By Tim Akano
Notwithstanding the amount of wasted opportunities and years, Nigeria’s modernisation, though difficult, but not impossible still.
Foreign Policy:
The world is in transition, tilting recklessly and dangerously, no futurist can say with certainty where the pendulum would swing. It is, therefore, incumbent on PBAT to adopt ”AMBIGUITY” foreign policy to survive and thrive in today’s geopolitics murky waters, his Cotonou Declaration was factual but not expedient.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli longest serving Prime Minister is one of the smartest leaders in the world today: Bibi has unbreakable friendship with America, iron-clad relationship with Russia, robust friendship with China and he is at the same time, India Prime Minister’s bosom friend, and yet he diplomatically cuts 3a.m. big deals in Ukraine.
PBAT has to learn, like BIBI, how to swim with the international SHARKS (they are more vicious than Nigeria’s ”national sharks” which BAT roundly outwitted these past 30 years) without being eaten alive! With what is going on in West Africa (Sahel) today, a PARITY may soon be achieved in ECOWAS between the number of civilian presidents and military Head of states! A case of Esau’s hand, Jacob’s voice. Enough said!
Homeland Security:
PBAT should do what Deng did: criminalize factionalism and set a deadline of October 1st, 2023 to eliminate factionalism within the security ecosystem. Establishing a new security architecture tagged: HOMELAND SECURITY COUNCIL (HSC)- consisting of military and para military chiefs meeting weekly: NSA, DHQ, CGs of Customs, Immigration, Prison, Civil Defence, DSS, Army Chief, Navy, Airforce, etc with a view to restoring order in the NE/SE/NC of Nigeria. Without internal order, PBAT’s hope of achieving food security and boosting revenue would remain an illusion.
In addition, with a view to strengthening the bond of comradeship among the various security agencies, I recommend the setting up of SECURITY FCs LEAGUE. The fiasco advertised recently where the DSS and Prison teams clashed over who should house brother Emefiele was a monumental national embarrassment. Europe used football and other sports to solve the problems of disunity which gunboat diplomacy could not resolve for 200 years of wars of brothers against brothers. Therefore, DSS FC vs Customs FC, Immigration FC vs Army Fc etc yearly competition would go a long way in trust building.
Food Security:
Agriculture should be decentralised immediately. Food is local, not national. Abuja’s role is to provide direction, data and sundry support. Consequently, PBAT should have a FOOD SECURITY STRATEGY SESSION with all the 774 local government chairmen immediately. Each local government should have targets of selected crops they would cultivate to feed their communities respectively.
Deng did this in China, it worked. The strategy of transporting tomatoes, pepper, carrots from Kano to Ibadan or Onitsha is inflation-prone. Nothing says tomatoes, pepper, carrots etc cannot be successfully cultivated in other parts of Nigeria. Nigeria lacks cost-effective logistics to transport food inexpensively from North to South of the country. Consequently, every local government should be encouraged to plant what they eat.
Education:
The UNESCO benchmark says countries should invest between 15%-20% of their yearly budget in education as against Nigeria’s 5%-7%. Sadly enough, Nigeria has one of the lowest literacy rate among the major oil exporting countries at 77%, compared with Saudi Arabia, UAE, Russia etc with almost 100% literacy rate. I learned it costs an average of N10 billion (conservatively) to run a federal university per year. For the 50 federal universities, I recommend that the government should continue to fund them for another two years, which will cost about 1 Trillion. My point is that the government must come to equity with clean hands. Unlike the issue of fuel subsidy removal that was included in the campaign promises, ”indirect school fees” was not. Nigeria’s focus now should be how to comprehensively overhaul the obsolete university curricula with a view to making our graduates globally competitive, every day we lose to students and lecturers’ strikes draw us back by one year.
Re-industrialisation:
The ideal strategy is to set up eight regional industrial Parks immediately and woo about 300 manufacturers globally and nationally with irresistible incentives with a view to converting our natural and mineral resources to finished products here on our soil, leveraging AfCFTA and global markets.
