The Nation Newspaper

Tag: holding

  • What is holding Africa back?

    Frustrated by the colossal failure in his continent, a young father once asked rhetorically, “Is black a curse?” Never shrink back from a controversial, and probably stupid, inquiry, I said to myself. So let us try the remix of that question.

    Is the lightning speed of Usain Bolt and all other 100m champions before him a curse? Or is the phenomenal strength of Iron Mike a desecration of nature? Or is the beauty of Meagan Good a sad consequence of genetic mutation? Can black be nature’s mistake?

    Black is divine, the bullying muscles of their ripped men, the voluptuous curves of their endowed women, beautifully conceived and sculptured in the mind of the most intelligent being in the universe.

    But this is not really a question of who is strongest, fastest, or most beautiful, but who has the capacity to build an advanced world by themselves, and for themselves? The curse question then becomes relevant when you take a snapshot of the entire sub-Saharan African region, the world headquarters of poverty, diseases, and underdevelopment.

    The question becomes even more pertinent knowing that this region possesses the most abundant natural resources and a human resource base with the most tremendous entrepreneurial energy needed for success. Sub-Saharan Africa could so easily have become the most strategically important geopolitical region on the planet, leading the way both intellectually and economically, smashing and holding every world record in the Olympic games that require power play. (Remember Jesse Owens).

    Except they are mostly held back by one crucial factor, not religion or ethnicity, not a low IQ, not their leaders per se, and definitely not a curse, but a certain attitude mostly characteristic of the sub-Saharan African region.

    Name any of the world’s great who is black, who have reached the pinnacle of their careers, whether in the field of technology, medicine, or entertainment, and they would have plied their trade in the West, an environment more conducive to nurturing talent, to harnessing new and imaginative ideas generated by all, irrespective of race. Back home in Africa, their successes would most likely have been limited by this characteristic attitude.

    So here is the attitude holding Africa back. You can see it in the most common of places, the highways, when driving in Africa.

    At intersections or narrow streets, nine out of 10 motorists who find themselves in a gridlock with other motorists would never back up. They would rather create a major traffic jam than yield when ‘challenged’ in a traffic confrontation. A nose-to-tail traffic can easily become a tug of war as everyone defends his right of way. Interestingly, cutting a line, or getting in front of other motorists, is as easy as begging for permission, in effect, massaging someone’s ego, rather than trying to be the victor in a power tussle. And for the benevolent motorist, it is a case of, “You didn’t win. I let you through.”

    The prevailing attitude governing every facet of life in Africa can be summarized with these stereotypes: To get ahead of me, I will have to let you pass, or you will never get through. Your success either comes from me, or through me, or you will have no success at all. We are either at par, or everyone else must simply play catch-up. You simply cannot be better than me. This mental disposition is powered by the “I pass my neighbour” syndrome.

    It is difficult to find the words to describe this attitude. This is neither hatred nor wickedness. Is it a display of alpha male superiority and dominance (ladies are not left out), or just being plain inconsiderate and uncompassionate? Interestingly, this attitude is not displayed towards obvious foreigners, for example Europeans, who are highly respected. Every confrontation, every situation, every hiccup, every obstacle, becomes a challenge that must be won, if only for personal ego. The little things are hardly allowed to slide for the greater good of society.

    Now picture this attitude in political establishments, in corporate organizations, in academic institutions. For example, students fail to come up with a first-class under the watch of university lecturers who failed to achieve that academic feat. Embezzlements are not just in response to poverty but to ensure parity is never achieved in society. Wages in local-based companies are ridiculously kept low for the same reason.

    A destructively competitive and jealous spirit becomes apparent, one that creates very little cohesion and minimal cooperation. Many individuals will rather let a societal project burn if the accolades will go to someone else. This guarantees only one reality, that societies are littered with unkempt lawns on the sidewalks, untarred roads, dilapidated structures, unfunded public institutions, and an unsatisfied, malnourished, disgruntled, and eviscerated populace.

    Whether Africa succeeds or not depends on their ability to restore a noble value system in their people. Some believe their society lost its way somewhere in the distant and forgotten past. Still, it is never too late to adopt the values of equity, selflessness and respect for others, honouring the dignity, rights and privileges of everyone to enjoy a fulfilling existence, knowing that they all share a common ancestry that makes them family.

