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 Politics › Nigerians Are We Really Patriots.... by Kharlyd(op): 1:14pm On Sep 03, 2016 |
"But, think of a country like Ethiopia and then Meles
Zenawi, the late Prime Minister. Ethiopia keeps growing
year after year at 11-12 per cent. And what did Meles
do? The simple things we have been saying for decades
and decades and decades. This is a country that came out
of a war, remember? It’s facing insecurities; got Eritrea
and other countries that do not like it around it. I’ll
give two examples.
"Coffee. It originated from Ethiopia in the world. But,
Ethiopian farmers, before Meles, would get 10 per cent
of the value of coffee from their crops. They would just
produce the coffee and sell to companies, and the
companies will take their coffee into Latin America and
have it improved and dried and and packaged. And
Zenawi just asked: “Why can’t we produce coffee in
Ethiopia that would go straight from Ethiopia to the coffee
shops in Europe?” And all sorts of responses came.
“Well, you know your weather is good for growing
coffee. You coffee is very good, but your farmers have
bad farming practices.” So he said: “Why don’t you
teach them?” So, he got in touch with the IFC
(International Finance Corporation), got a loan,
organised Ethiopian coffee farmers into cooperatives,
taught them how to grow the coffee, how to dry, prepare
and package it. Today, if you go to coffee shops in
Europe and take a cup of coffee that came straight from
Ethiopian farm. And Ethiopian farmers are now getting
70 per cent of the value of the coffee, from the former
10 per cent.
"So, he tells Aliko Dangote, come and build a cement
manufacturing plant here. I am going to give you
electricity at three cent per kilowatt hour. For a cement
manufacturer, that is all the incentive that you need.
So, Dangote goes, builds the most sophisticated cement
plant in Ethiopia, gets electricity almost for nothing and
cost of cement drops by 60 per cent. The construction
industries gets boosted. Roads are being built with
cement. Jobs are created. And new industry has taken
off.
"He said to the Chinese, “I don’t like this your idea
of coming to buy hides and skin and leather from Ethiopia
and sell us shoes. Set up the factory here.” Nigeria
imports 3 million pairs of shoes per annum from China.
Nobody knows how much duty they pay. I am not talking
about expensive shoes. I am not talking about what you
buy from Pierre Cardin, or Gucci. I am talking about
shoes people wear on the streets. Shoes that can be
bought here in Kano. We can produce all the shoes, and
school bags we want for primary and secondary schools
children, millions and millions of pairs. No, we don’t.
You know what we do, we export the wet blue and we
import from shoes from China, and we have Chinese
people coming here to take wet blue to China and bring
back shoes.
"We are just a very interesting country.
"Every single thing we are talking about today about what
we need to do have been said before. I have a document
“Industrialization Potentials of Northern Nigeria under
Ahmadu Bello, 1962.” There is nothing we are saying
today that was not part of the industrial plan of Northern
Nigeria in 1962. We are clapping ourselves that after
50 years, we have learnt nothing. The whole
industrialisation of Kano, starting from Bombay to
Sharada to Challawa had space on that plan. These are
very simple economic logic. You cannot continue doing the
wrong things and expect to have the right result. Since
1950s and 1960s, they understood what was the essence
of colonialism. It was to come to these countries, take
our raw materials, process them and sell us manufactured
goods, and keep shifting the terms of trade against
them, so you get richer at their expense. They understood
that independence was not about the flag, but about
reversing that process. They understood it. We did not.
And therefore they said we needed to stop exporting our
cotton. We need to build textile industries. We need to
stop exporting groundnuts.
"Kano used to take pride in groundnut pyramids. I still
have people who come to me and say: “You know,
Emir, you must bring back those groundnut pyramids.”
But, I don’t build groundnut pyramids. I want oil
mills. What am I doing with groundnut pyramids? They
stopped exporting groundnut pyramids and build all these
oil mills.
"We should stop exporting hides and skin. Huge
multinational corporations that came to Nigeria, whose
business was to buy hides and skin. A company like John
Holt. In Hausa anyone who trades in skins is called
‘Dan Janho’. It became a Hausa word, because this
was a multinational whose duty was to just buy hides and
skins and take to Europe to produce shoes for us to buy.
So, they said let us build our own factories and produce
our own shoes and bags. It’s so bad in this country.
"Tomato paste that our wives use in kitchens is imported
from China. At best, it is packaged in Nigeria. Now,
we have a paste factory 40 kilometres from Kano. That’s
about the first. We cannot process tomato. We have to
import tomato from China. It’s a very sad case.
"A country of 170 million people last week Nigerians
were celebrating, because we went to Rio and came back
with one bronze medal. I saw Nigerians jumping.
Somebody said at least we were on the medals table. We
don’t have ambitions as a nation. Some of these things
are not just about numbers. It is about a mindset and a
people and attitude.
"Do we really love our country? Do we feel any shame
when we say that Malaysia that came and took palm
seeds from us is now exporting palm oil? Palm oil is
what Eastern Nigeria people eat. Now, we can’t produce
it. Vegetable oil, groundnut oil.
"I went to my friend’s house the other day in Lagos and
they gave me Moringa tea in a nicely packaged tin. That
is the thing that grows wildly here in the Northern part
of the country. Somebody takes Moringa, puts it in a
tin, packages it. I did not even know it was called
Moringa until I took the tea. They packaged it and gave
it an English name. I did not even know it again. It
was after I drank it that I knew it was Zogale, as it is
called in the local language. If they had packaged it and
called it Zogale, it would have been known as Zogale tea
all over the world. Just like people know coffee from
Ethiopia. But, now that it is called Moringa, a Hausa
man does not know what Moringa is, and it is growing in
his backyard. Then, he takes pound sterling to import
Moringa tea. So, this is what Ethiopia did."
- Emir Muhammadu Sunusi II as reported by Premium
Times |
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