Last week, I watched a CNN feature
on the new railway freight service from Chongqing in China to Duisburg,
Germany. Spanning 11,000km, across six countries – China, Kazakhstan,
Russia, Belarus, Poland and Germany – the service allows manufacturers
in China to move their products to Europe in 15 days, half the time it
takes by sea, and at a fraction of the cost of air freight.
Not unexpectedly, my mind went to
Nigeria, and our tyranny of low expectations and high mediocrity. We are
cavemen with eyes on the ground, dancing around small fires, while the
rest of the world is laying claim to real estate on the sun.
Things have become so bad that we’re
forced to celebrate the resuscitation of a railway line that the British
first completed a hundred years ago (Ignore for a moment the fact that
the President has just appointed, to oversee it, a man who’s almost as
old as the railway line itself). And no, we’re not celebrating its
upgrade to high-speed status. We’re deeply satisfied that it’s still
running – that’s the standard by which we measure “transformation” these
days.
And then to crown it all, we’re forced
to endure petulant lectures from the President’s spokespersons, about
how we should bow down and praise his name to the highest heavens for
reviving the line. As though he’s elected to do us all a favour.
I recently came across the Vision 2020
document. Here’s what it envisions, in road transport: “For land
transport, the government will construct eight major roads (6-lane at
the minimum) to link the extreme ends of the country e.g. two (2)
diagonally: Maiduguri-Lagos and Sokoto-Calabar, two (2) across the
country: Kano-Port Harcourt and Ilorin-Yola and four (4) spanning the
borders of the country: Sokoto-Maiduguri; Sokoto-Lagos; Lagos-Calabar;
Calabar-Maiduguri; and also Lagos-Benin-Onitsha-Enugu-Port Harcourt.”
Isn’t that interesting? Just imagine if,
after 15 years of democracy, we could boast having accomplished the
road vision outlined above. By my estimates, the total length of those
eight roads comes to less than 10,000km. Is that too much to accomplish
in 15 years?
Yes, by Nigerian standards. Expecting
10,000km of new highway in 16 years would be asking for too much in a
country that in 15 years has not quite managed to fix the
less-than-150km Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.
But by Chinese, or even Indian
standards, certainly not. Between 2006 and 2010, China is reported to
have built 639,000km of roads (28,700km of which is expressway).
As of 2010, India was building 9km of
roads per day (3,000km per annum; 12,000km in four years), with a target
of 20km/day. I need someone from the Federal Ministry of Works headed
by Mike Onolememen to tell us how many new kilometers of highway Nigeria
has added in the four years since Mr. Jonathan became President. Let’s
start the 2015 election conversation from that point.
Ditto housing. Let the President come
and tell us how many houses have been built in the last four years,
considering a national housing deficit of 16 million units.
Whatever happened to big ambitions, and
to the big will needed to stand by those ambitions, against all odds and
vested interests?
I imagine one key question around the
issue of ambitious infrastructure will be funding. How will Nigeria fund
the construction of 10,000km of roads and one million low-cost housing
units, over, say, the next 24 months?
My answer would be a peculiarly Nigerian
one: How are the other emerging economies funding theirs? Why can’t we
do whatever it is they’re doing? How is Brazil managing to build more
than a million new homes per annum? Do its leaders have two heads?
Let’s not forget that we’re a major oil
producing country, awash with petrodollars. A country that can spend as
much as we’re spending on militants shouldn’t be complaining about funds
for big road or housing projects. I’m convinced that the money Nigeria
is currently leaking – from fuel subsidy scams, oil theft, and NNPC
brigandage – is more than enough to pull off a good number of
construction miracles.
At the weekend, I attended a meet-the-candidate session with Sam Nda-Isaiah, Publisher of LeadershipNewspapers,
and the first person to declare his 2015 presidential ambition (on the
platform of the All Progressives Congress). He touched on an important
theme: The concept of ambitious thinking; the sort that transformed
Dubai and Singapore from backwater lands into what they are today.
“This is a time for big ideas and
history-changing endeavours,” Nda-Isaiah said. He convincingly argued
that Nigeria’s Presidency is powerful enough to accomplish anything it
sets out to do, as long as the occupier of that office “really (means)
it…”
One major problem with the current
occupier of that office, however, is that beyond vague references to
“transformation”, one never gets a sense of what his personal vision for
Nigeria is.
His commitment to that invisible vision
is even more invisible. Just like during the Umaru Yar’Adua days, it
sadly seems like President Jonathan is just one of the several people
running Nigeria. If the buck stops anywhere it doesn’t seem to be
anywhere near his table.
Instead of the Presidency to take the
steps to convince us otherwise, it is resorting to the classic game of
distraction. The Board of the National Distraction Commission has been
reconstituted, and it is working assiduously to fulfill its mandate, the
linchpin of which is this so-called “National Conference”.
I find it absurd that the government is
showing seriousness in the matter at this time, barely one year to
general elections. This is something that should have happened two years
ago (with the same presidential commitment that was wasted on the
ill-advised fuel subsidy removal).
The President and his people are
probably counting on the fact that this N9bn Jamboree (“Big Brother
Nigeria – the Government Edition”) will keep us all sufficiently
entertained/distracted until the middle of the year, when the World Cup
will take over.
Since it doesn’t seem like there’s
anything we can do at this time to shoot down the conference idea, the
best we might be able to do is refuse to be distracted by it, and insist
on keeping alive the conversations about the things that really matter
at this time: The parlous state of transport infrastructure, the power
sector reforms, housing issues, unemployment, etc.
Why, you might ask, am I focusing
exclusively on the Federal Government? One, because it gets the biggest
chunk of Nigeria’s resources (52 per cent of the Federation Account goes
to Abuja, leaving 36 states and 774 local governments to share the
rest). Two, because, as the highest level of government, it has a moral
responsibility to set a good example for the rest to follow. When Abuja
is behaving irresponsibly, or like a Federal Government trapped in a
Local Government mindset, why should we be surprised when the states
follow suit?
Nigeria is not going to magically become
a country where things work. We will have to make it happen by the
choices we make and the seriousness we show. For now, we are busy
celebrating the fact that the world thinks we are MINT-hot. But we can’t
live off “potential” indefinitely.
I met a Rwandan journalist in Lagos at
the weekend. He told of how Nigerians are now flocking to Rwanda, to
invest in agriculture (coffee farms), attracted by the ease of doing
business there. It takes 48 hours to register a business. There is none
of the obnoxious multiple taxes associated with Nigeria. Corruption is
not a beast the President openly feeds. And the visa-on-arrival policy
actually works.
A few years ago, Nigeria announced a
visa-on-arrival policy for business visitors. If you’re a visiting
businessperson and you believe that you can show up at the Murtala
Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja and expect to get a visa, just
because the government has said so, I’ve got a small ocean I’d like to
sell to you.
Things like this explain why Nigeria is
ranked 120th out of 148 countries, in the World Economic Forum Global
Competitiveness Index 2013-2014; interestingly, 54 places behind Rwanda.
At the moment, there isn’t much
compelling evidence that we are a serious country. If we find ourselves
irredeemably left behind by the rest of the world (starting with Ghana
three doors away), we shouldn’t be surprised.
It will be a well-deserved fate, no doubt.
Omojuwa.com
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