THE BEST ANTI-CORRUPTION STRATEGY FOR NIGERIA AND AFRICA: INTRODUCTION

By Noma S. Patrick

I sat in a lecture hall in one of the Nigerian universities and noticed something I consider remarkable and thought provoking. The furniture in the hall consist of orderly arranged sets of a desk and two stools that were originally made detached from the desk. But an add-on job has modified the original design and a leg of each of the stools is now chained to the respective desks and welded permanently. Why must these stools be permanently chained, passing over all the disadvantages that follow? I asked myself. Of course the answer to my question is never far- fetched! We, as Nigerians generally, and mostly Africans, lack the propensity to obey simple instructions. Students have been found to be fund of taking stools out of the hall to their hostels and various other destinations and management understands that placing a simple instruction on the door demanding that no stool must be taken out can never suffice. A force must be applied to restrict and compel compliance before Nigerians are able to do what is needful. We hardly possess the discipline, motivation and passion to act what we fully understand to be the best and right thing set by rules that will guarantee an orderly and perfectly working system designed to carter for an all-encompassing greater good provided our myopic eyes fail to see the immediate benefits we can get for our selfish selves.

Nigerian leadership (and of course followership) is gravely characterized by this negative attitude which has largely become the bane of our collective societal progress. The ultimate rule of leadership is selfless service to the people and pressing towards a perfection in the societal system that offers justice, equity, fair play, opportunity for all and ceaseless progress; the prevalence in Nigerian and African leadership on the other hand is the direct opposite of this rule which aim at corruptly serving self at the expense and detriment of the well-being and progress of the larger society. Despite being a people educated well enough to understand the consequences of our actions and inactions, that the ultimate result of promoting self at the expense and detriment of the society is actually creating a society that puts that ‘self’ in grave danger no matter the kind of niche it succeeded in building for itself, this dangerous disposition persists. The maturity to work for the society indeed and practically has long been lost. The maturity to rise above petty deception and empty sweet words that amount to nothing in practical implementation when politicians churn out campaign promises, when members of parliament legislate endlessly, and when members of the executive cabinet meet is totally lacking.

Politicians sincerely yearn to become authorities so they can make things work for the Nation. They get these positions of authority and almost always certainly get confronted with absolute defeat from their lack of disciplined will and passion to do the needful. This seems to be an intuitive disposition we have all come to be most comfortable with. Where a person manage to maintain his tempo and passion for making things change for the better, the overwhelming complacency of his work neighbors and the entire dysfunctional system weigh on him with a crushing force that giving up becomes so appealing an option. The overall picture is of an overwhelming monster that defies every solution and defeats all good efforts available.

It does not seem to matter if the people get angry and elect new fresh leaders. The cycle still continues because the new leaders get up there, have their eyes opened to the extravagant “milk and honey” flowing therein, get a better grasp of how deep, wide and complex the evil network of manipulations to squander the resources by its handlers is and, in almost all cases, succumb to becoming part of the network; they then become more comfortable with the idea of doing all they can to maintain the status quo in their new found circle ultimately bothering not for a second about service to the circle they’ve just been elevated from, the common people. Unfortunately the power to change the status quo still constitutionally resides with those in that “beautiful-cum-evil” haven ─ a case in which the power to correct the ills resides with the one who creates the ills purposely to benefits from it himself/herself. The power of the common folks on the other hand stops at voting. The common man therefore continue to wonder what has happened to this man/woman that promised a better society for them once elected. This set-up is not good for a greedy and dishonest African leadership disposition. It doesn’t help to change. It is almost totally impossible that a better and progressive society can be born from this traditionally inherited style of societal administration. A set-up that does not recognize and therefore has no in-built mechanism for curbing our negative human factor.

On a general scale, only one thing makes us to want to do the right thing, to respect and obey the law and to see reasons why set rules must be followed and this one thing is FORCE. Only force therefore can guide and restrict and compel the actions of our leaders in public and civil services towards doing that which they have been placed in those positions to do and consequently allowing our common resources to work all the great developmental policies we have onto manifestation. In the lecture hall scenario of the opening paragraph, the force that compel compliance came in form of a chain.  This force can take an interesting form that will go a long way in checking our worst impulses when we serve the people as leaders in ways that are magical and quite enveloping. The rule is simple, serve the people; our comfort zone unfortunately is breaching this simple rule to serve self at the expense of the people; the force is something that effectively make our unfortunate comfort zone uncomfortable.

The main aspect of governance that has suffered most in this regard is the financial management responsibility in all tiers and arms of government. The embezzlement of public funds meant for infrastructural developments, wages, pensions, allowances, services etc. has taken the center stage in our perversion of public and civil service values and norms. This is the reason why our economy has remained crippled.

If misappropriating and syphoning of money meant for our own development is the only impulse that comes to us normally when given leadership (and even followership) responsibilities that include managing and handling these funds, then it is apparent that we MUST find a way of forcing ourselves out of our comfort zone of criminally enriching self at the expense of the greater society; we MUST create our own peculiar way of taming this negative impulse and for once experience the good that comes with an economically developed and socially just society; we must create a force to force ourselves to stop being myopic and begin to wait patiently for the benefit a prosperous society will offer us should we make it work.

A force that will compel us (even against our own very selfish will) is very possible. A force with magical capacity to penetrate every nook, every cranny and every crevice of our societal and institutional structures. A force completely nonphysical, without a single savor-wielding foot soldier and consuming almost no resources yet astonishingly more powerful than all the gun-wielding anti-corruption task forces a government can ever put together. It is a force that will hold no sentiment, devoid of the slightest iota of partiality; having no brother, relative or friend. A force that is not concern about politics but simply go straight to deal with realities holding public office holders accountable on the go. This force is nothing but the collective eyes and concerted consciousness/conscience of the people, the leadership and a great technology all rolled into one impeccable whole through a carefully designed system.

