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Nigeria’s expansive budget

We run an economy today that is based on budgeting. But, to a large extent, our culture does not encourage budgeting. In advanced economies that we are copying, if one lives on a monthly salary, it is difficult to expect one to share with members of one’s family, outside those in one’s nuclear family. In some instances, as one’s children attain the age of 18, parents would ask them to move out to get a council flat to live on their own.

There is nothing like: “Sorry, I was passing by and remembered my relation lives here and I said I should stop by to greet him”, and perhaps, expect that in appreciation of the courtesy, one would reach into one’s pockets to accommodate the unexpected visitor. From which budget is that going to come from?

That is why that, even from the federal level, government officials complain about the budget even before they begin to implement it, because what the executive submitted the lawmakers have gone to inject several other things for their selfish interests, thereby making it too expensive for government to manage within the limited resources available.

At individual level, it appears budgets are not meant to be followed. The point is that there are cultural issues that continue to militate against what we want to achieve both as individuals and as a nation.

The good news is that we can tinker with those cultural issues. But, the only way we can do that is to document those issues. Are we documenting the fact that our patronage and rent seeking culture can come between us and the achievement of the objectives of our national budgets?

Or are we aware that our culture is at the roots of the do-or-die politics that is playing out in our polity as a result of the prevalence of a patronage culture, whereby anyone that gets political appointment gets thousands of people hanging on his neck for one support or the other?

Role of corruption

Often we talk about corruption. Nigerians were not born corrupt. If we take the sample of seven year-old Nigerians today and compare with the opinions of their counterparts in Europe on corruption, the truth is that we are most likely going to discover that the latter would be more corrupt than the former.

Children in Europe are more exposed to television and other media, like the Internet, than their counterparts in Nigeria. So, at what point did we lose our innocence to become the most corrupt?

In 1927, Nnamdi Azikiwe went to work in one of the deepest coal mines in West Pennsylvania for six weeks. On coming out to collect his pay, the Janitor handed him only $294.95. He rejected it and threw a challenge at the white guy that he has been short changed. Despite threats to deal with him for his boldness to make such accusation, Zik insisted to have his correct pay. When he was allowed to do the calculation, it was found out that, indeed, about $200 was skimmed off his money.

Today, more than 94 years later, Nigerians, who are the direct descendants of Zik, are first treated in any part of the world as corrupt people, until proven innocent, while the descendants of that white Janitor, who wanted to defraud Zik in 1927, are seen as the epitome of anti-corruption and cleanliness. Yet, Nigerians are not saying anything to ourselves.

Nigerians are not corrupt. Being stupid might be the better word, because we see our leaders steal money from our treasures, monies they, sometimes, don’t need, and go to establish gigantic businesses that help develop other peoples’ economies, leaving the people to die of poverty.

Nigerians need to be more analytical and deeper in our though processes to inspire change.

Getting out of the economic woods

The ideal starting point is for all Nigerians to become less and less selfish and curb our ego. The difference between Nigeria and the advanced countries is the attitude of the citizens. One would not be known for the biggest houses one builds in one’s village when one is gone, but from the value of the sustainable work one did while alive.

We need to undergo a structural mental adjustment as a country to inspire a turnaround in our economy. What Nigeria needs to become a great country is just a few good men, who know what is right, and are ready to lead the change process, as not all Nigerians can change at the same time.

Living in poverty amidst wealth

Nigeria is not that rich, even in natural resources. The wealth of any country is not measured by the number of extractive resources it has, because the future does not belong to these countries that extract and export natural resources, but to those who think and control the wealth of knowledge.

As was documented during the time of the Dutch disease that those countries with natural resources, like crude oil, was likely going to ignore the other potentialities.

Today, as a result of oil, Nigerians have tended to forget the development of the most important resource – the human brain. That is why government continues to focus all its attention to explore, produce and export all the crude oil abroad, and use all the revenues to import refined products for our domestic consumption. What we do is that we import what we have and export what we do not need.

United States produces 8.5million barrels of oil a day, and not one single barrel is sold abroad. They are stored in giant reservoirs for the rainy day. Recall the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which attracted a lot of global attention by environmentalists. But, what happens in the Niger Delta, as a result of decades of oil exploitation? The western companies have devastated the environment and left the people permanently devalued, just because the technology to explore and produce the crude oil belongs to them.

