Our Nation, Our Future

Being Text of a Lecture by His Excellency, Alhaji (Dr.) Abdullahi Adamu, (Sarkin Yakin Keffi) Executive Governor of Nasarawa State as Guest Lecturer at the Lagos Country Club, Ikeja, Monday, April 25, 2005.

The late Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, once granted audience to American journalists visiting his country. In the course of his interview with them, Mr. Khrushchev told the reporters: "Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there’s no water."

Mr. Khrushchev’s remark typified the self-deprecating sense of humour unique to politicians. Many of us here would readily interpret his remark to mean that politicians are fond of making impossible or even useless promises they know they cannot fulfil. We would readily recall promises made but never fulfilled by politicians at all levels of government in the country. But we must be fair. Most of us here live in Lagos. We cannot, certainly, fail to notice that bridges are familiar features of the city. Most of these overhead bridges and flyovers are not over water. I present them to you as evidence that politicians do not make empty promises. Sometimes they find it necessary to build bridges where there is no water.

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, let me say what a great pleasure it is for me to be among you tonight. I did not hesitate to accept your invitation to participate in the annual lecture series of your club because I knew it would afford me the opportunity to dine with the cream of Nigerian professionals, business magnates, captains of industry and bureaucrats. Please note that I have dined and not wined with you because I am a sharia-compliant Moslem.

Lagos Country Club is one of the oldest clubs in the country. It is eleven years older than our country as an independent nation. The president and the members of the club should be justly proud of the age of the club and the achievements it has made as a forum for business and social interactions. From its humble beginning as a recreation club for mainly the employees of the then British West African Airways, Lagos Country Club has acquired a unique place in our national affairs. It provides a conducive atmosphere for the members and their families, friends and guests to relax and unwind after a hard day’s work. Here under its roof are assembled some of the best minds in the professions, businesses, the civil service and the academia in our country. I note that two of our former military leaders, General Olusegun Obasanjo, our current president, and our former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, were registered members of the club. Lagos Country Club could not have come this far and become this important in our national life without the commitment of its leadership and the active support of its members. From what I have seen, even if briefly, I am confident that the club will continue to serve as the hub of social and business interaction for Nigerians in various spheres of life now and in the foreseeable future.

I salute Chief Olayinka Ogunmekan, the president of the club and his executive team. I salute the 1,500 financial members of the club. I salute the 9,500 more or less inactive members of the club. I salute the employees of the club, in particular, the cooks and the stewards who cooked and served this sumptuous dinner and the cleaners who keep the premises health-friendly. Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, I bring you warm and fraternal greetings from the good people and government of Nasarawa State.

The annual lecture series instituted by the club in 1997 provides a forum for dialogue between the non-members and the members of the club. I see it as part of the club’s invaluable contributions to national development through intellectual interactions. In taking on this club assignment this year, I count myself lucky to follow in the footsteps of such intellectual giants like Professor Tam David-West, the erudite Catholic priest, Rev. Father Matthew Hassan Kukah, and my brother governor, His Excellency Chief James Ibori, the governor of Delta State.

Dialogue is critical to human progress and development within and among nations. Both the United Nations and the African Union and similar bodies were primarily set up to promote international dialogue on crisis resolution between and among nations. It should be easy for us to imagine what the world would be today without the United Nations, whatever might be its limitations, to intervene in conflicts and provide a forum for dialogue between warring nations. The current major political event in our country is the national political reform conference initiated by President Olusegun Obasanjo, a man whose commitment to the unity and progress of this country has become an article of personal faith. Despite the initial cynicism that surrounded the conference and its possible outcome, we are happily beginning to see it as a positive invitation to Nigerians to talk freely about what troubles us as a people and as a nation. The conference provides us an opportunity to air our ethnic and sectional grievances. More importantly, it is part of the essential process of nation building. It may also serve as an ethno-political catharsis. When we purge ourselves of the poison of mutual suspicion through the open and unrestricted discussion of our fears and distrust, we open the door to the fresh air of national understanding and harmony; the fabric of our national unity is toughened and our people become more united. The seed of discontent is planted by misunderstanding and watered by suspicion. Openness engenders mutual understanding and trust. It destroys the seed of social, ethnic and political discontent. I would recommend the national political conference at periodic intervals to help ventilate the polity. I believe that the more frequently we talk to ourselves about our fears and suspicions, the more we understand one another and the more we appreciate one another’s position on national issues. Our nation would be the better for it.