Creating this force will involve tweaking our (borrowed) long established governance system a bit to accommodate our peculiar situation by altering the check and balance mechanism we are used to. The system of check and balance among the three arms of government meant to help achieve greatness for the whole society has been gravely undermined by the collaborative negative tendencies of the entire leadership stratum which has over the years proven to be strengthened by their desire to achieve a common and unifying goal of self-enrichment at the expense of the masses and the greater society, of class preservation that helps enslave the masses perpetually placing them at their mercies and maintaining their worshipped status, the desire to forgive themselves  their collective incompetence, gross misconduct and allow impunity to continue to reign since they have come to realize that their comfort zone is where impunity and leadership misconduct prevail. The desire to remain bad all together has killed the effectiveness of checks and has turned them into one united and daring foe against the progress of the greater society. The Nigerian story especially is that the check system among the arms of government only works to balance out looting, public funds misappropriation and irresponsible leadership so that impunity is spread as even as possible among the top guys and all the check they do is that of trying to protect the liberty and freedom they need to be complacent. One arm tend to say to the other “look we know the cockroaches in your cupboards so please be careful the way you thread over and threaten our liberty to have cockroaches too” and that is where it ends. Keeping themselves as safe as possible in wrongdoings to the detriment of the society. And when they check and balance out power among themselves, such is done through the myopic prism that seeks to see only how this power can be manipulated and protected to serve their selfish interest of perpetually protecting themselves the more against any intrusion on their liberty of continuing to partake in the reigning impunity. A formidable controlling force can be created by empowering the people and bringing them into a real time and continuous check and balance equation of governance. There is a need to tilt the governance system a bit in favor of the creation of a platform in which normal folks get involved in the government more actively and beyond standing long hours in queues to vote. Giving the people not too much, not the power to execute policies and implement decisions, not the power to apprehend and punish defaulting leaders and politicians, not the power to enforce laws but just the power to see the working of their finances, the power of their awareness. The government of the people by the people and for the people is one of the greatest inventions/innovations of public administration system by mankind but a further exploration of better possibilities that gives more vigor and potency to this system is the only way through which government can be and decent and meaningful in Nigeria and Africa.

In view of this, the need to create an instrument that will guarantee an actively functional and objective system through which the masses can exercise a perpetual power to check the excesses in the leadership web at all levels can never be over emphasized especially in the African setting. What we need is a system that makes our budget, the people that handle it, the process of transforming the funds into results, the expected results themselves totally naked before the tax payers and that keeps leaders involved in the management of these public funds constantly conscious of the fact that they and the process they are handling are perpetually unconcealed in the eyes of the public no matter how hidden from the people the smallest corner they operate from seems to them. A system that continually invokes public conscience by bringing tax payers together through virtual platform to monitor and respond collectively to governance the instance it starts derailing from agreed path. A system like this incorporates in itself a watch that will work to purge out undesirable elements and processes constantly cleaning itself towards perfection. A constant monitoring of who handles and manage public funds at every stage of its utilization, its distribution and implementation at every point, compliance with set timelines and the manifestation of the results of its implementation in terms of projects executed, equipment and facilities procured, wages of workers paid etc. is a powerful force that will suppress every tendency to misbehave in our leaders. It will be a public service conscience control tool that incites an instant and almost “reflex” public reaction and condemnation at the slightest manifestation of fraud and/or aberration in budget implementation.

What we need is an innovation that makes putting the eyes of every citizen of voting age (yes, every of the 100 million or more Nigerian voters) and turning everyone into a watchman that guard leadership actions with our funds and recognizes every thief instantly super easy, least time and energy consuming, very interesting and fun-filled and particularly helps to bare out fraud for all to see. What we need is an innovation that takes Freedom of Information to an unprecedented level of not simply revealing what happened after it has happened but one that is “alive”, up and doing haunting and setting every government official on the hot seat of true service, responsibility and accountability.

And When every politician and every public and civil servants who occupies offices that are public funds conduits is aware and conscious of how naked his office and whatever he does with that office is to the entire people, being able to constantly see the nakedness himself through the created system, and knowing full well how instantly fraud is revealed and seen by the entire system, a psychological ambiance is created in the minds of these managers of public funds which becomes a powerful force that twist the arms and thinking of men into doing what is right. A common proverbial expression says “the voice of the people is the voice of God”, I dare extend this here to say that in fact the collective eyes of the people is the eyes of God. The “fear of God” that has long become a religious theory almost completely impracticable will become practicable when the eyes of the people is made to deputize the eyes of God. The fear of how one’s wrong doing will show up publicly is enough to curb the misbehavior that will lead to that wrong act.

Do we yearn for a great Nigeria, a great Africa; do we want public funds to be handled responsibly with fear and consequently channeled for exactly what it was meant for; do we want to see an unprecedented development like never before; do we want service to be the only attraction for public offices, do we want incompetence to be dealt with and rejected so swiftly; do we want the work of anti-corruption to be made so easy? The answer lies in the creation of this system. The only clear, radical and revolutionary end to corruption in Nigeria and Africa is a force that compel genuine action, a force carted in a transparency taken to an unprecedented level as this article attempts to expound.

In the simplest terms possible, the summary of the whole idea presented here involves having the tax payers send their leaders and public officials on errand (handling and utilizing public funds for the collective good), being indeed there to watch and follow them every step of the way while they buy commodities for us, construct houses, roads and other infrastructures for us. It involves having the people being vigilant and sober enough to see the slightest misappropriation that creeps in almost instantly and raise alarm together while these public funds handlers are fully aware and conscious of the fact that all the people are actually going round the market closely together with them making purchases and contracting firms for the services they all need as a people. An arm twisting set-up that gives no room for the officials to relax and breathe while the tax payers’ money is with them forcing their hands and compelling actions.