    So here is a simple formula that could propel Africa into a century of progress: live and let live. Whatever the nature of the challenge, always let go of ego and back-up for the greater good. Let others through. Let others have it if they deserve it. Sub-Saharan Africans can be great, even greatest, if they choose to be, definitely with input from the West as South Africa has proven.

    In the end, it is a matter of choice – their choice.

  • Holding the nation by the jugular

    SIR: Since pump price of petrol was fixed at N145 per litre, the nation appears to have enjoyed stability and reprieve from incessant queues arising from fuel scarcity at filing stations. It became so easy to the extent that petrol attendants were going round or stationed at entrance of filing stations beckoning on motorists for patronage and even offering discounts on fixed prices. Nigerians were happy and expressed satisfaction at the turn of events.

    Suddenly and in an attempt to remind us of the ugly past of celebrating major festivals especially Christmas and New year in fuel scarcity, Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria PENGASSAN gave a notice of indefinite strike action due to staff lay-off by their employers. This was a dispute which government had no hand and which could be resolved through  civilised and reasonable engagement either by payoff or reinstatement of affected staff.

    Pronto, truck drivers stopped lifting products. Panic, chaos and confusion began. No doubt, PENGASSAN and other other unions in the petroleum industry have formed the habit of taking advantage of their privilege position to inflict pain and stress on Nigerians. The unions behave like babies whose feeding bottles must be full at all times. They have often received uncommon and prompt attention on all issues from mundane to not too consequential from the government.

    The action by PENGASSAN is arrogant, unpatriotic, uncivilized and condemnable. Workers in other sectors of the economy face worse labour crisis, but go about them in nondestructive manner. The ripple effect of the action by PENGASSAN has since reverbrated across the country. For how long shall we continue on this route of national dislocation by workers in critical sectors of the economy?

    It is time for Nigerians to wake up, take destinies in their hands, by speaking against those that misuse tools of their privileged positions to inflict pains on them and make money out of desperate situations.

    The owners of tank firms, oil marketers and managers of filling stations are culpable. The Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) whose responsibility it is to go after those that hoard petroleum products and sell above regulated prices should rise up and deal decisively with them. No doubt, people behind this evil acts are big, rich and influential; they must be exposed and shamed. The federal government should strengthen the laws, through the National Assembly, that punish offenders under the miscellaneous offences act.

    • Remi Oyebamiji,

    Lagos.

  • What’s holding us back?

    The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah said this about the paradox of the Nigerian society. “Nigerian educational systems have surprising outcomes. The smartest students pass with First Class and get admitted to Medical and Engineering Schools. The Second Class students get MBAs and LLBs to manage with the First Class students. The Third Class students enter politics and rule both the First and Second Class students.

    “The Failures enter the Underworld of crime and control the politicians and businesses. And best of all, those who did not attend school become Prophets and Imams and everyone follows them. What a paradox of life. This can only happen in Nigeria where corruption is the order of the day.”

    Those who are matured enough to look at Nigeria with unglazed eyes know the Bishop painted a graphic picture of our society, Nigeria is indeed a paradox. Times without number I have asked myself what’s really holding us back. Are the forces of evil holding this country in a vice grip more powerful than the forces of good? Why is injustice so glaring in our land? Why would some officials – paid with government money – be so wicked and callous to exploit helpless IDPs? Why do we love mediocrity so much, yet we hurriedly praise positive strides other nations make?

    Joseph Stiglitz, one of the world’s best-known economists and former chief economist at the World Bank tried to give us a clue in a chapter of his book “Making Globalization Work.” “And there is a striking difference between the riches that arise from hard work and creativity and those that come from grabbing hold in one way or another of a nation’s natural resources. The latter is particularly enervating for national cohesion… It is not surprising that discontent seethes beneath the surfaces of these countries.”

    Those familiar with the affairs of natural resources endowed nations like Nigeria, Venezuela, Angola, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and others know that Stiglitz hit the nail on the head. In Nigeria, all our state officials do is to fly to Abuja and collect their cheques from the federation account and in the process killing all forms of creativity. The recession induced by the oil price crash has laid our flanks bare.

    One of the most significant of Nigeria’s many paradoxes remains the glaring disconnect between the country’s resource base and the state of its people. This was even glaring prior to the current recession. The growing disconnect between the improving macroeconomic indicators – which was our hallmark for years – and the growing descent into poverty of over 100 million Nigerians clearly has both short term and long term implications.

