Tag: times

The late former American President John F Kennedy once said, “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.” In essence, you do not wait for calamity before planning. Today, Nigerians and Nigeria are passing through one of its most difficult periods; we’re all feeling the pain one way or another. Emotions are running high, some blame the past leadership others blame the present leadership, still others are saying “bring back corruption!

We’re in a dire strait no doubt, but as the storm clouds is brewing all around us, let’s make sure the roof is in order, let’s deploy reason and imagination is searching for workable solutions to our problems.

Our number one resource as the hard times bites harder should be reason – why and how did we get here in the first place. The second should be imagination – how do we get out of this situation, how do we reflate the economy, create jobs, plan for the future, ensure we learn timely lessons from our present predicament etc.

In times like these, fear of the unknown is palpable, both for the government and citizens. How long will the situation last? When would there be light at the end of the tunnel? Are our leaders confused? Why

not listen to all the experts and adopt their solutions? What do you do with money recovered from looters? Do you pump it into the system to reflate the economy or do you focus on strengthening institutions so that the money is not re-looted? How do we wean ourselves from a near total dependence on imported goods and drastically reduce our insatiable demand for the dollar? There are a thousand and one questions to ask.

But in all, reason and imagination should be our guiding light. Imagination – the ability to form a mental image of something that is not perceived through the five senses – is really needed now than ever. The story of oil, our main revenue earner, is a story we’re all too familiar with. That the price of oil will again rise to $100 or above is likely not to happen in the years ahead. This presents a critical dilemma.

Diversifying the economy – the present positive rallying cry – has its own dynamics which is where reason comes in. Our best bet now is agriculture and solid minerals exploitation, but with the fall in commodity prices globally this may be in medium term planning. As we’re all aware, agriculture is not drilling, they’re poles apart. Drilling of oil is certain once your geological survey says there’s oil in a place; you drill, extract, refine and the deal is as good as done. But with agriculture, it takes time because nature is involved – even though there are now technologies that defy nature, but these technologies also have their own adverse effects on the environment and people’s health and must be acquired first.

This is where reason comes in because it takes time to diversify the economy. How do you communicate this harsh reality to a people who have had thing easy for decades? These days, one of the most popular

words you hear are “na change now” an allusion to the change slogan of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). Inflated expectations have met harsh reality, a reality of intractable and complex problems which seems to have initially been grossly underestimated by the APC as pointed out by Chief Odigie Oyegun, the APC chairman recently.

“It has been tough times for the nation,” he was quoted as saying during a reception held in his honour by the management and staff of the party’s national secretariat in Abuja to mark his 77th birthday. “When we were campaigning – it is necessary to continue to hammer on this point – we were not in government; we knew things were very bad but we did not know they were as bad as we eventually found them. And the revelations that come out every day continue to buttress that fact.

“Secondly, and that is very important: nobody ever expected the prices of crude to collapse in the way they have done. One can only repeat what Mr. President (Muhammadu Buhari) said a few days ago and that is, from being a nation that could have an Excess Crude Account, today, because of the collapse of the prices of crude, a lot of the states in this country do not even have enough resources to meet their very basic functions and responsibilities to their citizens.”

At this stage, we should be flexible with our imagination because it is the creative power that is necessary for solving tough problems; it is necessary for inventing an instrument, designing a dress or a

house, painting a picture or writing a book. The creative power of imagination has an important role in the achievement of success in any field. What we imagine with determination, faith and feelings most

often comes into being with concerted planning.

Can we be patient and disciplined enough to give a policy like “The Green Alternative: Agriculture Promotion Policy, 2016-2020’’ launched earlier this week time to succeed or fail? Lack of understanding of the power of the imagination is responsible for the suffering, incompetence, difficulties, failures and unhappiness people experience. For some reason, most people are inclined to think in a negative way. They do not expect solutions to problems. They expect the worst, and when they fail, they believe that fate is against them.