A recent policy of the government aims at doing all it can to maximize tax collection and diversify revenue source for the Nation. A scheme known as Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration Scheme was introduced which is accompanied by elements that seek to ensure maximum compliance with tax payment and stringent punitive measures against tax defaulters. A rigorous awareness campaign is also part of the new program designed to educate Nigerians of the importance of tax payment and its connection to development of the society. This is a very good initiative because the contributions of citizens towards achieving infrastructural development for their collective good comes with benefits that can never be achieved individually. But then in a setting like Nigeria, the cycle has to be made complete through an efficient systems that makes it easy for the tax payers to follow up very closely what use their money is being put into and instantly identify corrupt practices, misappropriations and incompetence and consequently pulling off such bad officials from the system through their collective uproar and disapproval.

Aside controlling financial corruption in political offices and public and civil service, this public administration facility being proposed will go a long way in bringing along some great collateral benefits. For us Nigerians, it is going to be an exciting and engaging tool that will take away our attention from the bitter and hateful social interaction that has developed among us in recent times. It will make planning and execution of projects more efficient, ease follow-up activities and eliminate lethargy in public and civil service. It will force budget planners to have no choice but to be realistic and truthful in budgeting for the Nation. It will bare incompetence so fast and swiftly and make hiring of competent and hardworking hands the only appealing thing to do. It is a system with ample possibility for constant improvement.  It will make public service to be attractive only to people who genuinely want to serve because it will block out the evil get-rich-quick that prevails in the service. It offers great objectivity in assessment of leadership performance. The nature of the system is such that the scale with which its unique anti-corruption operation will be deployed will be all-enveloping at once leaving no room for doubts about its objectivity and impartiality. It can in itself be a huge revenue generating machine for government. Its implementation can be introduced gradually at whatever desired magnitude say starting with just a single ministry or a particular budget and revenue flow channel to be tested. The same system can be set up to monitor public corporations and keep them alive. Its only major disadvantage is that 99% of our leaders and all those who man offices that are public financial conduits will fiercely hate it and do their best to reject and thwart its execution.  A piece will be specifically dedicated to elaborating on these and much more other advantages that comes with the implementation of the proposed system at the end of this series.

And now comes the biggest question that I believe continued to grow louder and bigger in the mind of the reader as he/she read through. How is it possible for tens of millions of people to mandate a few individuals among them with the responsibility of handling their money and still follow them into every corner at all the time ensuring every single one of them does what he/she is mandated to do and serving as a ceaseless check on their corrupt tendencies and thieving impulses? How can this be easy and cheap? How can projects executed and work done be validly and reliably confirmed in a timely manner as claimed easily? Advances in technology has given us sufficient tools to manipulate and achieve almost everything we desire with even further amazing opportunity to optimize for greater efficiency and cost effectiveness. Current existing technologies holds the potential to provide us with a platform for objective assessment of leaders and their activities through the enhanced presentation of their capabilities and incompetence via real time evidence-based means. The next two articles will be dedicated to a relatively detailed explanation of how this can be achieved.

NIGERIA LNG LIMITED : A PERFECT TEMPLATE FOR INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA AND AFRICA

By Noma S Patrick

At a time when Africa (black especially) has practically reduced itself to being at the mercy of foreign companies and consortiums with quite expatriate management and technical-knowhow in the business and technology of exploring and transmuting it’s abundant natural resources into values that are on competitive demand around the globe, one great Nigerian company stands out as an epitome of a daring possibility, workability, success and can-do corporate spirit in managing and making a formidable GDP booster of our own resources all by ourselves. Led by an absolutely Nigerian management team, the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Ltd, popular known as NLNG, stands boldly as a global champion in the business of liquefaction, sale and shipment of natural and petroleum gas as well as in the art, science and technology of world-class management.

With the great accomplishment recorded in management, technological capacity, revenue generation and consistent business growth, a model of  “wholly Nigerian” industrial and corporate success like NLNG is worth drawing the attention of the Nigerian and indeed all African governments to, with the view of inspiring a replication of such models to maximize resource utilization and take advantage of other important accompanying possibilities like human resource development, the growth of auxiliary companies and businesses and the development of other industries.

This is even more so considering the realities of failures of indigenous companies, public corporations and government institutions that abound; when our only way out has defied growing above the lowest ebb of surrendering our natural resources to foreign firms in return for crumbs falling from the real business thereby largely denying ourselves any opportunity to practically learn how things work and how the businesses are done and shutting off any possibility for doing it ourselves one day; when, for some uncanny reasons, we just seem to love to work against our own progress and killing our own investments by ourselves. Now what makes NLNG such a beacon of hope worthy of emulation and how can government take advantage of the revelation of possibilities that hitherto seem to be only attainable with firms and expatriate professionals? The paragraphs that follow examine some of the key things that make the company the corporate champion it has become today.

Being a company modelled to be run privately with a 50:50 investment stake from the Nigerian Government on one part and the trio of Shell, Total and Eni on the other, a good financial management autonomy is ensured cutting off the chances of any undue interference from the shareholding parties. This is as a result of the fact that such a system checks and balances itself through the corporality of three separate autonomous authority that form the stakeholding parties of the company which include the Nigerian government, the three International Oil Companies and the company management. With the check and balance nature of the authority structure of NLNG, only that which is right, ethical and in line with the laws and terms of agreement that set-up the business is possible. This helps the company in maintaining a decent financial accountability and responsibility and upholding ethical standards in conducting other management operations for the company.