    Statistics appear to grossly under-estimate the immensity of poverty that defines Nigeria’s paradoxes.  More than 90 per cent of Nigerians are poor and exist largely at the mercy of fate. These realities are much more obvious when one visits rural areas and slums. Some will ‘laugh’ if you tell them stories that in these places people die because they cannot afford N500 to purchase needed medication or basic public healthcare. Worse still, people around may not be able to help as they too may not be able to collectively raise that amount of money. It is a very obvious reality in today’s Nigeria! As strange as it may sound, this is going on side-by-side with ostentatious living by our own one per cent!

    By the way, these are not recession induced. As far back as 2012 when things were even ‘rosy’ the harmonized Nigeria Living Standards Survey (HNLSS) conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) puts the Nigerian poverty profile at 69 per cent – this indicates that poverty and income inequality in the country have increased since 2003/2004.

    It is now clear that we have a crisis which historically has been a platform for the creation of, and dynamic sustenance of other crises. It only “dawned” on us when recession hit that the fundamental imperfections in the macro-economic structure of Nigeria is unsustainable; and that our politics cannot crowd out the implosion that would ensue from this unaddressed problem.

    It is a trite fact that unemployment economically translates to low purchasing power leading to lesser consumption of goods and services. This in turn impacts on businesses which have to lower production outputs, out rightly shut down production or relocate like a tomato paste company did recently by relocating to China and Kenya because of stifling operating environment.

    Another paradox is the curious issue of GDP. It suggests we had more production in the country. Yet if total output was so impressive, the question must be asked as to why this is not reflected positively in the unemployment, poverty and income figures for the majority of our people. It’s equally curious how what should be our distinct advantage – our close to 180million population size – is now a now a huge burden.

    In my wanderings, I have asked: could it have something to do with the economic model that positions Nigeria as an input provider and an import dependent economy? Is it not possible that our policy of selling all our agricultural produces and mineral resources (cassava, cocoa, cashew, oil etc) as inputs to developed nations who invests in processing/production and exports same to us to consume is the underbelly of all our problems?

    Questions of these natures will continue to agitate the mind. As the recession has shown, it is clear that we cannot continue to pretend about this reality anymore. Until we pursue a growth inclusive economic model, we would continue to manage an economy that pushes the productive capacity of this country into irrelevance, and the people far into desperation. Whatever we do, if we do not address poverty we’re going nowhere.

    At the heart of the problem remain successive government’s economic policies which need to change. The economy since the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) of the 1990s is one that supports imported consumption and not local production, thereby perpetuating dependency, non-inclusive growth and insecurity in the process. At a point, the economy grew at close to 10 percent annually yet the people were getting poorer. My economist friend tells me the answer is simply because growth gains are not evenly distributed. Personal income is skewed towards people in the oil industry, Telecoms, high finance, stock market, real estate and yes civil servants and politicians who feed on corruption.

    Yet another paradox is that we have a large cotton belt in the country but we import textiles from China. The implication is that we keep their subsidized factories open and jobs for their citizens. We are the world’s number one producer of cassava but import cassava starch from Europe. We have a huge tomato belt in Jigawa and Chad Basin but are the world’s largest importer of tomato paste – from China and Italy. We can produce rice but we import rice from Thailand and India-most of it from grain reserves that have been in stock for over 5 years in these countries.

    Painful as it as sound, we do not really create any value-added jobs as the only real production is peasant farming. Oil, Telecoms, finance and real estate are not employment intensive. So everyone becomes a civil servant since the economy cannot create jobs. A glance through our budgets will reveal that recurrent expenditure is usually on personnel costs and overheads. To reduce this there must be salaries or pensions cuts, or worse still retrenchment of civil servants. Which government will dare travel this route? This is the classic trajectory of underdevelopment, de-development and de-industrialisation

    The most pitiable paradox of Nigerian society today is that majority of its members are living in a state of penury while the remaining relatively insignificant minority, are living in affluence. These distorted economic relations do not reflect the geographic spread of resource endowment; rather it is a product of class greed, injustice and poor leadership.