As it is with individuals so it is with nations. For instance, the universe is a mystery. Most of its secrets remain untouchable, impenetrable, making it a frightening place where all we can do is stumble around half-blind in the dark. Imagination is the light that dispels this darkness, making the cosmos accessible. It’s a mental framework, a way of perceiving the world. It doesn’t claim to know the answers, but endows us with the creativity necessary to discover them. Even fantasy has a place, through it the enigmas of life and existence are revealed, making us better equipped to relate to reality.

There was a time in our history when agriculture was the main stay of the economy, but today, billions of dollars are spent importing food and other things we can easily and readily produce. So, resetting our

mindset to go back to the basics again has to do with seeing the reason to do so. If achieved, we then deploy the imagination to paint a mental picture of where we are heading.

Reason is discursive. That means it takes time to think things through, imagination is intuitive: it sees, or grasps knowledge all at once. Reason tries to explain, describe, or define things in language that is as clear and literal as possible. It wants to explain what things are. Imagination wants to explain what things are like. It uses metaphorical language to express deeper qualities, the kinds of qualities that come not just from thinking about things, but from experiencing them.

And imagination expresses the kinds of reactions we have to such experiences. Reason to some people is generally abstract – withdrawn from reality – while imagination tends to be more like experience. How

many of our compatriots are even willing to understand why we are where we are today?

But we have no choice than to reason with one another. Is this government on track and is there hope for Nigeria? I believe there is as elaborated by Finance minister, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun. “The focus of

our economic policy is to redress the infrastructure deficit, unlock the rich diversity in the economy with a determined and focused turn-around programme. For us, it would be a tragedy to have endured so much pain and not emerge better and stronger. The provision of a spending stimulus to the economy is critical to releasing the upside in the economy. Investing specifically in power and transportation will release the opportunities in solid minerals, manufacturing and agriculture.”

In times like these we need discipline, understanding and patience in addition to reason and imagination to pull through; and pull through we must.

The month of September 2008 was unique for one singular reason: Lehman Brothers, a global bank collapsed and almost brought down the global financial system. It took huge taxpayer-financed bail-outs to shore up the industry. Even so, the ensuing credit crunch turned what was already a nasty downturn into the worst recession in 80 years.

The crisis began in 2007 when sky-high home prices in the United States (US) finally turned decisively downward, spread quickly, first to the entire U.S. financial sector and then to financial markets overseas. The casualties in the US included the entire investment banking industry, the biggest insurance company, the two enterprises chartered by the government to facilitate mortgage lending, the largest mortgage lender, the largest savings and loan, and two of the largest commercial banks.

The carnage was not limited to the financial sector alone as companies that normally rely on credit suffered heavily. The American auto industry, which pleaded for a federal bailout, found itself at the edge of an abyss. Banks – trusting no one to pay them back – simply stopped making the loans that most businesses need to regulate their cash flows and without which they cannot do business. By the end of 2008, a deep recession had enveloped most of the globe.

In a way, Nigeria was insulated from this crisis as the shock we felt then was largely negligible. But what we are currently facing today has given us a bird’s eye view of what other countries faced from 2008. My focus today is not about the crisis per se, but one of its fallouts.

Immediately after the crisis started universities in the west came under attack for failing to predict the financial crisis, with – especially economics undergraduates – demanding change. To this end, academics and students called for economic history to be included in undergraduate courses. Before now, economic history is a specialised field in history akin to developmental economics and political economy.

The apparent failure of economists to predict – let alone prevent – the 2008 crash led to accusations that conventional economic teaching cannot adequately explain the complex dynamics and risks of modern economies. Among those championing change have been disgruntled students, who have demanded that a more “pluralist,” diverse, range of theories be taught on their undergraduate degrees.

After years of activism championed by groups like “The Post-Crash Economics Society” at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom (UK) and the “Rethinking Economics network,” universities are now tinkering with their economics curriculum. These groups have links with the wider International Student Initiative for Pluralism in Economics.

The Post-Crash Economics Society says they were inspired to start their activism when they heard about a Bank of England Conference called ‘Are Economics Graduates Fit for Purpose?’ At that event, leading economists from the public and private sphere came together to discuss whether economics undergraduates were being taught the right things in the light of the 2008 Financial Crisis. This chimed with some of their frustrations about the economics they were learning and so they decided to set up a society that would through doing research, organising events and running workshops seek to bring “this discussion to Manchester.”