The legislation establishing the company which forms part of the enabling environment provided by the government ensures that stakeholders get proportionately excellent reward for their investment. A recent move born out of the frustration created by Nigeria’s economic recession attempted to undermine the legislation. Having made to understand the importance of leaving the NLNG act as it is, law makers seem to have finally seen shelving that move is in the best interest of Nigeria as it concerns that industry.

The caliber of persons that have occupied management positions over the years the NLNG has been in existence is the dream of any company with the desire for a global ranking. From top class graduates of some of the best Nigerian universities like ABU Zaria, University of Ibadan, University Lagos and the likes, to those coming from Harvard and having management experience with top shots like the Shell, ExxonMobil, Total, KPMG etc., competence and capacity has been the rule for the company when it comes to hiring its managers. These individuals have been able to provide world class management and leadership to the company through the years consequently growing it from strength to strength. This has help in making the NLNG a leader in the Nigerian corporate circle.

It is common corporate and institutional sense that leadership can be totally handicap without the right people down the hierarchical ladder to work with and synergize for productivity and efficiency. Unlike other conventional government owned companies and institutions in Nigeria where recruitment is done simply because a minister or senator wants to show how influential he is in “helping” his people with jobs, when NLNG carry out recruitment exercise, the company follow the international standard best practice to hire the best hands and brains to work for it. The company is strictly profit oriented and therefore condone no form of irresponsible arbitrary recruitments that don’t take into consideration the fact about the true need of manpower as it relates to job reality and profitability objectives.

High quality British graduate standard psychometric aptitude test produced by companies like the SHL Group and KSL is used as a first stage assessment of fresh graduates for recruitment into the Graduate Trainee positions. This is then followed by standard Assessment Centre Exercise that involves activities like group work, fact finding exercise, presentations, one-to-one interview and the likes. Rigorous process like this helps in providing the company with the best human resources the Nigerian labor market can offer making it possible for the company to compete favorably in running its business and operations with its International Oil Company’s counterparts. Further to this, the pay and welfare package has been so competitive that it has become typical seeing graduates preferring NLNG to the international oil companies in choosing between employment offers – a principal necessity in not just attracting the best to work for the company, but also retaining them.

The company is a very socially responsible corporate citizen in relating to its host community and the Nation as a whole. It has establish a tradition of providing full scholarship for postgraduate studies to the best universities around the world for the indigenous people of the host community and other Nigerians and sponsors the Nigerian Prize for Science and the Nigerian Prize for Literature as a way of rewarding and encouraging excellence. The local government area hosting the company’s production facility and staff residence, Bonny Island, is on twenty four-hours-a-day and seven-days-a-week power supply courtesy of the company

When investment and corporate leadership structure like that of the NLNG is adopted in public companies and corporations in Nigeria and other African countries, all business operations and decisions will be put under appropriate and better check and control with a resulting decimation of corrupt practices that have been the bane of corporate success in this part of the world. Only ethical practices that assures mutual respect among investors and their management team will reign with such a structure.

Take the Ajaokuta Steel complex in Nigeria that has refused to work despite over 98% project completion since as far back as 1994 as a typical example. Although politicians never come out to tell Nigerians the truth about its workability preferring to continue to play politics and budgetary games with the whole project, there is a technical hitch that has to do with the coal source that is needed as fuel for the smelting of ore into iron and steel. This has been the hindrance for a successful production takeoff in the company and the major dissuasion from any further “sincere” interest in the complex by both government and private investors. The huge coal deposits in Nigeria are all highly contaminated by sulfur, the most dangerous and stubborn impurity in steel, and as a result no in-country fuel source to drive the technology of the complex. But an investment set-up like that of the NLNG in which Nigeria partner with a sulfur-free coal producing country like South Africa (SA), and recently Botswana and Mozambique, can go a long way in tackling problems that are even beyond just lack of good coal. Where the partnering country, say SA, acquire some stake in the complex by supplying Nigeria with coal through the gulf of guinea coastline and providing part of the manpower for the management team from its pool of experienced mineral processing professionals, a business relationship can be set up for great success for the steel complex. A check and balance set-up that will ensure only what is due as gains to the respective investors and wages for management and workers gets to these stakeholders will be a vital accompanying advantage and the path to a formidable industrial and economic prosperity will once again be laid before us as partnering Nations.

The Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Ltd. is a company an investment structure worth replicating

MY THOUGHTS ON RESTRUCTURING NIGERIA

By Noma S. Patrick

The best asset any Nation can have is a unity that transcends every natural and artificial boundary that seems to discriminate its people into different groups be it virtual or real. Only then can a Nation expect progress. It is from the understanding of this basic truth that Nigeria decided to make it a cardinal duty to preach unity not only by talking it but also making a slogan/motto out of it (“unity and faith, peace and progress”).

Ironically, practically attaining a state of basic necessary unity has turned out to be one of the impossibilities that has evaded the grip of the Nigerian people and as a result stalled our progress over the years even as our democracy keeps accelerating its escalation. The extent to which we have gone the opposite direction as regards the actualization of the unity we understand we so desire has led us to a point in our national political discourse where an idea called “restructuring” is given birth to. Nigerians are now either for or against the concept of restructuring the nation into a likely more workable system and order. I passionately belong to the former school of thought and this is an attempt to explain my own views on why restructuring should be the best thing any people in our position should clamor for.

