Newscenter Media News National Assembly. Photo/facebook/TopeBrown/NigerianSenate
Entertainment-as-a business (EaaB) task force: As a nation, we seem to have comparative advantages in music, movies, dancing, culture, humour, football, and some other traditional games. I am calling on Mr. Femi Otedola to head the EaaB Task Force and come up with a national road map on how to globally commercialise those opportunities profitably.
The Nigeria re-birth project: Every nation that is successful today went through a season of moral, cultural and social re-birth when the populace all came to the conclusion to modernise their behaviours and trash all animalistic traits. It happened in China, South Korea, UAE, Israel, etc.
[ad] To this end, I am calling on our dear Bishop, Rev. Fr. Kukah to handle this as project manager and come up with a road map on what Nigeria should do to acquire a new mentality, new philosophy of life bereft of primitive materialism and rapacious greed and wickedness. Why would the accountant general of the federation who allegedly stole N109 billion be rewarded with a chieftaincy role in his community? We need the bishop’s team to help us out of moral bankruptcy as a nation.
Restructuring of the Nigeria’s superstructure: Unarguably, this current political structure is not working optimally and it seems unworkable, if after 40 years, Nigeria remains static at a per capital income of about $2,526. Indeed, Nigeria is retrogressing in several human development Indices. Our national airlines, refineries, shipping lines and NITEL, among others, are all dead.
Our economy remains at a mono level, 50 years after the indigenisation project. The IMF projected Nigeria to slip to 4th largest economy in Africa in 2024 behind South Africa, Egypt, and Algeria with a GDP estimate of $253 billion from $500 billion a few years back, when we were number one.
Now that the wind of change is blowing globally, it is high time we looked into how to re-calibrate Nigeria to make it work, and walk faster. To this end, I will set up a team of Eminent Elders Reform Group (EERG) to be headed jointly by General Yakubu Gowon and General Olusegun Obasanjo.
[ad] The secretary will be Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe (rtd) to be assisted by Mallam El-Rufai We are lucky to still have these eminent personalities around, leaders under whose watch Nigeria conducted an experiment in centralisation of a heterogeneous federation which has failed calamitously. Their task is to produce a document for National Assembly’s consideration and approval for a new superstructure for Nigeria.
Conclusion
The inconvenient truth is that the first year’s performance of this administration cannot be graded! Nonetheless, we can see some oases of hopes in the desert of suboptimal performances. Some peak performers in the team include Dave Umahi in Works, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo in Interior, Wale Bashir Adeniyi in the Nigeria Customs Service, Festus Keyamo in Aviation with the Air Peace Lagos-London and Emirates -UAE breakthroughs, Wike in FCT and Dele Alake in Solid Minerals.
Uranium is the new oil; Dele Alake can build a trillion-naira economy from it for Nigeria. In addition, this administration has some good “yam-on-fire.” One of which is the student loan, if it can be free from corruption. Jim Ovia should see it as a legacy project and give it his all. The biggest elephant in the room is NCCC (Nigeria Consumer Credit Corporation) headed by Otunba Aderemi Abdul, a man who has invested over 20 years of his life studying how consumer credit works in America and Europe and how to make it work in Nigeria.
NCCC is massive, therefore, the CBN governor and the Minister of Finance should do whatever it takes and make it work.
[ad] Going into the second year, the President should: Replace the ‘’plate’’ that broke and ensure there is, at least, one piece of meat on the plate as quickly as possible. People are at the freezing point right now, at zero degrees Celsius.
Stay more in Nigeria and confront the above identified seven demons and Gerstner’s 12 policy thrusts to fix them accordingly. Nigeria is 10x richer than most of those countries we are begging from. All we need, we already have, including first class brains and untold wealth. The fault is not in our stars but in ourselves.
Stop all the ‘’Zacchaeuses’’ in his government from inventing novel taxes. It’s obvious that both the citizens and corporations have reached their limit of paying capacity.
Stop listening to those people telling him that there are no alternatives to his economic policies. There are alternatives, but it requires a kind of perpendicular thinking to obtain. The deep calleth to the deep. To strengthen the naira, we can save over $10 billion in 2024 if we prioritise local production.
One, establish state-of-the-art furniture factories and training schools in Edo State immediately and bring trainers from Turkey to teach the artisans on finishing. There is no Turkey or Italian furniture that the artistically gifted Bini people cannot produce. Bini are the world’s best in design and that was why the Europeans stole their artworks 500 years ago.
Two, according to CBN governor, Nigeria spent $40 billion on both medical and education tourism in ten years, i.e. an average of $4 billion yearly. Policies number five and six above would save half of that money in 2024. Furthermore, we spend roughly 13.3 per cent of the country’s budget on alcohol, another 13.8 per cent on electronics and billions of dollars on fish and sugar importation. These importations are naira-killer, which policy number three above is meant to fix.
In addition, we can generate fresh $50 billion if we put on our thinking cap. There’s a way, where there’s a political will. The billions of dollars realised from gold, uranium, cobalt, diamond, rare earth and other solid minerals mining are substantially in the private pockets of foreigners and their local VIP agents. We don’t even know the quantities being illegally shipped out daily. We, therefore, need to set up multiple solid minerals refineries and laboratories using the NLNG model of PPP.
[ad] We also need to modernise the sector and review our route-to-market-strategy vis a vis our education curricular to reflect our new priority. Furthermore, whatever it takes, we need to reduce oil bunkering by 50 per cent, reduce corruption in the civil service by 50 per cent through scapegoating. Every street in Nigeria is paved with gold, but corruption, the senior Demon, has arrested our development.
Lastly, the President should also get Jim Obasi Team to examine the state of the $5.28 billion NLNG dividend remitted to the Federal Government through the NNPC. Is the money still taking a nap somewhere? If yes, the President should tap it on the shoulders to wake up. He needs it to strengthen the naira, which is doing acrobatics from being the best performing currency in April to the worst performing currency in May.
[ad] However, if the money has been sent on an errand, President Tinubu should get the details of who, when and for what purpose was it used? Did it pass through the National Assembly, as required by our constitution?
The long and short of it is that getting Nigeria’s elephants to the dancing floor is one thing, and getting the elephants to dance beautifully is yet another. Both are doable. We have incredible potential, limitless resources and resilient citizens. However, as long as we continue to behave like an ostrich, rewarding the wrong people for the wrong values, deceiving ourselves and allowing the 1 per cent at the top of the pyramid to capture 99 per cent of the wealth of the nation, modernisation will become a will-o-the-wisp. But then, nature does not permit a situation to be mismanaged in perpetuity.
So long!
Concluded.
Akano is President, One Africa Initiatives. He can be freached via: timakano1@gmail.com
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