In his letter inviting me to tonight’s event, Chief Ogunmekan kindly allowed me to choose my topic for tonight’s lecture. He suggested, however, that I share my thoughts with you "on economic matters that are of sensitive and of great concern to Nigerians." He gave me freedom and promptly limited it democratically. I cannot disobey a presidential order. He was right to pick the economy as a subject of continuing dialogue between our political leaders and the private sector. Our common concern is the rapid economic development of the country. The economy is so important to human development that it now defines the agenda of all modern nations. All nations are preoccupied with the sound and progressive management of their economies. Economic power has replaced military might as the defining attribute of a nation. The Asian tigers have clearly demonstrated this truism. Japan, Singapore and South Korea are today recognised as first countries, not for their military might or military conquest but for their considerable economic muscle as modern, industrialised nations.

As Nigerians, we are naturally anxious for our own country to experience similar economic miracle and transformation. Alleged economic mismanagement twice prompted the military to topple democratically elected governments in this country. We have made, and continue to make, considerable efforts at all levels of government and the organised private sector to achieve such a miracle. The miracle has not happened but it is happening. The economy has been the pre-occupation of the Obasanjo administration for nearly six years now. In its first term, the government initiated the poverty alleviation programme. This was later changed to poverty eradication programme. The objectives of both programmes were essentially the same, namely, to rescue our people from the ravages of poverty through their systematic empowerment and capacity building. In his current and final term in office, Chief Obasanjo’s ambition in his economic reform programme is to raise the country’s annual economic growth from three to seven per cent by 2005.

The federal government’s most ambitious economic reform programme is the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy, better known by its acronym, NEEDS. It is a two-pronged attack on our country’s faulty development structure and its macro-economic malaise. Its strategy is to accelerate the pace of government work, boost the private sector as the principal engine of economic activities, implement the people’s charter and re-orientate our warped social values as a people. A similar programme, States Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy, SEEDS, is being prepared for the states. However, to use the popular saying, it is not yet uhuru on the economic front. We must be patient. Economic development is a process, not a miracle. At any rate, economic miracles take a little longer than healing miracles.

Mr. Chairman, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, I have looked at our country in the last forty-four years or so and the various efforts made by successive governments to address our economic, social and other problems. I have also reflected on the numerous seminars and workshops on ways to move the economy forward. It seems to me that the problem with our economic development is not the dearth of prescriptive ideas. It may indeed be, without being cynical about this, the surfeit of prescriptions. Let me enter a caveat here. I do not intend to walk the well-beaten track and bore this distinguished audience with what it has heard many times over from perhaps people who are more qualified in this area than yours sincerely.

My topic may sound rather unusual. I call it Building Bridges. I hasten to assure you that this is not about building overhead bridges and flyovers in Lagos or Abuja or even Lafia. It is about the missing link in our national efforts to rise to the challenges of nation-building, economic, and social development. It is about the disconnection the nation experiences each time new leaders at national and state levels take over the reins of government. It is about our individual and collective dissatisfaction with the progress this nation has made so far compared with other third world countries that gained their independence or started their developmental journey at about the same time with us. It is about a new thinking about where we are, where we wish to be, and how we wish to get there.

We can think of the bridge as both physical and metaphorical. The physical bridge over water or land carries human and vehicular traffic. Without it, our movements, social interaction and economic activities are greatly impeded or imperilled. The metaphorical bridge carries and enhances the free flow of intellectual traffic. It is, if you like, the convergence of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Without this bridge to serve as the meeting place of yesterday’s beginning, today’s progress and tomorrow’s ultimate attainment, human progress would be a series of islands, each independent of the others and each a weak component of the whole. Our progress would be simply disconnected and chaotic and without a cultural foundation. It is not the way of human progress. The bridge is the meeting point between words and actions. It is the link between yesterday and today and between today and tomorrow. It is the means by which mankind makes a steady progress over the chasms of ignorance and under-development. Some may like to think of this as a chain of human development. But a chain serves a much less grand human purpose than the bridge. By its nature, a chain does not and cannot carry traffic. It is limited in its scope and in its application. Those who prefer to see it as chain must remember that the chain has always been used to limit individual freedom and is usually regarded as a symbol of oppression, not of progress.