The basis upon which the new found yearning for restructuring was born is the desire for an unadulterated federal system of government in which federating states, provinces or regions enjoy total economic and appreciable political autonomy as it concerns right to control and ownership of resources in their respective territories and a cooperation geared mainly towards maintaining a federal government that is only concerned with protecting the territorial integrity of the country, maintaining diplomatic relations with the international community, overseeing and executing a framework of economic cooperation and such other matters. This, I believe, is the right definition of the tendency towards which the work of restructuring should be for many wonderful and blissful benefits we stand to gain from as a people. In my view, restructuring, in the context of my argument as presented here will go an unimaginably long way in solving our problems politically, economically, socially and in much more other ways directly and indirectly connected to these that have over the years appear to defy all efforts toward solutions. I take these respectively in the paragraphs that follow.

In our game of POLITICS that has turned out, in recent years, to be characterized by an alarming level of immaturity audaciously shaking the very foundation of our cohesion and harmony both among the elites and the poor masses alike, restructuring will be the light that will lead us out of the dishevelment in quite a magical fashion.

The agitations, bitterness, desperation and do-or-die approach to politics that has accompanied the fifth republic and exposed our political puerility in recent history have just one main root cause. This cause is nothing short of the fact that there is a very lucrative and attractive center that every group defined by ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, regional sense of belonging etc. desire so fiercely to see “their own” in that lucrative place where wealth sharing (and embezzlement of course) is decided and where laws that affect everyone else are made (or at least where those making the laws are controlled). And in what has sadly turned out to be more like a natural disposition towards a total disregard for enthroning justice, fair play, equity, neutrality, evenhandedness and nonpartisanship which are supposed to the cardinal guiding principle of leadership in especially a plural society like ours, Nigerian politicians strive to get to leadership position to help “their own people” completely forgetting that every Nigerian must be considered as the leader’s immediate own and must be treated with all the love and care they need and deserve.  Of course the result is a further amplification of the agitation, competition and despair to have “our own” on the throne. It is not unusual to hear Nigerians rain curses on leaders that do nothing to help his village, his community or something one moment and still abuse somebody doing that the next moment for caring only for his immediate own.

Restructuring that ushers in economic and political autonomy through devolution of powers will go a long way of relieving the center of these lucrativeness and hence the attractiveness and easing out the resulting fierce and unhealthy contention among regions to be there. This will serve as a galvanizing spur for a unifying political inter-relations.

The pressure and desire to have “our own” over there will ease out and the unhealthy political machinations, conspiracy, connivance and mistrust that has bedeviled us will be alleviated. The politics of bitterness that we seem to have developed will become less tense and there will be respect to and fro among the federating regions.

The ECONOMIC freedom that will accompany restructuring will be a flabbergasting stimulant for healthy economic competition and hence unprecedented growth and vibrancy in economic activity especially when blended with laws that ensures fruitful economic cooperation among the federating units. It will greatly cut down on our collective lethargy and unrepentant indolence. The units will have no option but to succumb to a spontaneous force that will excite them into a concerted evolution of leadership towards the maximum development and tapping of their human and material resources. When every region or unit is made to depend on its own resources and work towards the development of same for the betterment of its people, the competition that will ensue will be a competition to develop which shall, in the end, serve us all well rather than our current kind of unhealthy competition just to grab power. The competition for political power has distracted us so badly from the path of economic progress to the extent that we seem totally and astonishingly oblivion of the fact that we are collectively and actively on the path to a consummate economic (and of course literal) suicide.

During the reign of the trio of Sir Ahmadu Bello, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Chief Obafemi Awolowo, a federal system where economic autonomy dominates supreme and anybody that is aware of Nigeria’s history can attest to the fact of how these leaders fiercely led towards outdoing one another in developing and maximizing an excellent human resource, agricultural resources and solid minerals. This is the kind of competition that everyone that mean well for Nigeria will yearn to have back and this is only possible if we make it to come naturally through restructuring.

Where federating units feel it will be beneficial for them to create an economic collaboration between themselves, agreements that are aside the economic coorperation framework established for the entire federation can then be entered into towards that goal.

When the desired economic autonomy is accompanied by laws aimed at promoting economic cooperation among units such that, for example, goods and services produced by these regions are made to satisfy the needs and demands of the entire federation, by the legislation, first and foremost before any consideration for export, Nigeria will become an economic envy of the world. The development that Singapore experienced under Lee Kuan Yew will be nothing compared to ours. Through an intra-exchange of goods and services where energy in ample supply from the Niger-Delta is made to serve the demands of agricultural entrepreneurs in the north, industries in the east and west and a vibrant transport and communication network between and within these regions, the speed with which the accompanying economic growth will come will leave Nigerians and indeed the whole world astounded. And what more, the beauty of it all is that it will come so spontaneously that even an inborn tendency to be inert will inevitably give way.

In our SOCIAL atmosphere, after all the frayed nerves of mutual anger, animosity, friction bitterness and tension prevailing through politics has eased out, Nigerians will begin to consider one another respectfully. In fact to achieve a workable and practicable unity we so much desire verbally, to wield better National cohesion and comprehensive mutual respect and understanding, autonomy of regions and decentralization should be taken very seriously. In his article titled “The Intellectual Case Against Nigeria’s Breakup”, Farooq Kperogi noted “the vibrant pre-colonial inter-ethnic relations between such northern minorities as Igalas, Tivs, Idomas, etc. and Igbos” and went further to say “to this day, Igalas and Idomas have councilors in some Igbo states, and there are ‘indigenous’ Igbos in Benue State”. This historic reality, in my view, was only made possible because of the fact of the existence of mutual respect from one ethnicity towards the other and this respect was born out of autonomy of these ethnic Nationalities in which none strive to be a ruler over the other. This same mutual respect, understanding and beautiful social order is still possible with a restructured Nigeria where everyone is considered with dignity and held in high esteem.

