By Qansy Salako
Nothing betrayed the primitive state of the Nigerian nation more than the scandalous incident of Mar 15 2014 14 involving thousands of traumatized citizens in a deathly struggle for the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) jobs from hell. It went down like this. NIS advertised vacancies for 4550 entry level officer positions, 6.5 million applicants signed up instantly each paying the N1000 fee for the application form. Unfazed NIS proceeded to conduct a 35-minute aptitude test for half a million shortlisted job seekers, alfresco, in large city venues across the country, all in one day. By the time the pandemonium was over, all applicants had lost their dignity and application fees, 25 were trampled to death and thousands wounded and hospitalized. When asked for explanation, the minister of the interior and officials of the NIS blamed the multitude for not following the laid down test room procedures. Arrghh, Africa!
Long before our president Goodluck Jonathan rang the closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange at the famous Wall Street on 23 Sept, I had noticed more frequent news coverage on Nigeria in the global media. Even on yahoo news, hardly any week passes by without reading something about Nigeria, ranging from the grim to the laughable. It’s like the world is saying, watch out for this pregnant nation, we don’t know what it will deliver, but it’s gonna deliver something, soon.
Some economic analysts have, for some time now, been hawkish about Nigeria, plucking it out into newly emerging economic groupings such as MINT and PINE. Nigeria finally announced a new gross domestic product (GDP) of $510b on 06Apr14 up from GDP of $290b and becoming the largest economy in Africa after overtaking South Africa’s GDP of $370b. Nigeria’s output has been reported to experience a continual expansion of about 6.5% year on year over the past decade with a current population of 170 million, compared to South Africa with 3% average annual growth rate and a population of 51 million. The new GDP figure was obtained by changing the base year from 1990 to 2013 for calculating its output to reflect newly emerged sectors of the economy such as telecoms, information technology, music, online sales, airlines, and film production. The figure instantly shrank Nigeria’s debt-to-GDP ratio from 19 percent for 2012 to 11 percent for 2013. In terms of per capita income, Nigeria’s global ranking is still a grim 121.
The news on how Nigeria is exploding in economic prosperity has been a red herring to everyone. Aside from the GDP rebasing, nobody could finger any intelligent driver(s) for the economic growth other than high oil prices and surging population of consumers. In the end, Nigerians may not feel any effect of this economic gymnastics on paper as according to 2010 World Bank estimates, 84 percent of the population are in strangulating poverty. 56 Percent of the youths were out of work in 2010, according to official data. The World Bank most recent release listed Nigeria alongside four other countries in the world’s extreme poverty category. As expected, Nigeria via its double sinister Ngozi Iweala immediately pooh-poohed the World Bank claim, assuring all that Nigeria is doing just fine. I bet it does.
Nor surprising, Jonathan and many of our vainglorious governors have been celebrating and owning the new country status, even though it only means the country is now more qualified to borrow more loans. The governors have been viciously elbowing themselves into foreign countries on investor hunting, literally like touts. They go, often as part of usually oversize Jonathan’s foreign trip contingents, with neither any economic development philosophy nor even a coherent speech, other than shamefaced begging of the host country’s business community. They are notorious for promising just about anything – CofO’ed land, security, oil lifting, etc – in exchange for establishing foreigner business, any business, in their state.
Some foreign interests with preference for the zero to semi-regulated business environment of Nigeria are responding to the calls. Nigeria is among few irregular countries where you can make the quickest kill turning over a N2m investment into N30m in just 5 years. So, as a potpourri of sleazy foreign direct investment (FDI) entities now tepidly enters Nigeria, the long presence of village-size Lebanese bloc in Nigeria is now being swelled by town-size communities of Chinese, Indians, Koreans, and a mixed bag of Europeans. Giant corporations such as Lenovo (laptop and smart phone), Nissan (auto) and Monsanto (GMO crops) are other FDI interests giddily waiting in the wings to come in. These opportunities should herald a new era of social development and people emancipation for Nigeria. But is it?
The way we are going about shoving Nigeria into modernity makes me want to climb the walls. It is beyond perplexing how our political class thinks it is making progress by bringing in other’s technology to civilize us before we civilize ourselves. Inviting investors into our land carte blanche and without readying ourselves for their technology will neither put us in a vantage position on any multilateral business contract nor liberate us from our culture of consumerism. The crude begging approach betrays a lack of in-house competence to receive the best intellectual property (IP) from anyone, it only places us in a position to be walked over by everyone at will like a rug in a lobby.
I don’t understand why we Nigerians seem to be a pitifully unorganized and short-range thinking people. Why can’t all the almajiri governors operate from a single national FDI master plan? We have one, don’t we? Why are all the governors in a tizzy running around like drunken teenagers outdoing themselves on profligate projects when our state of readiness in the country for modern technology is pathetic? I bet I know the answer to my own questions [email protected]
