profitable business is her cloud services, which now includes online database as a service. CWG launched her new subscription based business model christened CWG2.0 on the Cloud Platform. It enables the business to scale globally seamlessly, without having to make any investments in brick and mortar.

    The global economy seems to be moving from getting supply from companies, to a crowd sourcing model in a peer to peer way. Regulation of this ‘new normal’ is quite a challenge because regulation is backward-looking while innovation is forward looking, so there is always a gap which creates considerable tension. It takes quite some time for regulation to catch up with technology, so there is a period of time where the disrupter seem to be operating in ‘no man’s land’ as far as the law is concerned.

    Another major challenge in the new economy is data security. The bigger problem is about governments getting interested wherever there is large amount of data, and seeking to gain access to it, perhaps for tax purposes, security etc. How do the new businesses, which typically generate tons of customer data handle this dilemma? On more than one occasion, Google has reported governments’ requests for access to her data.

    There is a lot of concern around the disruptive force of digitalisation and the need for inclusive growth and job creation. The impression is that digitalisation kills jobs through automation. The reality is that for every job lost through digitization, 12 more are created, but you may need retraining and retooling to benefit. In reality, digitisation provided a whopping $193b boost to world economic output and created six million jobs globally in 2011, equivalent to a 1.02% drop in the unemployment rate.

    It is very clear that we are at the throes of a new digital economy. Companies who fail to adapt to the new imperatives of the shared economy should prepare to write their obituaries.

    • Okere writes from New York

     

  • Akwa Ibom: Road to economic turnaround

    Akwa Ibom: Road to economic turnaround

    The morning they say, shows the day. For the Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Udom Emmanuel, the six months he has been in office, is enough for him to x-ray the problems confronting the state and find lasting solutions for them. Expectedly, he has left no one in doubt about his deep appreciation of the problems that confront the state, and the solutions that must be brought to bear in getting it out of the economic doldrums in which it has been.

    After the infrastructure renaissance that was achieved in the last eight years, the state urgently needed to break with the tendencies that left it economically incapacitated for decades. The person to carry out this task was certainly not one with public sector perception of governance. Udom’s appointment as secretary to the government was therefore to give him an inside knowledge of the political aspect of governance, which he mastered in two years.

    In the nearly six months that he has been in office, the governor has left no one in doubt about his deep appreciation of the problems that confront the state, and the solutions that must be brought to bear in getting it out of the economic doldrums in which it has been. He has gone about the business of erecting structures that would support his industrialisation drive, knowing that it is the only way the state can emerge from its past and be economically relevant in the Nigeria of the 21st century.

    The office Udom is occupying today is, for him, not a fulfillment of a personal ambition, certainly, not an ambition he could have nursed while making his mark in the nation’s financial sector, where he rose to the pinnacle of his career as a chartered accountant. It is a case of seizing a rare opportunity presented by providence to mastermind the economic revolution of a state with which he was proud to identify, even when he did not know he would one day be the one to inaugurate that revolution.

    Udom represents the positive change that only a new order can guarantee for Akwa Ibom. This explains the continued rise of his profile since he became governor, because the people see in him a man who is genuinely committed to taking the state to new heights.

    They see a governor who is not driven by any desire to settle old scores or fulfill a personal lifetime ambition. Above all, they see, in what he has achieved in so short a time, that they made the right choice on April 11. It is the reason they will stand with him all the way.

     

    Udom, the Peoples Democratic Party candidate in the election was, until his appointment to replace Umana as secretary to the government, a prominent member of the Akwa Ibom ‘Diaspora’ in Lagos – a group of professionals who have distinguished themselves in different areas of endeavour in the nation’s commercial capital.

    After many years in the private sector, which saw him rise to the position of executive director in one of Nigeria’s biggest banks, he is well equipped for the task of reinventing the wheel of progress in Akwa Ibom, in a manner only someone with a good grasp of the workings of the private sector and its strategic importance in economic development can do.

    That is why some analysts believe the forthcoming state governorship election re-run in the state is not really a contest between two political parties – the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC). Nor is it just a contest between two individuals – Udom and Umana Okon Umana. It goes beyond all that.

    Even before the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) blew the whistle for official commencement of electioneering ahead of last April election, it had been known that the race to Government House, Uyo, was going to be a battle of sorts between two political parties; between two individuals; between two power blocks and between two spheres of interests in the state. That there were, at the final count, four candidates for the governorship election, did nothing to change the fact that it was, essentially, a two-horse race.