Lately, Nigerians have become fund of misinterpreting and misdefining peaceful coexistence as a Nigeria that remains not only as a one whole entity but closely knitted in its current structural state. Peaceful coexistence actually involves not only the existence of a nation as one country but also many sovereign countries coexisting in a geographical space in complete peaceful harmony. Indeed, by extension from points raised in the previous paragraph, African countries seams to coexist with one another more peacefully when compared to how people within their respective borders coexist. So just like we are coexisting peacefully with Ghana, Cameroun, Niger, Chad, Benin Rebulic etc, an even more peaceful and harmonious coexistence is very possibly and most likely for us when we are restructured.

PETROLEUM RESOURCES: THE INDISPENSABILTY OF ENERGY

By Noma S Patrick

The basic science defines energy as the ability to do work. In the linguistic sense of this definition, it's easy to be misled into viewing energy as some kind of abstraction. However, in the real sense − which is of course the scientific sense − energy is actually a precisely quantifiable commodity that nations consume on daily basis in various forms and ways. Energy is the very 'victual' that nurtures the economies of the world.

Labourers working on farm fields, mines, construction sites and factories is one form of energy input into a nation's economy; machineries consuming power from gas powered plants in a factory is a form of energy sinking into the economy of a nation, electricity generated from dammed rivers and used up by the people is yet another form of energy input in the economic life of a nation. It is therefore only logical to conclude that the amount of energy powering a given economy determines how strong such an economy can be. This translates to the GDP of that economy. The standard of living of the people and the extent to which luxury is enjoyed by them are all tied to this. And, besides many other sources of energy, the major, most efficient, most effective, most dynamic and most versatile source of energy with the most flexible applications in the world today is the petroleum mineral widely known as crude oil.

America is today the world economic power chiefly for this reason. It is simply the result of the natural law of the working of things. They have a nonpareil understanding of the need for energy for economic power and hence make it a frontline conscious duty to wield, promote and advance every effort towards acquiring it, maximizing it, consuming it, educating it, researching it and developing it. Little wonder, then, that when Arden Hayes, the then five year old American genius, met the former vice president Al Gore, the gift he received from the American leader was an energy book. To America, such smarts must be tapped towards developing energy. The US has been among the top three crude oil producers in the world, continually permuting positions with Russia and Saudi Arabia. Yet the US consumes the entire quantity it produces, imports about the same amount produced by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and still consume half of it.

It is therefore utterly perplexing when Nigerian leaders make comments about contemplating policies that will make the Nation shift attention from oil and gas. This in actual sense translates to “shifting attention from energy”. It is a position that smacks of the lack of understanding of how things work and the possession of a false sense of economic vision for the Nation by Nigerian leaders. And to think that they actually say this to impress the people shows how far we have gone in being collectively lost.

Energy is the very last thing any Nation can ever consider shifting attention from because the world is a world of work and work is only possible when there is constant supply of energy. Rather, a nation like ours should be talking about changing the way it uses its energy resources.

A little further look into US' energy consumption will suffice a helpful insight. Aside its crude oil consumption level, the United States is the second largest producer of coal with a net export of less than 10% of its total production. It is the largest producer of natural gas and still a net importer (meaning that it consumes more than it produces). It is still the second largest producer of renewable energy after China. It is no surprise therefore that the US is the strongest economy. This is despite the fact that the Chinese population is more than quadrupled that of the United States of America. The energy input into the US economy is far more than what a 1.2 billion population provides into the Chinese economy. Human energy is less efficient than the crude sourced energy and China’s use of the more efficient source lags behind US'.

Nigeria as a nation must understand this principle and be submissive to its motivation. We are a Nation so much blessed with the best resource any right thinking people should yearn for in the world − energy. This is what solves every problem of mankind and place Nations above others. We instead choose to sap this resource dry, earn dollars with it from people who use their head to use this energy, and at the end spend much of this money buying luxury from the same people. The nation must pursue self-sufficiency in order to have a stable economy that never wobbles simply because someone elsewhere suddenly decides to temper with equation of things.

This self-sufficiency and all the economic strength we need to flourish and secure a better future for our children is not going to be attained by taking away attention from crude oil and, consequently, energy. The main pointer to the fact that we are being innovative, creative and that our education, in science and technology especially, is counting is whether we are producing our crude for ourselves or for others. A nation can only have what to spend a vast amount of energy like the one we produce if its human resource uses its brain to create and/or assemble technologies and businesses that will use up that energy. Entrepreneurship stimulation by government through human resource development, target legislation and economic policy, infrastructural development and seed capital provision should be our focus. This is what will ultimately count as our economic strength and power in the end.

The key thing is the human capacity that is able to turn the energy into useful products. Nigeria must rise to concentrate on the technologies, innovations and human capacity that avail the means through which petroleum is used up to create value, enjoy the value so created and only sell the excess to capable buyers to exchange for the things they lack. This is very material because apart from maximizing the usefulness of petroleum with the resulting reward of an unshakable economic backbone, our human capacity is going to be developed at an exponential rate and we will become more likely to continue to be as independent as possible. It is therefore vital that Nigeria make legislations that limits crude export and maximize its utilization in-home to provide cheap energy for industrial revolution and consequently spur economic activities.

This is what ultimately determines the strength and stability of our currency and how less susceptible we can be to economic recession and downturn. We have a population big enough to use its human resources and manpower providing very affordable labour to create and produce solutions that take care of a lot of our needs, importing strictly only that which is unavailable for us.

This is the war of the modern day − economic war. The most diligent and prudent wins. With a natural gift right under our feet that is the very requisite ‘arsenal’ for this war, loosing amounts to an immeasurable folly. This is the way we should be using our energy, exchanging only strictly for the things we can not create. This way, we can become very strong as a people. 

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND NIGERIA'S EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT

By Noma S Patrick

Effective communication is the major deciding factor for a successful educational process because it is the only means through which knowledge is passed from one individual to the other. It therefore will not be out of place to say that a thorough understanding of the language of communication by both teacher and student can never be overemphasized.