Nigeria is forty-four years old as an independent nation. It is a rich nation by all standards. Even without crude oil and solid mineral resources, given its extensive arable land, which supports a variety of cash and food crops and livestock, we would still not be a poor nation. But we are, according to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Yet our earnings from crude oil exports alone are far in excess of the gross domestic products of several African countries put together. In 2004, for instance, the federal government budget alone was N1.18 trillion. That was not a chicken feed. This year, it is N1.6 trillion. That is not a chicken feed either, even if the chicken is the size of a gluttonous elephant. Even if we do not agree with the ranking of our nation by the Bretton Woods Institutions, none of us can deny that the indices of under-development are hardly hidden. The United Nations Human Development Index ranks Nigeria number 152 out of 177 countries. It is a painful paradox that, in the words of General Ibrahim Babangida, we witness our nation’s "rise to greatness followed by a decline to the state of a bewildered nation."

None of us is happy with this state of affairs. We cannot understand why we are unable to sort out such basic problems as steady power and water supply in spite of all the past and present efforts to put these problems behind us. Some of us have resigned themselves to the paradox because they believe that our dear nation is cursed. I beg to disagree. God did not curse us with His rich blessings. This resigned attitude is what the late Chief Bola Ige famously referred to as siddon look. I see siddon look as a temporary response to a temporary frustration, not a permanent abdication of our individual responsibilities to our country. What is remarkable is that we are all anxious that our country should pull itself out of this rut and become a model for African progress and development. We want Nigeria to rise to greatness and never slide back into a decline let alone a "state of a bewildered nation." But we must be willing to pay the price, whatever it takes, to make our country great and its citizens, happy and contented people.

It needs to be restated in stark terms that our country faces enormous challenges of modern, industrialised development. We cannot lay a solid foundation of industrialisation on a weak economic base. Uncompleted development and social projects litter our nation’s landscape. Our hearts are cluttered with shards of broken dreams and promises. But must not despair. We must seek and strive for the kingdom of a solid economic base and I believe the rest will be added unto us. Current efforts by the Obasanjo administration point us in the right direction. These efforts will come to nothing if the rest of us think the challenge is entirely the business of government and not of the people themselves. Our challenges are no bigger or more critical than those that faced or face other countries at our level of development. If those countries overcame, so shall we. But we too must respond to the challenges with the same determination and purposefulness as those other countries did. Perhaps, the problem is not that we failed to respond to our problems and challenges like other nations. The problem seems to be that we failed to sustain our response to them.

Mr. Chairman, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, let me at this point invite you to some of the signposts of our national response to the challenges of under-development, at least since the end of the Nigerian civil war in 1970. The Second National Development Plan, 1970-1974, was arguably, the most ambitious development plan this country has ever had. It was our first development plan written by Nigerians for Nigeria. It was an intellectually sound and pragmatic response to the immediate post-civil war challenges of physical reconstruction, social integration and economic development. But its goal was far more reaching than that. The plan diagnosed the ills of the Nigerian nation and concluded that what the country "lacked most in the past has been the national sense of purpose, particularly in economic matters."

The objectives of the development plan were to "establish Nigeria firmly as:

i. a united, strong and self-reliant nation;

ii. a great and dynamic economy;

iii. a just and egalitarian society;

Clearly, the authors of the development plan knew what they wanted to radically transform Nigeria. Mr. Allison Ayida, one of the super permanent secretaries in the Gowon administration, believed that "properly interpreted and pursued with a collective sense of dedication, the five national objectives could provide the ideological foundations for a New Nigeria."