    Umana, the APC candidate, came into the election representing many interests. Firstly, to fulfill a lifetime ambition of occupying the highest office in the state, if only as a befitting climax to many years in public service, which saw him hold such offices as director of budget; permanent secretary; commissioner for finance and secretary to the government. He is also working hard to protect the interest of his party by re-establishing its relevance in the state.

    Umana has been a lucky chap. He was a permanent secretary, and would probably have been content to enjoying his retirement at the end of his career. But former Governor Victor Attah made him commissioner for finance, a position that made him prominent on the corridors of power and exposed him to the inner workings of government. His position as secretary to the government under former Governor Godswill Akpabio placed him only two steps away from the top job, and apparently further ignited his interest in the ultimate office.

    As the number three man in the executive branch, Umana wielded a lot of influence and power. It helped his case that the rumour mills literally gave him the governorship of the state, at the completion of Akpabio’s tenure. But it wasn’t to be.

    • Abiola wrote this piece from Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.

  • The youths and the fight against graft

    The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) is, of late, on the fast lane. Smarting from the high scores it recorded with the approach of fighting corruption by preventive measures, its new initiative of incorporating the Nigerian youths into anti-corruption war strikes as another means of closing the circle of good ideas on its desire to opening up participation in the war on corruption in the country.

    Indeed, ICPC demonstrated ingenuity on its desire to raise the bar on the fight against corruption by forging a synergy with representatives of the youths on war against corruption. The Chairman, Barrister Ekpo Nta, indicated this much when he said in his welcome address to the participants at the ICPC two-day National Conference Against Corruption in Abuja on November 24, 2015 that the idea of partnership with the Nigerian youths, indeed, originated from the youths.

    An earlier public outing in Ibadan between ICPC officials and members of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) on the need to intensify fight against corruption yielded an initiative for an extended conference which the two agreed to organise. Suggestion to that effect came from the students, while ICPC took up the challenge to put the conference in place.

    To underscore its huge interest in forging a synergy with the youths on the war against corruption, the ICPC deployed a robust team of its officials headed by Professor Olu Aina to brain storm with leaders of the Nigerian students on the need for a national conference to advance on the evolving initiative.

    It was after this National Conference that Nigerians began to appreciate the necessity for collaboration between the ICPC and the youths on evolving a cutting-edge approach towards fighting corruption in the country.

    Speaker after speaker at the conference hailed the ICPC for taking up the challenge. For instance, the Comptroller General of the Nigerian Customs, Colonel Hamid Ibrahim Ali (retd), and the Minister of Youths and Sports, Solomon Dalong, agreed that the ICPC and Nigerian youths’ synergy could not have come at a better time.

    The guest speakers took time to educate the youths on the onerous responsibilities entrusted in them to fight corruption. They, indeed, impressed it on the youths to latch onto the platform already created for them to get involved in the fight, while they were entreated to take the lead in the process.

    The chief host, Mr. Nta, was the most elated. He expressed confidence in their ability to make the difference on the basis that doing so would enable them to stave off the dangers that acts of corruption hold against the youths’ future.

    The ICPC Chairman was of the view that the commission had already been good to the youths before now. He told participants at the conference that ICPC had also initiated anti-corruption curriculum in schools while also engaging the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) on the task of infusing national values on schools’ curriculum.

    The conference hit the right momentum during the opening ceremony when Dalong, the Minister of Youths and Sports, addressed the youths on the high expectations by Nigerians on what they could do to bail out the country from corruption. His advice to the youths was considered germane given the role he had played in the past as the president of NANS.

    Col. Ali (retd), the Comptroller General of the Nigerian Customs, spoke in the same vein when he said, “We must ensure the active participation of young public servants in the fight against corruption. The better future we hope to live belongs to the youths and it is only right that you play an active role in shaping it.”

    There is hope that the youths will go out there and work on what they got to rid the country of corruption.

     

    • Idowu Samuel, Abuja.

     

  • Bailing out non-productivity

    Bailout or no bailout – that seems to be the questioning hue and cry currently pervading the financial landscape of our nation.  What exactly are we bailing out – the enviable national productivity of the nation’s civil servants or funding the bottomless pit of a non-productive template?

    Many states and federal civil servants are being owed several months of overdue payments.  What has not been highlighted is whether they actually deserve these payments.  Have their services to the nation yielded whatever billions have been agreed to be paid to them?  This is money that would be borrowed on their behalf and definitely with interest strings attached to repayment.

    Even with all these, Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State on Splash FM in Ibadan was reported to have stated that the amount being earmarked for his state would not be enough. But is the contribution of the Oyo State Civil Service to the state’s revenue coffers able to generate whatever they are receiving monthly from the federal coffers?  If not, then Oyo State, with Ibadan as its capital – previously the capital of the economically buoyant old Western Region – is not a viable state.  If Oyo State with its historical pedigree, certainly much smaller in size than the Western Region, is not able to stand on its own, then one is safe in concluding that there is no viable state in Nigeria.