In Nigeria, the English language inherited from the British has been our official language and therefore the only medium of effective communication in our formal educational system. Our education is therefore inevitably limited to the extent to which we can communicate effectively using this language medium and hence tied to our ability in learning as early in life as we are expected to start learning arithmetic, sciences, social studies and the rest.

It is thus never out of place to say that a society like ours that has a major part of its young population growing up learning one language at home in their early years only to end up in a school, when they are ripe for one, that tries to teach them a new language while using the same strange language to tell them how arithmetic is done, what science is all about and what social life should be is a burden that weighs heavily against meaningful learning and hence workable progress in the society. It can only be said to be even worse if we consider the fact that many of the teachers of the language hardly understand it well enough themselves to teach it effectively.

Our progress in science, technology and engineering has been generally too slow to compete favourably in a rapidly advancing world and a major reason for this is our lack of 'true' understanding of these subjects. This is linked to our near total collective inability to grasp the basic concepts as early as possible during the foundation period due to the communication shortfall. The concepts then appear boring and completely uninspiring to us. The result is that we ultimately run short of the number of scientists and technologists with "true" understanding that is needed for a practicable synergy in the scale that is congruous with the Nigerian society.

Fancy a situation where a child's first word he ever uttered was from the Jenjo language. He then went on to develop his communication skills in this language becoming socially and spiritually comfortable and stable in it. Then at school-going age, rather than teaching him some strange and abstract ideas using yet a strange language he has hardly known in his life, a teacher stands to teach him just the formal rules of the language he has been communicating with and introducing more vocabularies, and another teaches him arithmetic and what science is all about using his Jenjo mother tongue. The child is bound to assimilate effortlessly, the class never boring, and inspiration and the joy of learning becomes boundless. Decision towards choosing the path to take as a career turns out less up-hill, his knowledge and skills in such a career becomes nothing short of being consummate and practicing his profession grows into an enthusiastic and fun-filled activity he'd fall sick if he take a break from.

I was in a Junior Secondary School class and, being a public school with kids that a typically from poor homes that haven't been blessed with the opportunity of expensive play classes and nursery education, our understanding of English language was relatively limited. Our Introductory Technology teacher, being fully aware of this fact, decided to switch to the Hausa language we all are most comfortable with and on that day he was to teach us the principle used in manipulating the aeroplane so it can fly despite its weight. My teacher took us through that lesson so encyclopedically giving me the opportunity of a profound and immeasurably exciting understanding of how a plane flies. I was so captivated that day, I left school totally confident that I shall be building a plane immediately. I got home, explained the same concept to a friend, he was so inspired too that he joined me in the "project". All I can remember at this moment is that I succeeded in destroying a pot from my mother's kitchen and forming some shapes from the aluminium scraps produced. This is how inspiring, captivating and exciting learning can be if we understand what is being taught as we should and such understanding only comes if communication is effective.

Sadly, what we have today is a large population of school going kids and teenagers learning sciences, mathematics and the likes with a seldom good understanding of the medium of communication. Students are trying to understand what a certain combination of words meant or even the very meaning of the individual words yet they are still being taught difficult ideas using the same sets of words. The result is total or partial misconception of the points, boring and uninspiring lessons, lack of motivation, lost of passion and at best a crop of students that put effort only to memorize definitions and points to give back to the teacher in order to pass to the next class without necessarily understanding what was taught. Misunderstood principles accumulates so much so that by the time one has successfully learnt the language, the basics have already been missed which are necessary and most needful for understanding at higher levels of education. The culture of memorizing then continues in cycles that never ends. The passion and the understanding needed to apply these things for greater achievements is then totally lost.

Advice would have been towards advocating for Nigeria as a country to start adopting it's local languages for educational purposes. But such would be too radical and extremely costly a change. It is comparatively easier to achieve our educational goals by simply grounding our understanding of the English language as early as possible. Endless new words would have to be introduced,so much translations of texts and we will indeed end up trying to learn a new language, our own language again! Our best options therefore is to work on our English language learning process.

Government must enlighten parents through public and private school educators on the importance of teaching the child English language to the child's development in both the short and long term. Parents on the other hand must take communication with their kids in English language right from infancy seriously. Recruitment of teachers of English language into public schools must be taken seriously on merit and a good reward and incentive system must be established to promote excellence in the teaching of this subjects especially in Nursery, Primary and Junior Secondary schools. That way we can make significant gains and facilitate teaching and learning generally.

NIGERIA OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY : THE URGENT NEED TO WAKE A SLEEPING GIANT UP!

By Noma S. Patrick

It will be quite incredible to say that an industry that has seen crude oil produced at 2 mil b/d and sold at a price of $120 per barrel with guaranteed buyers across the globe has actually been a sleeping giant. Yet the sad reality is that, just as with many other sectors of the economy like Agriculture, Solid Minerals, Power etc., Nigeria's Oil industry, despite it's relative vibrancy, has indeed been a sleeping giant. One can but conclude then that with the recent free fall of international oil price, it wouldn't be wrong to say the industry is headed towards being a 'dead giant'. The fact is that the potential in this industry is so tremendous and we never cared and still don't seem to care about exploring such; rather we chose and still choose to depend on just the 'crumbs' it has to offer. The good news is that this giant can be awaken and made to reach it's maximum potential and the present administration should not miss the great opportunity that this presents ~ a chance to prove it's worth in the business of 'progressive change'. Having this alone done is enough to place Nigeria at an unprecedented level economically.

