•President Buhari
Mr President, no modern country, not to talk of Nigeria, can be self-sufficient not to talk of being buoyant, without a strong manufacturing sector.
The letter to the president from citizen George I. Umeh, did not arrive the columnist’s desk yesterday. It came weeks back and I had cause, some two weeks ago, to quote therefrom. However, no time could have been more opportune than now, to bring the entire letter to the public space. When I quoted from the letter, though in reference to what I described as our country’s ballooning corruption, it coincided with the Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu Colloquium on ‘Made in Nigeria Products’. This past week, the president launched his government’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP).
It will be apposite to quote the president on the plan. Said he:”We are determined to change Nigeria from an import-dependent country to a producing country. We must become a nation where we grow what we eat and consume what we produce. We must strive to have a strong Naira and a productive economy …”
Mr Umeh’s letter is pointing the president in that very direction.
Happy reading.
Mr President,
ECONOMIC ADVICE
I am constrained to write this letter to you because of the dire economic situation in the country. Our country is on the brink of an economic crash with states unable able to pay salaries. The unemployment rate among the youth, according to the UNDP is over 75%. I am writing to you because I believe you have a listening ear. You are pure, highly disciplined, humble at heart, and above all, you are not the type that would want lives wasted. There are several evidences of your kindheartedness, even on the war front. For instance, I was reliably informed you released captured Biafran soldiers at the Awka sector, giving them relief materials, explaining that the war was for us to live together as one.
But Mr. President, there is one war, I believe, you cannot win and that is the industrial war. Why you cannot win it is twofold:
It started, way back, from independence when our leaders did not pursue industrialisation as being more important than even independence itself. They all overlooked it or, their efforts were at best half-hearted. It will take the combined spirit of your war against Boko Haram, and corruption, to make an impact during your administration, even if you were to stay for eight years. All our past leaders failed on this and so contributed to the present problem in which has led us to becoming a nation of importers. I actually told people to vote for you if they wanted a fight to the finish with corruption, or a very fierce fight with Boko Haram, but I did not see you being able to tame the economic problem facing our nation.
Mr President, no modern country, not to talk of Nigeria, can be self-sufficient not to talk of being buoyant, without a strong manufacturing sector. You need to manufacture majority of the products you consume in your country and if possible, export, which Nigeria can do to our neighbours in West and Central Africa. I saw this problem as far back as 1973, and chose not to study medicine or engineering but instead, read business studies. Mr President, political independence is not economic independence. Political independence must be backed by economic independence otherwise it becomes a flag independence which is merely symbolic and, like Nigeria and South Africa, could see poverty, crime and frustration gain the upper hand in a country.
I remember how, from Nsukka, in 1975 we embarked on a U.N.N students’ industrial tour of the north and I saw ripe tomatoes wasting on farmlands in Zaria, Kaduna, Kano, down to Benue. They could not be canned. Today we are importing nearly a thousand different brands of tomato. We import vegetable oil, and such mundane things as ordinary hand grinding machines, basic electronics etc. By now, not only these products but other light engineering products should all be made in Nigeria.
I have not seen any serious effort by Nigeria to industrialise. The most Nigerian governments did to push this was Shagari’s Import Substitution Policy around ’82 –‘83. Economic insecurity breeds corruption, which will be minimised if the economy is properly fine tuned. Except for one pre-war minister, all the other ministers had stories to tell about having to borrow money to transport their families home after the 1966 coup, or having to discover they had no house to live in on their return to their hometowns. People like Maitama Sule, Shettima Ali Munguno and others can say so. Even top civil servants found themselves in similar situation. To escape that situation, public servants now steal from the public purse.
Mr President, why I am insisting on manufacturing and industrialisation is that it is the core of any modern economy. Many nations which had failed severely, have miraculously bounced back, becoming self sufficient, even affluent, through manufacturing. China is the most glaring example. Chinese officials came to Nigeria in 2009 and testified in Abuja that Nigeria in 2009 was better than China 30years earlier, that is, in 1979. China, after the death of Chairman Mao Tse Tung (their communist economy champion for about 30years), took up industrialisation and by 2013 had become about the greatest economic power in the world. That miracle of China is nothing besides industrialisation. South Korea had the same problem in the 1950s and 60s and reverted to industrialisation. By the 70s, it was already breaking through, and remains self-sufficient today. Vietnam, the miserable jungle communist country fighting the US from 1965 to 1975, is today an industrialising nation, becoming more self sufficient. It has, in fact, been projected to become the 17th industrialised nation globally, by 2025. Japan of the 1950s is not the Japan of today, due to industrialisation.
No nation, including Nigeria, can survive on an excess of imports. It is stated that we spend about 90% to 95% of our income on imports. Poverty, devaluation of your currency, unemployment and uncontrollable crime will reign which the country’s police will never be able to control.
In a good economy, political leadership recedes to the background. Japan and Italy have had not less than 58 prime ministers each since after World War II, yet they are not affected in terms of economy or employment. Even governments have closed down financially, but were helped, back up, by the private sector till they fully recovered. It happened to the U.S between November 1995 and February 1996 under Bill Clinton and under Obama in 2014.
Mr President, it is not hotels and filling stations that will give our graduates employment but industries. We are compounding the problem creating more universities instead of industries, since hundreds of thousands of graduates are being poured into the labour market yearly without hope. Our economy has contributed to even the Niger Delta and Biafran problems. Yes, Niger Delta, because we have a monocultural economy based on crude oil alone. Together with unemployment, there is the fact that oil companies have not acted as they should. Pipes laid over 50 years ago are breaking up, polluting farmlands and streams. They never cared to help the communities around them until the communities started revolting. Even the B.B.C once reported, a few years ago, that 65% of all oil blowouts world-wide happen in Nigeria. Unfortunately, our laws are not updated to impose heavy fines on them. Recently a lawsuit brought against an oil company for polluting some towns since 1983 was just decided this year, 33years later. The compensations had become meaningless.
The solution: Mr President, manufacturing must be encouraged at the federal, state and local government levels. Every area must find out what their people use, establish through feasibility\viability studies, the attractiveness of manufacturing such products. Local governments should not establish less than three small scale industries per year. So should the states also do with a minimum of three medium scale industries per year.
Government cannot do it alone. Therefore, private businessmen must be encouraged, and heavily induced with free land, free taxes for up to 10 years and dedicated electricity to their factories. If we do not do that today, tomorrow will be worse. We barely have power for two days each week where I live. This must be substantially improved upon. It is better we embark on this industrial war, very much like the Biafran war of old, but without shelling, bullets and war plane strafing civilians.
Industrialisation will reduce our importation, increase foreign reserves, and revalue our currency. Industrialisation will provide the solution to the unemployment problem for millions of our youths. You only recently cited import substitution as a policy sometime ago. That is the way we should go. There is no other way, and we are already very late.
It must therefore be treated as an emergency.
I wish you well,
Your compatriot, George I. Umeh.
