By Adamu Adamu
Most people are able to dream only in bed at night as they sleep; others do so as they catch some zees in an afternoon nap; while yet others manage while they are wide awake—and this is called daydreaming, a sort of silent soliloquy of fantasy. Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the minister of finance and coordinator of the nation’s economy was able to do it and share it with a straight face and an un-cracked voice during a recent BBC interview.

She says Nigeria has what it takes to be in the category of the BRIC’s. Ha! Ha!! Ha!!! Okay, if it does have, why isn’t it there? And isn’t this just as outlandish as that 2020-20 claim of joining the ranks of the world’s 20 most developed economies by the year 2020? Why are we just so very good at deceiving ourselves? How can a country that is failing, and will in three years almost certainly fail to meet the very basic Millennium Development Goals be talking of becoming one of the world’s developed economies in eight years? Why is the leadership of this nation fond of telling lies and the followership so fond of not disbelieving it?

The BRIC—Brazil, Russia, India and China—are the fastest growing and largest emerging market economies in the world today. South Africa was invited to membership in December last year; and it attended the BRIC summit for the first time April this year. With Nigeria, the collective will probably be known as the BRINC; and so the question is: Is Nigeria really qualified to be on the BRINC? And the truth is that it is not, but it is already on the brink; and so long as it remains on that brink—a crossroads with unending crises, always with the looming disaster of state failure and a real possibility, perhaps probability, of a foreign-assisted implosion, as the nation’s greatest source of strength—its deep and sincere belief in God—has been turned into its greatest potential for failure by a visionless, uncreative elite class, so long will it remain out of BRINC.

For the moment, therefore, Nigeria certainly doesn’t belong in that distinguished gathering, not with a GDP less than a fifth of South Africa’s, whose own membership is being contested as unmerited; not with its low productivity and dried up flow of foreign direct investment; and certainly not with the current state of the security and law and order situations.

And while there is grinding corruption in all the four BRIC countries but what obtains in Nigeria defies description. And even if we generate and export surplus mega wattage of electricity, have the most efficient transportation system and the world’s highest economic growth rate, all that will not translate into development or a higher standard of living for our people unless corruption is curtailed.

All the others at least have something going for them. Until recently, Russia, Soviet Union, was a superpower and it is still more than an ordinary medium one. India has the best civil service in the world—because the whole world learnt and copied the principles of merit-based civil service from them; and an efficient service is the best antidote to corruption. China has the world’s most effective solution to corruption—instant death, while Brazil.

Nigeria is today desperately looking for a statesman, a person of great vision with an ambitious plan to lift this country out of its self-imposed stagnating world of corruption, poverty and underdevelopment, out of the current economic wilderness into which lack of good governance has consigned it, and onto the path of sustainable social, political and economic development. But first, something drastic and final must be done about corruption and election, because the corruption-freeness of the polity is just as crucial as the freeness and fairness of the election and neither is negotiable, and both are beyond being on a so-called agenda.

And if our statesman comes along with a seven-point agenda this time, it will not be so much out of place; and the agenda should look something like this: education, power, agriculture, water resources, power, railways, and industrialization.

On education, extensive investment must be made at all the three levels of learning—primary, secondary and tertiary—and may also involve the retraining of all the university graduates of the past two decades.

There has been no meaningful or sustained policy for the industrial take-off of this nation, though there is nothing that Nigeria has not claimed to have tried—import substitution, backward integration, export-led growth—and there was in fact a time when the leadership said it would do everything, including stealing technology in order to develop Nigeria. But, somehow, they never got to become accomplished thieves in this endeavour. This time they really must steal it if that’s the only way the country can industrialize.

On water resources, an ambitious master plan involving that massive inter-basin water transfer within the country and on regional-continental basis once envisaged, drawn up and for long championed by the duo of Alhaji Salihi Ilyasu and Alhaji Yalwaji Saleh Mansa should now be undertaken.

Agriculture which is the mainstay of our economy must be subsidized and this national pettiness of opposition to agriculture on account of its being largely a Northern affair must just stop. No serious government will play with the nation’s food security.

But subsidizing agriculture and making water available may yield some benefits, but the success may be Pyrrhic and short-lived, because without halting the Sahara Desert, it will all turn out to be a long-term environmental disaster. However, with the right attitude and necessary political will, a genuine partnership between the Nigerian government, the European Union and the governments of neighbouring Benin, Niger, Chad and Cameroun republics can successfully launch a 25-year tree planting campaign in which 50 trillion trees will be planted in the 500,000-square kilometre rectangle covering the Sahelo-Sudanese region of the five countries’ savannah belt.

On railway rescue, the idea is to achieve a complete grid locking of the entire nation with a fast, efficient, modern rail system, with a network that goes vertically from Sokoto to Badagry, from Katsina to Benin, from Kano to Port Harcourt, from Nguru to Uyo, and from Maiduguri to Calabar; and, horizontally, from Sokoto to Maiduguri, from Birnin Kebbi to Mubi, from New Bussa to Jalingo, from Ilorin to Gembu, from Ibadan to Ikom, and from Lagos to Calabar. The lines from New Bussa and Kano both pass through the Federal Capital Territory; while the Lagos-Calabar line goes along a coastal loop through Benin City, Warri, Yenagoa, Port Harcourt, Uyo and Calabar; and the Maiduguri-Calabar line goes along an eastern loop through Bama, Gwoza, Yola, Gembu, Takum, Vandeikya, Ikom and Calabar.