The consumption of refined petroleum products in Africa is enormous ranging from PMS, gas, bitumen, synthetic plastics to aviation fuel. Even more is the consumption at this time when every country is struggling hard to develop and advance. This is supposed to be a big opportunity for a country like Nigeria with huge reserves of the most wanted commodity on earth. The great majority of African nations have continued to depend on countries virtually all outside Africa for their refined petroleum products needs. The biggest irony is that these are mostly countries that don't produce crude oil themselves but depend on importation of the crude products. The reversal of this prevailing situation is a chance Nigeria must open it's eyes to and take seriously because it comes with an assured golden prize of taking our economy to an unprecedented vibrant level.

The economic advantages that Nigeria stands to gain within the ECOWAS alone in the business of refining and sale of petroleum products is overwhelmingly immeasurable. Add other African sub-regional market we can tap from and one can clearly see the great economic position that awaits us as a Nation.

We have long depended on countries like America to buy our crude oil placing ourselves deliberately at their mercy so that whenever they sneeze we instantly catch cold. This is what is happening right now. America can't buy from us and the rest of her suppliers any longer because they are now self-sufficient as far as their crude oil needs is concern and the international oil price have no option but to fall freely like a body under gravity. If only we weren't sleeping, if only we apply our understanding of economics and submit ourselves to its motivations and refine our products within our shores and add value to it before selling to whoever need them after helping ourselves to contentment with the products, we wouldn't be in this economic mess we have found ourselves.

Then are we going to fold our arms yet and keep biting our lips in regret while we just look? Not at all! in fact there is no time for regrets right now. The most important thing needed is action by the government and people of Nigeria. Nigeria should be a hub for petroleum refining business and the number one supplier of PMS, gas, aviation fuel, LNG, LPG, petrochemicals and related products to the entire West Africa and beyond. The market is huge. Africa had a total refinery capacity of 3.317 million b/d as at 2011 with an actual throughput of 2.219 million b/d giving out products mostly used up (albeit unsatisfactorily) in far northern and Southern Africa. They still have to import. The rest of Africa like the West, East, central and parts of Southern region wallow in scarcity and high cost of the products as they depend largely and almost wholly on imports of the refined commodity.

The government seriously need to take up this huge opportunity and turn the economy of Nigeria around. Nigeria has to invest heavily in the refining business and knock our foreign suppliers out of business as far as the great majority of African market is concern. We can't continue to depend on these foreign nations to give us both what we don't have and cannot produce and what we have and can produce. We are doing our selves great economic harm to their advantage. We import technological products from these countries; we should not be lazy to the extent of importing even what we have as a natural resource right under our feet. We should not leave the markets of such a commodity like fuel that is closer to us than them for them to be the ones to enjoy such markets.

Nigeria needs to build five more mega refining complexes like the one being built by our beloved business mogul, Alh. Aliko Dangote as urgent as possible. Larger refineries have proven more profitable, feasible and cheaper when the overall operation is considered, this is more so considering the prevailing economic condition of the oil and gas market. Such refineries will produce fuel and other products at a cheap rate to the west African market and beyond and knock out smaller refineries that are more costly to operate as they will ultimately find it impractical to compete favorably with us. We can actually make countries like South Africa and other big African economies that depend on imports from overseas for their refined petroleum products needs to turn to us for supplies. This will go a long way in building the foundation for a stronger economy for the country. It can take us to a position where we may even begin to be the ones importing crude oil for refining from countries around us.

This will also go a long way in supporting other sectors of our economy. It will lead to the supply of diesel and gas at an unprecedented cheap price level to power other sectors of our economy. Electricity will be stable and cheap and investment in other sectors that depends largely on power supply will be spurred. It will increase interest in the fabrication of agricultural machineries for food processing because the demand for such will grow in the face of cheap and available energy. Transporting these produce will come cheaper because fuel for the transport sector will be available at cheap rates. We will produce and process agricultural produce competitively and start exporting these in enormous quantities overseas. It is definitely going to be a blessing to us that will come in thousand folds and even much more unforeseen ones.

With the rise in demand of electric vehicles for cleaner energy use the demand for plastics is bound to go high. Companies like BMW are leading the way already in their Leipzig factory where the entire electric car chassis is made of plastic. There is high likelihood that manufacture of such vehicles will commence in Africa too in the near future since they are simpler as regards the technology involved. Nigeria will then ultimately be the supplier of chemicals for the plastics needs of these and other potential industries. Meanwhile there is already a very high demand of plastic products ranging from containers, PVC pipes to textile materials just within Nigeria. We wouldn't have to jostle to import these again and the pressure on our forex reserve will go considerably lower pushing the value of our Naira up. No Nigerian road will be left untarred as bitumen will be more than enough.

America has and is still strategically trying to cripple the oil and gas industry through technology, a mix of politics and international relations and economic policies. The aim is simple, make crude price go as low as possible so that energy can be cheap for them. They are now going into the business of exporting crude after strategically opening the door for Iran. It will therefore be a stupid and a total economic suicide for us to still depend on them and others for petro-chemicals and other related products.

What should the government do? Removing subsidy and deregulating the petroleum sector holistically is the first and necessary step. Government should not fear the removal of subsidy simply because it is cautious of loosing popularity among the masses. Make laws compelling all oil companies that wish to be given exploration license to build refineries and refine at least 50% of crude they produce within the country. Enter into partnership with the oil and gas industries (indigenous and international) to build refining business replicating the NLNG model. Our locally owned oil companies like SAPETRO, OANDO, FORTE, CONOIL and the likes should be made to understand the gains of investment along this line. The business of producing crude alone is no longer sustainable in the present era. Dangote with excellent business foresight has seen this already. Next the government should produce an action plan that will guide implementation and follow it as if the country is no more without that. Even if this is the only economic plan that this government focuses on it will certainly prove to be worthwhile at the end of the road.