  • Plunder of timber and fisheries is holding Africa back – Kofi Annan

    Africa’s rich natural resources offer a unique opportunity for a breakthrough in improving the lives of Africa’s citizens, says a major new report launched over the weekend by Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary-General, but too often these resources are plundered by corrupt officials and foreign investors. Rising inequality is also blocking Africa from seizing that opportunity, the report shows.

    The 2014 Africa Progress Panel report, Grain, Fish, Money: Financing Africa’s green and blue revolutions, calls on Africa’s political leaders to take concrete measures now to reduce inequality by investing in agriculture. It also demands international action to end what it describes as the plunder of Africa’s timber and fisheries.

    “After more than a decade of growth, there is plenty to celebrate,” Mr Annan said upon releasing the report. “But it is time to ask why so much growth has done so little to lift people out of poverty – and why so much of Africa’s resource wealth is squandered through corrupt practices and unscrupulous investment activities.”

    “Africa is a continent of great wealth so why is Africa’s share of global malnutrition and child deaths rising so fast?  The answer is that inequality is weakening the link between economic growth and improvements in wellbeing,” he said.

    Although average income has risen by one-third in the past decade, there are more Africans living in poverty now – around 415 million – than at the end of the 1990s. New global development goals are likely to aim to eradicate poverty by 2030 – but on current trends, one African in five will still be in poverty when that deadline arrives.

    Mr Annan, who played a central role in shaping the Millennium Development Goals, says: “When countries sign up to the new global development framework, they should pledge not only to meet ambitious targets but also to narrow the region’s indefensible gaps between rich and poor, urban and rural, and men and women.”

    The report’s authors identify agriculture as the key to growth that reduces poverty. They point out that most of Africa’s poor live and work in rural areas, predominantly as smallholder farmers. “Countries that have built growth on the foundations of a vibrant agricultural sector – such as Ethiopia and Rwanda – have demonstrated that the rural sector can act as a powerful catalyst for inclusive growth and poverty reduction,” Mr Annan said at the launch.

    The report calls for a “uniquely African green revolution” that adapts the lessons provided by Asia to African conditions. Africa currently imports US$35 billion worth of food because local agriculture is dogged by low productivity, chronic underinvestment, and regional protectionism. Increased investment in infrastructure and research could dramatically raise the region’s yields and the incomes of farmers. Meanwhile, eliminating the barriers that restrict trade within Africa could open up new markets.

    While critical of African governments, the Africa Progress Report 2014 also challenges the international community to support the region’s development efforts. It highlights fisheries and logging as two areas in which strengthened multilateral rules are needed to combat the plunder of natural resources.

    Illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing has reached epidemic proportions in Africa’s coastal waters. West Africa is conservatively estimated to lose US$1.3 billion annually. Beyond the financial cost this plunder destroys fishing communities who lose critical opportunities to fish, process and trade. Another US$17 billion is lost through illicit logging activities.

    ”Natural resource plunder is organised theft disguised as commerce. Commercial trawlers that operate under flags of convenience, and unload in ports that do not record their catch, are unethical,” Mr Annan said, adding that these criminal activities compound the problem of tax evasion and shell companies. The Africa Progress Report 2014 calls for a multilateral fisheries regime that applies sanctions to fishing vessels that do not register and report their catches. The report also calls on governments around to world to ratify the Port State Measures Agreement, a treaty that seeks to thwart the poachers in port from unloading their ill-gotten gains.

    African political leaders have failed to manage natural resources in the interests of the true owners of those resources – the African people.

    As well as losing money through natural resource plunder and financial mismanagement, Africans miss out on money from abroad, not only when aid donors fail to keep their promises but even when those in the African diaspora send remittances home to their families. It is estimated that that the continent is losing US$1.85 billion a year because money transfer operators are imposing excessive charges on remittances.

    With greater resource revenue, African governments now have the opportunity to develop more effective taxation systems – and spend public money more fairly, the report adds. For example, 3 per cent of regional GDP is currently allocated to energy subsidies that principally go to the middle class. That money should be diverted into social spending to give the poor a better chance of escaping the poverty trap.

    “Africa’s resilience and creativity are enormous,” Mr Annan says. “We have a rising and energetic youth population. Our dynamic entrepreneurs are using technology to transform people’s lives. We have enough resources to feed not just ourselves but other regions, too. It is time for Africa’s leaders – and responsible investment partners – to unlock this huge potential.”