We as loyal and proud citizens of Nigeria, have every cause to thank God each passing day of our lives because we come from a blessed country, we are a lucky country, we are country that should not lack anything.
We are God’s own country, a country endowed with everything, such that other countries are even jealous of us. We are the children of the Most High whose land abounds with the richness of oil. The poet S.T. Coleridge writes of “water, water, everywhere but not enough to drink.” But here in Nigeria, it is the case of oil, oil, everywhere, but not enough to take care of its people because wealth is in the hands of the rich, greedy, favored few. This is the sermon on Nigeria, the oil-rich country where its people are suffering amidst plenty. Plenty oil. Yet plenty trouble.
Oil! That precious liquid gold from the bowels of the earth. Oil, that dark, precious, subterranean liquid that the world keeps wanting, that fuels the global economy and keeps everything moving, from cars to okadas to planes to even spaceships that fly on a mission to explore the heavens.
Oil, the wealth that sustains our economy such that Nigeria depends on oil for everything, from monthly federal allocations to state governments to stolen oil subsidy money to the money that politicians share in heavy bags of Ghana-must-go. All of them are products of oil. Oil money!
What will Nigeria be without oil? Death of course. Because oil has become our oxygen. Oil provides us perpetually with the easy pocket money from God. Without much sweat, we make billions of dollars from oil, such that we don’t even know what to do with it—to borrow from General Gowon who once ruled Nigeria and boasted to the world about our oil wealth surplus.
Without oil, perhaps, there would be no
Nigeria today. It is oil that ties us together as one. The Biafran
War was fought partly or mainly because of oil. Today, oil is Nigeria
and Nigeria is all about oil. One dig at oil, one attempt a
t removing oil subsidy and there would
be civil disobedience—because, as people would say, “God has a reason
for blessing us with oil and we must benefit from it till we die.”
But one great Nigerian woman is praying
that God should dry up Nigeria’s oil! Her name is Dr. Oby Ezekwesili,
the former Minister of Education and the immediate past World Bank Vice
President. She was the guest speaker at the Success Digest Enterprise
Award which took place at the Lagos Sheraton Hotel on Saturday November
3. And there she dropped this sweet bombshell:
“I am one of those Nigerians that
constantly pray that our oil should dry up or that the rapid quest for
technologies that offer renewable energy options as alternatives to oil
should emerge in order that the lure of oil politics in our nation may
cease. Oil is not the route to our greatness. Our human capital is not
just a route to our greatness but is in fact our greatness.”
She was speaking on how Nigeria can
achieve greatness through entrepreneurial mindset which she defines as
“a way of thinking and behaving that capitalizes on opportunities by an
unusual willingness to take risks and to pursue an idea until it creates
value and impact.”
he explains that although
entrepreneurship is mainly about business, “the art of having an
entrepreneurial mind is broader than the circumscribed world of
business.”
The problem with Nigeria, she says is
that we don’t have leaders that think like entrepreneurs. This is what
has caused us the ticket to the land of greatness.
“Our underperformance as a country and
people is directly traceable to the poor choice of mindset. Simply, we
have lacked the leadership of the kind that moved a nation like Botswana
from a 98% aid dependent economy at independence to one that upon
discovering diamond judiciously invested the proceeds to grow itself
into one of Africa’s very few upper middle income countries…
“No nation that has developed did so by
having leaders who remained complacent in the face of the stark reality
of very poor and declining performance of national productivity and
competitiveness indices. No nation became great without leaders who
have the entrepreneurial mindset. History is replete with nations that
were once great but became complacent or distracted at some point only
to be overtaken by nations they previously looked down on…
“Even more instructive is the history
of many nations which were several thousands of miles behind others
economically but which today are the locomotives that are keeping the
global economy from completely running out of steam. No economic
discourse is today complete without some perplexed acknowledgement by
even the most cynical that China, India and Brazil have indeed come of
age and have become the economies most deserving of the respect of all
other economies.
“At another level, many a Nigerian
perennially recalls when Singapore, Taiwan (China), South Korea,
Malaysia and Vietnam were economic contemporaries of our
country. Nigerians rue the missed opportunities that made us the
laggard nation among these former peers…
“Every great performance in life starts
with great ideas. As it is with individuals, so it is with
nations. It is in the realm of ideas that leaders espouse the kind of
nation they really want to lead their citizens to build and bequeath to
future generations…
“We have a private sector which also
reflects the state of the public sector—a collection of businesses which
mostly thrive not because of creativity and motivation but mostly
because of incestuous linkage with a corrupt and inefficient public
sector…
“Our politics and those who run it have
become our albatross. The political system has unfortunately
frequently attracted those who do not seek to create any new value but
simply desire to be given a share of wealth that is already
available. The crowd that makes our politics needs an entrepreneurial
mindset in order to awaken to the reality that our oil dominant economy
has not only fallen way behind other economies with less possibilities
than us but that the future of the nation is extremely bleak if they do
not urgently lead us to the path that diversifies our sources of growth…
A few good men
“For our new Nigeria to emerge
therefore we simply need a few good men and women who can lead us away
from the pain of the Dutch disease that oil has afflicted our nation
with for several decades…Our governance has underperformed over several
decades because it has been deficit of integrity or what I call
character, lacked capacity, lacked competency on a continuing
basis. Above all however, it has lacked strategic innovation which is
the ability of discovering new things to do—things for which there are
no precedents.”
The biggest threat to our nation today,
Ezekwesili says, “is the vast army of unemployed youths (half our
population are youths between the age of 18-34 and about a conservative
estimate of 40% are unemployed). They are joined annually by an average
of two million new ones. This is a problem that demands a more
aggressive attention that is currently being given to it.
“We must all collectively avert the
looming upheaval that could come from not giving this very angry
community of restless mind credible signal that our society cares enough
to work collectively take them out from the class that the
International Labor organization referred to as “scarred” generation of
young workers facing a dangerous mix of high unemployment, increased
inactivity and persistently high working poverty.”
Now, you can see why Dr. Oby Ezekwesili
wants Nigerian oil frozen and taken away permanently from us by God,
the giver of oil and free pocket money!
Will you say Amen to her prayers? Will you?
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