Spending $8B on furniture importation from Turkey, China and Europe in 2022 was not a smart economic decision. Edo state can produce better furniture if we establish BENIN FURNITURE FINISHING SCHOOL (BFFS) equipped with modern furniture making technology. With about $10million, a modern factory will be in place. (Inclusive of 20% signatures commission. I joke!). Re-industrialisation is one sector where our strategy is not to ”copy” but to ”leapfrog” China, UK, America, using advanced AI-POWERED ROBOTS from Japan or South Korea. What do we do with millions of our unemployed youths, when we introduce robots? We should re-train the youths for new Business Process Outsourcing, agriculture and service economy opportunities.
More importantly, MONOPOLY has to die for Nigeria to make progress. Has anyone ever pondered at what cost do we have ten Nigeria business men and women on the Forbes list of the world’s richest people yearly? The opportunity cost of retaining ten Nigerians on the Forbes list is the 140 million multidimensional poor people who are permanently on 0:1:0 meal formula 24x7x365 days. We need to come up with stronger ANTITRUST & COMPETITION LAWS, the China way.
That the richest Chinese man on earth (Jack Ma, Ali Baba Founder) is back in Hong Kong University today as a teacher bears eloquent testimony to China’s commitment in building shared prosperity, because they have since learned the hard way from history that unbridled wealth accumulation by a few monopolists was what corrupted, crippled and eventually destroyed China’s first civilization!
Revenue Generation without TEARS:
There is the OLD MONEY and there is the NEW MONEY.
NNPC is old money with plenty of blood left in its veins, but Nigeria needs to hire a set of first class Cardiologists, neurologists, pulmonologists and nephrologists as all NNPC vital organs need surgical operations starting from the heart, brain, lung and kidney.
Or how else can you describe a corporation that is supposed to be the nation’s cash cow but which has only declared profits twice in 45 years? NNPC can generate over $30Billion yearly net revenue if we hand it over to Norway or Aramco to help manage it.
Two, we should sell all the four moribund refineries immediately. One each to South Korea, China, Singapore and India. Within 12 months the four dry bones will rise again and refine petroleum for national consumption and export. This is one stone that will kill four birds: refine oil in Nigeria to strengthen the value of naira Two, break the monopoly of one single line refinery. Three, liberate cash from assets that are idle or performing sub optimally. Four, create quality jobs for the Nigerian youths.
NEW MONEY: There are more Nigerian skilled workers outside of Nigeria today than within Nigeria. And they are 1000% better paid than their counterparts in Nigeria. What would PM Sunak do with this reality, if he were in PBAT shoes? He would creatively build a new economy around this demographics shift and set up a customised virtual OVERSEAS Nigerians Workers BANK (ONWB) to handle Nigeria’s overseas workers financial transactions with special incentives which will be mutually beneficial. The benefits are enormous, ask the Philippines government with OFBank.
The KING of NEW MONEY will come through the implementation of *data fusion and generative artificial intelligence technologies*. Small and medium businesses are not the clog on the wheel of revenue generation. The SMEs that borrow money at 40% interest rate are living hand-to-mouth struggling with salaries and diesel payments. If PBAT and his team want to triple the national revenue from 2024 they should target the ELEPHANTS in the room using a combination of data fusion and generative artificial intelligence technologies.
With an investment of about $50million, the Lebanese, Indians, Philippines, Europeans, and even Nigerian elephants would have no hiding place- they have to pay appropriate revenue to the respective government agencies.
Crushing Corruption:
Nigeria’s past 15 governments failed to crush corruption, rather corruption crushed them. Why can’t Nigeria’s 16th President borrow a leaf from either China, Singapore, Israel or Saudi Arabia on how to sanitize and modernise a society without sacrificing the masses welfare?
Once, I asked my friend, a former Prime Minister of Israel: ”why are the Israeli elites and public embarrassing Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife for overshooting her ice cream budget despite Bibi’s humongous sacrifices for the prosperity and continued survival of Israel”? He calmly told me: ”Tim, it is not about an individual, it is about the future of Israel. It was the rapacious greed and corruption of a few elites that rendered the Jewish people stateless for over 2000 years. Therefore, in Israel today there is no small corruption, and no big man or woman. The rule of law is supreme!”.*!
*Tim Akano*
*www.timakano.com*
*timakano1@gmail.com*