    I am sure people would mention Lagos and Rivers States.  Well, sorry to burst your bubbles, none of them is viable.

    Lagos State leads with its ‘centre of excellence’ mantra.  Checking Google – import export container ratio Nigeria – displays a different picture that we import 92% containers and export 8%. That 92% comes in through the Lagos ports. The banks lubricate this; the telecoms provide the cable high-speed network connection while the aviation sector provides the hydraulics for fast distribution to all parts of the federation with the Lagos State revenue system living off Nigeria’s import consumption appetite.  Only Lagos State is so blessed and is the main reason why it can survive the federal government ‘strangulation’ when push came to shove during the Tinubu-Obasanjo saga.  Lagos State, contrary to its slogan hardly contributes to the economic value of Nigeria PLC but to its importation feeding frenzy and it feeds off it.

    Rivers State on the other hand does contribute to the Nigerian economy – in fact it is THE main contributor holding up the Nigerian economy.  Only problem is, if all foreigners were to abandon ship and cart away all their equipment, we, 160 million plus of us, can hardly get that oil or gas. So whatever shape Rivers State is in is only dependent on magnanimity of the foreigners who still find it worth their while to drill for us. Without them we are nothing as we are dependent on them for our mono-cultural existence.

    The current template on which the country is run with the most Honest, Accountable and Transparent (HAT) system would not move the country forward on an exponential scale, diversify our economy in record time nor would it make our citizens suddenly more creative, innovative and productive.

    Our reactive-oriented civil service is tailored to only act as a distribution channel for money from Port Harcourt and its environs and contributing nothing of significant value to the growth of the economy.  Once that distribution channel dries up, there is nothing to do than to moan and groan under the strains and pains of the pipes not providing the petro-dollars sufficiently enough anymore.  Once this non-productive train of activities is extended to the states and local government level, then one begins to get a picture of the wasteful essence of the Civil Service.

    For this to change we would have to make two drastic revolutionary moves.

    One is making the Civil Service more proactive like bank workers sourcing for business and not closing down businesses except where it is directly injurious to public health.  Priority is on making businesses survive and thrive and not taxing the few ones into liquidation.  If their remuneration rates are tied to the survival of companies, civil servants would be interested in the sustainability of the private sector and not focussed on welding the draconian stick of shutting down private companies or the bureaucratic paper shuffling of nothing done until ‘what is in it for me?’ has been addressed.  No one whose financial fate is tied to the thriving of a business would ever promote its destruction.

    The industrial, agricultural, trading and commercial activities of a nation are supposed to be viable enough to fund the public sector.  Where they hardly exist and the national economy is public sector-driven provides a classic illustration of our non-productive orientation as a nation as we have been dependent on the sure banker petroleum booty from Port Harcourt which we have been conditioned to expect and simply sign off for.  This is exactly why the civil servants can have a non-chalant attitude towards the private sector since its productivity or otherwise has no effect on them.

    Making the Civil Service proactive at the federal level is one challenge in itself, to achieve the same at the state and local government level is another challenge of heavenly magnitude.  The same proactive orientation needed at the federal level must now be applied to the governors to be more entrepreneurial and extend same to the local government councils and officials – now that, seriously, is new territory that needs to be creatively charted in order to make the rural sector engaged with the wider economy. Without the state government apparatus and local government officials on board, this, my dear readers will just remain a pipe dream.

    Now to the other sector that really underpins this acclaimed non-productivity – the education sector.  Without beating round the bush, it is the root of our problems. It produces the civil servants from all the universities, pen and paper pushers of no productive or practical value to the wider economy apart from seeking employment in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt.  Our university products can only work in the financial, telecoms, tax offices and transport sector in Lagos, the Civil Service and legislative chambers in Abuja and the petroleum sector in Port Harcourt.  Outside of these sectors, the only place they can function in is the state’s Civil Service, waiting for contributions from the Abuja control and distribution centre made from Port Harcourt’s petroleum goodies.

    To achieve a revolutionary transformation of the education sector would require a budgetary allocation and a radical curriculum overhaul to target the professions that can be of use to the other 33 states so they can contribute to the nation’s economy rather than just be siphoning parasites feeding off the nation.

    For now, we are funding a template of the abyss that yields nothing of national meaningful value; only dependent on Niger Delta states in a country of 36-plus-one states. This is what we want to provide more bailout for to cement further a nationally wasteful blueprint.

     

    • Owolowo is an educationist, trainer and rural entrepreneur.