The seeds of our future greatness were planted in the Second National Development Plan. They were never properly tended and watered. Successive federal government administration exposed them to the heat of indifference and they withered. We laid the foundation for our social and economic transformation but we failed to build on it. The bridge between our national ambitions and what Ayida referred to as "a collective sense of dedication" was thus broken. This attitude is a common feature in all aspects of our national life. A disconnection between the past and the present has more or less become the normal way of our way of life. It does not seem to us that when the bridge, the vital link between the present and the past is broken, our development effort is imperilled and the brake is slammed on our meaningful progress as a nation and as a people. The Second National Development Plan was the authentic foundation on which we refused to build "a great and dynamic economy." And as we shall see, the same fate befell most of the other policies and programmes of government, the combined effect of which brought to the contemporary point of trying to begin again.

In 1977, the federal government enacted the indigenisation decree. Its objective was to put Nigerians in the commanding heights of the national economy. Under the decree or act as it later became in a civilian administration, some economic and industrial enterprises were exclusively reserved for Nigerians. Such enterprises were not capital intensive because government recognised that not many Nigerians had the necessary capital to go it alone. The law permitted foreign participation in economic activities in varying degrees, depending on the levels of capital, technical and administrative capacity needed to set up and run them. This policy was supposed to ensure a steady but gradual indigenous participation in the nation’s economic development. Citizens of a truly independent nation must be in firm control of its economy. This was the underpinning philosophy of the indigenisation decree.

The policy did not achieve its objectives. Nigerians did not assume the command of the economy. Indeed, some of us collaborated with foreign investors to undermine the policy. For short-term individual gains, we sacrificed the future of our national economic development. We allowed the bridge between the present and the future of our country to be broken.

The Obasanjo military administration launched the Operation Feed the Nation, OFN, programme, in 1978 to try to get Nigerians back to the farm, once the pride of the nation as part of efforts to diversify the economic base. OFN was a popular slogan although, trust Nigerians, some cynics soon dubbed it Operation Fool the Nation. The programme itself did not outlive the government that conceived it. The Shagari administration that succeeded that military regime, decided to launch its own agricultural programme called the Green Revolution programme. Both programmes had the same objectives even if the conceptual approaches had different emphasis. The Green Revolution programme suffered the same fate as OFN. It did out outlive the administration that initiated it. The military administration that overthrew Shagari abandoned it and our national investment in it went down the drain. Operation Feed the Nation failed to feed the nation and the Green Revolution failed to turn our agricultural fields green with cash and food crops. We are still a net importer of food, dairy products and meat, even from other third world countries such as Thailand, Brazil and India. We are a mono-cultural economy with our nation’s fate firmly tied to the vagaries of crude oil consuming nations. The bridge to our past when agriculture was the mainstay of our national economy was broken. As Groucho Marx would say, the rest is history.

The Babangida administration introduced the structural adjustment programme, SAP, in 1986. The basic policy thrust of the programme was to address the country’s faulty industrial and economic base and restructure it in line with contemporary development wisdom. This is not the place to argue the merits or the demerits of the much-vilified policy. We can understand the public feeling towards it. It lacked what Chief Obasanjo referred to as "a human face and the milk of human kindness." Still, the formulators of the policy saw it as a grand social and economic transformation policy for the country. It might not have been the most reasonable approach to the management of our economy but it did represent one tough effort aimed at addressing the structural defects in the economy. Its own initiators could not protect it against the opposition to it and thus by the time the programme was officially terminated, it left us more confused about where we were in our economic development. The lack of will on the part of the initiators of the policy sabotaged it and one more bridge was broken.

As I have had occasion to observe elsewhere at another forum, the federal and state governments are right to accord education the priority it richly deserves in this country. Education is the engine of modern development. No nation can get anywhere without it. Our national anxiety to measure up in education must be duly appreciated even from that point of view alone. According to the statistics provided by the National Universities Commission, NUC, there are 47 universities in the country. Of this number, 25 are federal government-owned; fifteen are state government-owned and seven belong to private investors. Of the federal universities, several are specialised universities of technology and agriculture.

Our young boys and girls have maintained the great quest for knowledge demonstrated a long time ago by the likes of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo and the late Owelle of Onitsha, the Right Honourable Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and many others who braved the odds to travel abroad for university education. According to the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board, JAMB, the number of applications for university admission has risen to about half a million a year. However, the total enrolment for all the universities is still abysmally low, about 20 to 25 per cent. But we are making good progress.

