Some measured optimism is being expressed concerning the emergence and ranking of the Nigerian economy as a member of the Top 20 League come the year 2020. Part of that optimism is freighted on the recent grading of the Nigerian economy as Africa’s foremost, following its breasting the tape ahead of South Africa. What the grading has shown is that, in spite of years of mismanagement, distorted planning and unrelieved corruption – particularly during the period of stratocracy, from the mid-’80s up to well into the Fourth Republic, is the remarkable resilience of the Nigerian worker, tax-payer and the economy itself.
Some development economists, like Dr.KayodeFamiloni, formerly of the Department of Economics, University of Lagos, Akoka, tend to argue that the remarkable stubbornness with which the Nigerian economy, since the Babangida regime’s structural adjustment programme (SAP), has resisted what is regarded as “an ever-dose of fiscal and budgetary distortion”, is a faint tip, under which there’s an iceberg of entrepreneurial spirit yet untapped. Dr.Rotimi Oladele, who’s the Executive Secretary of the Institute of Entrepreneurs, Nigeria, figures that it may require unleashing, with a combined force of unswerving political and economic determination, the near-limitless Nigerian entrepreneurial acumen underneath the iceberg – if Nigeria, with some fair ease, is to sail into the league of Global First – 20 (GF-20) economies, come the target date of 2020.
There’s a pressing need, said Oladele, for what may pass for an approximation of renaissance in entrepreneurship in the Nigerian economy – not, necessarily, in the political economy or the macro unit, which, sometimes, is mistaken as the sole, rightful beneficiary of trillions of naira in government budget.
It’s dysfunctional, in Oladele’s view, to act on such a marginal or far-from-progressive point.
While Oladele advised against a vertical or horizontal economic planning and implementation, as the main speaker, at the induction of about 40 new members of the Institute of Entrepreneur, Nigeria, in Lagos, recently, he offered that the renaissance should be in tandem with the trend in global economic practice for which economic policymakers and entrepreneurs are into the acquisition of what he called “diagonal” skills, in terms of informed, eclectic education, new entrepreneurial behaviour, attitude and practice, which, combined, are an index of a blustery force that propels economic growth or expansion, and micro economic activities.
What Oladele’s argument implies is that it would require an encompassing economic model predicated on diagonal, inter-discipline skill acquisition behind policy-making and execution that accords recognition to army of entrepreneurs yet to be in the potentially rich medium- and small-scale sector of the Nigerian economy. It makes far less economic sense to have a budget, in trillions of naira, that, for want of a better expression, is almost hairlessly disdainful of how well to ignite a rewarding rejuvenescence in the relationship between the macro and micro sectors of the Nigerian economy.
It makes, besides, far little economic meaning when such colossal budgetary allocations tend to ignore, at the price of sustainable economic growth and expansion, the creation or emergence and participation of new entrepreneurial ambassadors of the Nigerian economy. The basic principle of diagonal entrepreneurial skills, it appears, is borne out of the agonising experience of the countries of North America, the European Union and, to some extent, Africa and Asia, on account of the 21st Century’s first, global economic depression – occasioned by the collapse, in 2008, of the United States-based Lehman Brothers.
By inference, Oladele’s view is linked to a binding need to have new entrepreneurs who’d drive the Nigerian economy. With diagonal entrepreneurial skills and behaviour pumped into the Nigerian economy, a solid foundation would have been laid, anew, by a countless number of Lehman Sisters, who would be determined to protect the Nigerian economy from the destructive practices and effects of the Lehman Brothers. It’s, perhaps, plausible to argue that there’s a need to have, henceforward, a founding team of Lehman Sisters, Nigeria – with Finance and Economic Planning Minister, Dr.NgoziOkonjo-Iweala, as the captain. The intent should be to test-run a project with an eye to handing the running of the Nigerian economy over to Nigerian mothers, who are, presumably, more entrepreneurial than their fathers counter-parts.
Truth is that they are the less entrepreneurial fathers, who have mismanaged the economy of this blessed country.
Currently, the country’s debt profile is, again, on the rise.
Oladele believes that the unsavoury debt peonage that was one of the Lehman Brothers-like experiences of the Nigerian economy, caused by the Babangida regime, could be avoided with a rebirth of the entrepreneurial spirit amongst key players in the macro and micro sectors of the Nigerian economy. Nigeria can be saved from the kind of economic catastrophe suffered by such countries as Iceland, Portugal, Ireland and Greece for which they had to go a borrowing from such multi-lateral institutions as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
Oladele’s position as the acquisition of diagonal entrepreneurial skills and behaviour is instructive: it was the lack of entrepreneurial spirit that led, in part, to the collapse of some once-virile and dominant Nigerian business outfits, like textile industries, savings and loans (S and L) merchant banks, airlines, road transportation, print and broadcast media, hospitals, shipping etc. and the attendant loss of many jobs.
Going beyond profit towards growth was what produced the Asian tigers. It has taken a driving entrepreneurial spirit to post the economy China to where it presently is; so close to that of the United States that, some say, it’s a question of time before it dominates the world.
The absence of a culture of entrepreneurial spirit in the Nigerian economy find a notable expression in the dishonourable idleness of most state governments, who do nothing with the huge petro-naira they collect from Abuja each month: no infrastructure, no economic development, no encouraging business milieu, no credible and sustainable employment opportunities for the teeming population of virile youths.
Oladele says Nigeria must shift from the decay that is cover-dependence on oil and be, now, about other sources of financial capital – mostly solid minerals, with which the country is abundantly endowed, tourism and hospitality, a more aggressive, but less-hostile-to-business, tax and excise regime – sans the current regime of multiple tax that is eating into the health of some promising, private businesses – agriculture not, necessarily, another fraud with an alias like “Green Revolution” – but one rested on an awakening of the river basin authorities, mechanised farming and a boost to agriculture in the rural areas, and many more.
In which case, as Oladele puts it, it’s an exercise that would require patriotic professional entrepreneurs. An economy blessed with patriotic, professional entrepreneurs is a bright future. Armed with diagonal skills, it has a reserve of resources when the unexpected – a dislocation in economic activities on, say, happens. The real entrepreneurial is not the Nigerian business manager who stops at profit.
He or she is the risk- taker, said Oladele, who can distinguish between business budget or capital and profit. Such an entrepreneur is a person who, guided by an engrafted entrepreneurial spirit, distances himself from the capital on which his enterprise leans. Such an entrepreneur has a cap on which is boldly inscribed “integrity.”
It was a manifestation of the professional entrepreneurial spirit in the skippers of the multi-national company that they targeted the youths and a popular musician to revive their ailing business. If it’s a rejuvenation of the agricultural sector, the professional entrepreneurs – some of them facetiously referred to as Oladele brought-ups – are ready to take over.
Solid minerals – coal, iron ore, steel, lead – rubber, palm oil, cocoa, ground-nut, hides and skins? Yes, the professional entrepreneurs are ready; ready to create not only employment but also generate tax. There are professional entrepreneurs who are willing to fix the network of both federal and states roads, based on some mutually-agreed terms – including time-bound collection of tolls. It creates wealth and profit, just as it drives growth and sustainable employment.
Oladele believes that Nigeria would do well to redesign its educational curriculum such that the products of its universities would be well equipped with entrepreneurial skills that would make them less dependent or have to wait in vain for government jobs, as is presently the case. It helps crime that springs, in most instances, from unemployment.
•Uzuakpundu is a Lagos-based journalist
