Starting Nigeria afresh

For years, many Nigerians prayed that the oil would finish so Nigeria could start afresh, could go back to first principles and reconstruct itself along productive lines.

Well, after four decades of the oil bonanza their prayers have been answered. Oil didn’t exactly finish; plenty of it is still in the ground and under the sea. But all too many countries now have oil. Oil is everywhere, the oil market is glutted, and prices have collapsed.

The glut was anticipated, and the collapse was predicted. Oil producing countries with a smart leadership saved for the rainy day and channeled their expenditure to education, industrialization, and   infrastructure. For them, oil was a blessing.

Countries with fools for leaders did not. Like the proverbial prodigal son, they spent their oil earnings “in riotous living.” Some not only consumed most or all of it but, in addition, took on huge debts to finance their appetites and bloat their personal bank accounts through “recurrent expenses.” For them, oil was a curse.

Every Nigerian can count his teeth with his tongue and decide which side of the equation we are on.

And so the question is: what is to be done? How do we reorganize and reconstruct Nigeria along productive lines? How do we start Nigeria afresh?

The first thing is to recognize the sovereignty of the nationalities that constitute Nigeria. Even the colonizing British recognized them to some extent, hence their system of “indirect rule” which left the peoples alone to develop their economies and pay taxes to the colonizing power.

Such autonomy and “self government” continued until the military snatched it away in 1966-67 and created multiples of artificial, economically un-viable little “states” that depended on hand-outs from the central government to sustain their huge bureaucracies which consumed everything and produced nothing.

Now that oil revenues have dwindled to pre- or early-OPEC levels, the logical thing is to “decentralize” governance, return autonomy to the pre-oil, First Republic Four Regions or their modified and updated Six Geo-political Zones so that each of them can control and develop all the resources (mineral, agricultural and otherwise) in their territories, educate and train their children in marketable skills, industrialize and provide jobs for their teeming millions, build infrastructure, and pay taxes to the central government. “Hand-outs” (if anything) would go from the active, productive “federating units” (by whatever name—regions, zones, provinces or states) to the non-producing central or federal government.

Merely reducing the number of states from 36 to 6 would automatically cut the cost of state governance by 87%. When the expenses are trimmed (special assistants, fleets of cars, bloated allowances, foreign junkets, “security vote,” etc.), the cost of governing the states will drop to about 3% of what it is at present.

A similar belt tightening in every arm of government—federal  executive, judiciary, legislature, parastatals and civil service—will reduce federal government expenditure to suit the drastically diminished revenue from oil, and, more importantly, prepare the stage for a new mind-set focused on production rather than consumption. Necessity will push the operators of government as well as the ordinary citizenry to apply their minds and energies to productive, transformative work that will yield sustainable, repeatable revenue from agriculture, manufacturing and technology.

This fundamental restructuring of the Nigerian federation will require:

(a) Detailed mapping out by a national Think Tank, e.g. the            Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG);

(b) A Conference of the Nationalities who will agree on the terms of the restructuring, followed, if need be, by a plebiscite approval vote;

(c) Implementation, guided by the road-map provided by the Think Tank.

Meanwhile, as the Think Tank prepares its road map, the current administration can take certain preparatory actions:

1. Stand the annual Budget on its feet, with no more than 10%  going to Recurrent Expenses (salaries, emoluments, entertainment, transport & travel, etc.), and 90% to Capital Projects (infrastructure—reconstruction & re-equipment of schools, training of teachers, electricity, health care, roads, railways, etc.).

2. Dismantle the Local Government system which has nothing to show for the billions pumped into it over the years.

3. Drastically reduce salaries/emoluments paid to governors, ministers, legislators, etc.

4. Reduce the National Assembly to a part-time legislature of 2 or 3 delegates selected from each State Assembly.

5. Reduce State Assemblies to volunteer or part-time, with very limited salaries/allowances.

For Nigeria to become a self-loving and peaceful nation it must be restructured and reformed into productivity. The collapse of oil means that there is no more easy money to steal or share. But there is plenty of money to be made—as the productive nations of the earth know very well. We should observe those countries that produce all the goods we import and consume every day, and learn from them how honest money is made through determined application of physical and mental energies by a self-loving and hard-working citizenry.

Onwuchekwa Jemie