Our great leap in tertiary education has not quite transported our country into a modern industrialised state. Perhaps it is too early to expect this miracle. However, as we journey towards this desired destination, we need to overhaul our educational system to respond appropriately to our developmental needs. There is still a gaping hole between our needs and our capacity to meet them because of a historical disconnection between our educational system and our socio-economic development. The 6-3-3-4 system introduced by the Obasanjo military administration in the late seventies was the first national attempt to comprehensively address this disconnection. If that system had succeeded as conceived, not every child would hanker after university education. Some would head for technical schools and colleges and would come out with the needed technical skills to provide support for our civil and mechanical engineers, medical and dental technologists and agricultural engineers. Our industries would also have a corps of skilled hands to draw from.

Here again, the bridge between our educational system and the world of commerce and industry is broken. There is a disconnection between research and applied research. Low indigenous research input in our manufacturing industrial enterprises means that our industrial growth is hobbled by lack of local raw materials and this in turn leads to low capacity utilisation. When we see factories humming, we like to think that we are making progress. The truth is that fully 90 per cent of our large and medium scale industries are merely assembly plants for the semi-finished industrial goods of other countries. Our vehicle assembly plants remain just that – assembly plants that do a little more than assemble completely knocked down parts.

This situation is not about to change soon unless we demonstrate the will to move our educational development in the same direction with our economic and industrial development. The universities of technology and the universities of agriculture are special institutions that must be made to respond to our national needs in the areas I have mentioned. At the moment, applications from candidates seeking admission into courses in administration and the social sciences outnumber those of engineering, medical sciences, pure sciences and agriculture by a disturbing margin. In fact, in the 2000-2001 academic session, there were only 4,796 applications for agriculture. There is no reason to suppose that the picture has changed dramatically since then.

We could go on and cite several more instances of government policies that have not quite made it because of the sudden disconnection caused by changes either in the leadership of the country or resistance by local representatives of foreign commercial and industrial interests to such policies. I do not wish to go on because it would be unfair to force the club to serve a second dinner tonight.

None of the policies and programmes I have cited so far was a product of a hunch. Each of them had a saleable developmental philosophy. Each of them was the product of a careful evaluation of our situation and what must be done to point the nation in the right direction in its quest for modern development. Yet, each of them was a victim of what is cynically referred to as the Nigerian disease.

The bridge is broken every time a government policy, be it economic or social, encounters resistance and it is abandoned. The bridge is broken each time a succeeding administration abandons the development programmes and policies of its predecessor. Every time this happens, our forward movement is arrested in its track. The people feel frustrated and disappointed. My educated guess is that Chief Obasanjo may be losing some sleep over the fate of his economic reform policies and programmes in the hands of a new administration in 2007. Just think what this possible disconnection would mean to our dreams as a nation and a people. This is no way to develop a country and its economy.

We need to build and sustain bridges in all aspects of our national life. We must build bridges between the tribes and the religions. We must build bridges between the politicians and the technocrats. We must build bridges between our tertiary institutions and the commercial and industrial world. If we fail to build and maintain these bridges the various sectors of our economy will remain islands unto themselves and our nation will not make the desired progress.

To sustain the bridges we build, we must agree on one fundamental principle in our national development policies and programmes. We must accept that government is a permanent institution. It does not begin and end with the political fortunes or misfortunes of those who control it at any given point in time. Rulers come and rulers go but the institution of government stays forever and therefore, the change of baton in government marks only the arrival of a new head of government and not a break in the continuity of government. A succeeding administration must be morally bound to continue with the policies and programmes of its predecessor. The new administration will be permitted to make only such adjustments to those policies and programmes as are necessary to accommodate its own vision and sense of mission. Continuity will end the painful high mortality rate of our policies and programmes and the circle of public frustrations and disappointments with government. Continuity will also help us to see and accept socio-economic development as a process and not as a magic.

Mr. chairman, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, I commend building bridges to you as the best antidote to the poison of wilful disconnections in our national life.

Thank you and God bless.