Nigeria Content Online

The Austrian-Jewish
novelist and playwright Stefan Zweig once famously described Brazil,
his adopted home, as “the land of the future” — a country of eternal
potential. Today, Brazil is an increasingly self-confident emergent
world economic power, a technological-industrial state of the first
rank, thanks to visionary leaders such as Fernando Henrique Cardoso and
Luis Iñacio Lula da Sliva, who have turned around the fortunes of the
country.

Nigeria,
unfortunately, seems to have inherited the questionable mantle of being
Stefan Zweig’s land of the future – a country forever in suspended
animation.

Last week, during
Monday the 13th and Tuesday the 14th, a conference was held under the
Abuja Distinguished Speaker Series (ADSS) on the theme of “Unlocking
Nigeria’s Wealth Potentials”. The ADSS is a joint initiative of the
Abuja Investment Company Ltd (AICL), the commercial and investment
agency of the Federal Capital Territory and the Centre for Policy and
Economic Research (CEPER), an Abuja-based macroeconomics and public
policy think tank founded by yours sincerely. The aim of the series is
to bring to our Federal Capital world leaders in business, government
and academia to speak on issues of national and international
importance. It is part of efforts to place Africa’s most beautiful
capital on the map in terms of cutting-edge ideas that would help
transform our country.

Last week saw the
launching of the maiden lecture by Professor Peter Lewis, Director of
the African Studies Programme at the elite Johns Hopkins School of
Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. The welcome address
was given by the Minister for the Federal Capital Territory, the gentle
and soft-spoken Bala Abdulkadir Mohammed. The event was declared open
by the President of the Senate, David Mark. A brief introduction was
made by the Managing Director of AICL, Abdu Mukhtar, a Harvard Medical
School graduate who has become a successful finance and investment
executive. Participants were drawn from industry, finance, government
and the international agencies. Among the speakers were: Bart Nnaji,
Special Adviser to the President on Power; Andrew Alli, CEO of the
African Finance Corporation; Mustapha Bello, Director-General of the
Nigerian Investment Corporation (NIPC); Ernest Ndukwe, former Executive
Vice-Chairman of the National Communications Commission; Ikenna Nwosu,
CEO of Mooregate Ltd; Ndidi Nnoli-Edozien, Founder and CEO of the
Growing Business Foundation of Nigeria; Isa Odidi, founder/CEO of
IntelliPharmaceutics Ltd, a billion dollar publicly quoted firm based
in Toronto, Canada; Hassan Usman, CEO of Aso Savings Ltd; and my humble
self.

Peter Lewis provided the main lecture around which three round tables were organised.

His paper, titled
“Can Nigeria transform its Economy? Lessons from Asia” drew from his
famous book, Growing Apart: Oil, Politics and Economic Change in
Indonesia and Nigeria (Michigan University Press, 2007). It is one of
the most important books to be written on comparative Nigerian
development over the last two decades and I recommend it to all those
who feel a calling to leadership in this country.

Lewis makes the
point that Nigeria and Indonesia started in the 1960s with similar
initial conditions but ended up with development trajectories. Both are
large, populous oil producers; both are ethnically divided societies;
both underwent bloody civil conflicts as well as corrupt military
tyrannies. But that is where the similarities end. Unlike Nigeria, the
Indonesian power elites managed to broker a national development
consensus that oversaw massive investments in infrastructures and human
capital. Indonesia pursued an agriculture-led, export-oriented
industrialisation strategy that has seen the country reduce its
dependence on oil as principal source of government revenues. Most
importantly, Indonesian elites kept their ill-gotten wealth within the
country. They invested at home, providing jobs and opportunities for
their own people.

We did the complete
opposite. Out of the US$850 billion we have made from petroleum over
the last four decades, between US$200 and US$400 billion have been
squirreled abroad. Our physical infrastructures, including power, are
in shambolic conditions and our education system is fourth-world. The
tragedy of our situation is that most of us do not believe in our
country. This encourages the haemorrhaging of the economy through
capital flight which in turn deepens the vicious cycle of poverty. If
people decide to take everything abroad the country will remain poor
and our people will continue to wallow in destitution.

What is the ultimate solution?

For my part, I
believe part of it lies in the declaration of an amnesty on all
expatriated funds for two years, after which the government should be
free to prosecute those who have pillaged our national treasure.

That could rake in
an estimated 25 trillion naira, which is more than what we need to
realise our much-vaunted ambition of being among the top 20 economies
by the coming decade. We must also create conditions that make it
attractive to invest at home. I regard Indonesia as one of the ‘softer’
Asian countries. We have to benchmark ourselves against China, Japan and South Korea.

History teaches that nations can never rise above the vision and
endowment of their leaders and the heights of their ambitions. I have
never wavered in my faith about our country’s high and noble destiny.
If we do not believe in ourselves nobody will believe in us.