The student critics were not alone is agitating for curriculum change. Reports have it that they were backed up by prominent UK academics such as Robert Skidelsky and Ha-Joon Chang.  In its wake, a “Reteaching Economics” was founded alongside the student movement. These were further buoyed by surveys of employers who uncovered industry demand for changes to university programmes, identifying areas for improvement in the skills and knowledge of economics graduates.

Now a growing number of UK universities are implementing changes to adapt their degrees to a “post-crisis” world. For some institutions, this has meant the launch of additional modules within existing undergraduate programmes. In one of the reports I read, Alan Fernihough, a lecturer says the economic history module added to the course at Queen’s University Belfast “gives students a long-run perspective on economic conditions and helps contextualise the recent state of the global economy.”

Another report stated that a new first-year module at Royal Holloway, University of London, covers non-market voices in economics; growth from an historical perspective; difficult allocations for markets to handle; and behavioural economics. Another lecturer, Professor Jeff Frank says he and his colleagues saw a “market opportunity” to make changes to the course. “Students realised that the dry-as-a-bone economics they were being taught couldn’t deal with the complexities of economic issues.”

All these have led to agitation for the application of a “real-world application of economic theories” which is seen as an important part of these new curriculum initiatives. With this in mind, University of London will be launching a new single-discipline degree in economics in October. One of the varsities lecturers, Constaninos Repapis says it has been developed in consultation with student and academic reformers with “an interest to develop a curriculum that better prepares economic graduates for the challenges of the modern world.”

The University of Greenwich is also towing this line when it introduced – in 2014 – modules in economic history, the history of economic thought, and international development and finance saying “it too is responding to student demands for pluralist teaching.”

At Kingston University, a lecturer, Professor Steve Keen teaches a module on “becoming an economist”, which explores disagreements between economic thinkers, and a range of schools of thought. Kingston, he says, “has set itself the objective of being the leading pluralist school of economics in the UK – and possibly the world.”

Others, including University College London and the University of Bristol, have worked on an open-source curriculum programme, the CORE project (Curriculum Open-Access Resources in Economics), which takes a restructured approach to the format of the traditional economics degree.

My take away from these reports is that there is collaboration between students, lecturers, society and employers on the need for change and how to adapt to these changes. With credible feedbacks UK universities say they are also trying to address concerns from employers. “As a direct response to employer demands that economic graduates are better able to communicate their knowledge to non-economists, Goldsmiths has developed a third-year module called communication and presentation skills that focuses on how economists present their findings to non-specialists in an accessible way,” says Repapis.

Are there things Nigerian varsities can learn from this development? I strongly believe there are. In the first instance, it is clear that we live in a world that is constantly changing. Note that it was mainly students that were concerned that no economists predicted the 2008 financial crises hence their agitation for a change of focus to a more practical way of teaching economics. They did not stop with agitation only as they ensured the curriculum is changed. Can our undergraduate undertake such agitation?

Nigeria is presently at an economic crossroad. Are we seeing great ideas on how to move forward from our ivory towers or students? Apart from economic issues, there are security and social issues like Boko Haram and the current Herdsmen crisis that is threatening the very existence of the nation. These call for deeper research and thinking which varsities are better positioned to do.

Rather than expend their energies giving awards to dubious politicians or undertaking rallies to prop them up in office, even when they morally unfit for such positions, I appeal to our students to start thinking of the future. Apart from economics, almost all disciplines in our varsities need to move with the times. I mentor a group of Mass Communications undergraduate and most of them are shocked that there is a huge disparity between what they are being taught in the varsities and polytechnics to what really obtains in the “real world.”

I enjoin our varsities to be susceptible to change. There are certain individual who may not have “passed through the ranks,” but by the virtue of their experiences in various fields, have a lot to offer the next generation but cannot do so because of obvious systemic issues. Can we loosen up and explore ways of bringing such individuals into the system as is being done elsewhere?