Once I accosted the late Waziri Mohammed and asked him—and I was later to mention the same idea to Alhaji Lawal Batagarawa when he replaced him as chairman of Nigerian railways—why such a suggestion should not be forwarded to President Olusegun Obasanjo; and all Waziri would say was that he had already submitted a $50 billion proposal to the president. But I was thinking of funding in the level of $150 billion—perhaps a syndicated World Bank, African Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank soft loan—to finance for the dismantling of the old system, acquiring the land, laying standard-gauge, to-and-fro lines, building stations in all state capitals and major towns, procuring wagons and engines, and establishing plants to manufacture them.

The existing railway tracks must be completely dismantled. The nation must stop deceiving itself: the current laughable railway revamping and all the Chinese corruption will not take us anywhere. And let’s get it straight that there is nothing wrong with a loan properly utilized; and with an efficient, accountable and closely supervised management, the new leadership of the railways can pay back the loan in 50 years. Then perhaps we can confidently start thinking and talking of 2060 as being the year.

On power development, the target should be the generation of 100,000 megawatts over two presidential terms; and the programme should exploit the many abandoned hydroelectric, gas, wind and solar potentials of the nation.

This is a very involving agenda, but the president doesn’t have to know everything; indeed, he doesn’t have to know anything; but the nation needs the reassurance that at least he knows and can get those who have the knowledge and skills required for proper and efficient economic management and the competence to run a modern government—and, above all, the experience or readiness to learn; and in the meantime, the good sense to allow those who do to do the job. At the moment his doesn’t seem to be happening. Only when it begins can Okonjo-Iweala realistically begin to talk of Nigeria joining the BRIC, not before.

Very well said.

A former U.S ambassador to Nigeria once said "Nigeria is blessed with all kinds of resources you can think of but the country is afflicted with bad,insincere and corrupt leadership".

These afflictions over the years are graually affecting the followers.

Now,we are fast having bad,insincere and corrupt followers. You can see poverty written all over some people even when they are financially comfortable. They call it "Survival Strategies".

I call it "Poverty of the mind" also known as" extreme greed" it defies economic logic that the more of something you have, the less the value you attached to it.But the greed in them will always take control.

People both in leadership and followership want to acquire and acquire wealth through corrupt means to the detriments of everyone and the country at large.

While I really would not want to subscribe to mass revolt because of attendant bloodshed that it could lead to, I do not think the Nigeria system and sructure as currently constituted and these present crops of politician(regardless of party affiliation) can give us the Nigeria of our dream except we find a means to get rid of them.

The few activist we know before joining politics are singing different tunes now that they are in corridors of power.

Oshiomole fought Military government and 2nd coming of obasanjo administration vehemently over this fuel Subsidy.Channels TV-lagos was fond of showings his analysis of artificial fuel subsidy. But what do we have now that he is in a better position to convince his colleagues in the Governors forum who were the first to support the removal because they want more money to steal!

No one is talking about the Corruption in NNPC. Why the refineries can't work? Where all the monies spent on the refineries since 1999 has gone? The landing cost template for imported Petroleum products? How PPRA headed by former PDP chairman and close confidant of Obasanjo-Ahamadu Alli  allocates licences?

In 2008-2009 when crude oil was at its highest- $145, Zenon oil was selling a litre of diesel at N65. But for about 2yrs now that the price has gradually come down to about $100 per barrel, one would expect a decline in diesel price locally, but the reverse is the case. As we speak,diesel sells for  N155-N160 per litre in Lagos!


I have a twin priviledge of being an economist and works within the oil industry. Most commentators about subsidy removal are ignorant of the key issues and I just laugh when people make uninformed comments.

Deregulation in itself is not a bad idea if there is a free market entry and exit. You may discover that some people may sell good quality imported pms, diesel and AGO at a price far cheaper than what NNPC can sell locally refined petroleum products here!

If you don't believe, good quality imported cement is cheaper than locally produced cement.Same applies in most industries because of poor infrastructures such as power thereby adding to local cost of production.

But a situation where only few people "Cabal" are allowed to do certain business and import certain essential items, such as petroleum products, Sugar etc. then what you will have is Monopoly, price-fixing and profiteering as it is the case with the petroleum products importers now.

What the Jonathan led govt is trying to do is to hand-over Nigerians to the so called "Cabal".

Most people think the "Cabal" will loose out if the subsidy is removed! But the contrary will be the case. In actual fact, the cabal will make more money because they can sell at any agreed fixed price among themselves.Once upon a time, Zenon oil was selling diesel at a far more reasonable price of N65 per litre  when crude oil was $145 but the cabal has since fixed it above N150. Just like what is happening in diesel market-fixed!

Same will apply to PMS and kerosene.

Rather than solve the real problem of corruption in the system, do a shake-up in the entire oil and gas industry including institutions like NNPC and DPR, address questions early asked about why our refineries are not working and allow anybody to bring in petroleum products without any licenses (as long as the standard quality is imported).
The last point may be difficult because I am a witness to how the cabal sometimes uses the the DPR & customs to muscle competitors who intend to import similar products and sell cheaper.

In the long run, Nigerians will have to determine their collective fates