What if Nigeria did not have oil?

Perhaps, if Nigeria didn’t have oil we would not have governors driving around in official convoys of more than 25 bullet-proof SUVs.

If Nigeria did not have crude oil, probably our expectations would have been managed better. Not only should we manage our expectations from political office holders, who always believe they should be seen as demi-gods, but also the expectations from even the common man in the streets. With that we can focus more on things we can do to make our country a great place, rather than what we can get from our country.

When we look at the way things are going in Nigeria and compare with what is happening in other climes, one is convinced that we are heading for extinction. It is very easy to set us against ourselves.

Nigerians may be laughing over the crisis in Libya and Egypt today. But, if anyone wants to cause a serious upheaval in Nigeria, all that needs to be done is to go to a few markets to amplify a claim of what one religious group has done against another, or one tribal sentiment against another tribe, and the country would collapse on its head in minutes.

When countries want to develop, either to stay at the top or rise, they don’t spare any expense to go at it. No resource is too costly for them to remain at the top.

Sharia banking and the legal question Societies develop on the basis of trust. When trust disappears, fear creeps in and society goes back to that state that Thomas Hobbes describes as ‘short and brutish’.

If there was trust, one would not need to talk about whether Sharia banking is in the constitution or not, because often we tend to be so fixated about constitution.

From the finance perspective, Sharia banking is a product of financial diversification. The Islamic Bank of Britain has branches all over the country and there is no furore about it, as we have in Nigeria. Islamic banking is growing around the world, and Nigeria cannot afford to be left out from the numerous benefits.

We need to have more instruments in the banking industry. If we say we want to become the financial hub of the region or continent, we cannot have the kind of bland banking we have here to get there. We need alternatives for business, beyond collecting deposits and giving loans at huge interest rates.

Nigeria reflects African economy

The sad thing is that a lot of these things about Nigeria also apply to the development in most African countries, especially sub-Saharan Africa. It is not about how others have helped under-develop Africa, but what we have been doing wrong within. The truth is that except we right the wrongs, or the rest of the world correct the wrong they have been doing to Africa, then we cannot make progress.

If we stop being corrupt and undisciplined, and we still live in a global society where the influences of foreign countries can disorganise all our imaginations and calculations, then we won’t get there. If, suddenly, all the foreign countries forget about their personal interests for African countries to make progress, and we don’t change our ways, we wouldn’t also make progress.

We have got to a point where things have become so bad that we must start to solve all the problems at the same time. It is not enough to say, let’s start with fixing energy, because even if there was adequate supply of electricity today and the structures remain unchanged, we probably would not know what to do with it. It is so bad that just fixing that alone would not solve a lot of problems. That is why government has spent about $16billion in that sector since 1999, yet not enough result.

Africa needs to be Crushed

‘Crushed’ is an acronym for the strategies one believes Nigeria, nay Africa, needs to take, if it must get out of the cycle of underdevelopment. It is the title of my latest book: Crushed: Africa’s Tortuous Quest for Development, which has highlighted those fundamentals that are lacking in the continent’s quest for development.

C stands for courage. We need to have the courage to curb corruption.

R stands for being realistic and reasonable in terms of our ambition and the things we can achieve as a nation. It also means that we need to accept responsibility for the things we want to achieve for our lives.

U stands for unity, without which we are finished. This is something we do not have. We can mouth it, but our actions and pronouncements daily shows that we are not ready to be united as a people.

S stands for Strategy. It is not enough to wish or pray we should be great. Yet, it is not enough to merely work for greatness. We should be able to imagine the journey, catalogue the likely obstacles (both internal and external), and plan appropriate responses from day one.

H stands for hard work, history and humility. Development is not a destination but what one works for. Winston Churchill said ‘Any nation that forgets its past is not entitled to a future’. We don’t care about our own history. Schools don’t teach history anymore. Where they do, one only sees colonial history being taught, and nothing about contemporary history. We need to document our history to provide the basis for learning how to build our future.

E is for education. Though Nigeria has education, there is a disconnect between what we have and what we really need.

D stands for democracy. We run by far the most expensive democracy in the world, where lawmakers are earning, indisputably, more than the U.S. president. Our democracy has become a huge drainpipe, more problem than it solves.