CHANGE NIGERIA

A very good friend of mine wrote a post on Facebook on 7th September which I was tagged in, his point is that corruption is what is killing Nigeria. Statement I partly agree and disagree with at the same time. My short response is narrated below. 

Short Story

Since people won't read the whole post, so let me summarise my point here: Corruption is not the main reason why we are not growing (believe it or not, corruption will always exist in all society, it is a fact). What we lack(and continue to lack) is "educated visionary & strategic leaders"(educated here does not mean you need to have a PhD. As a matter of fact, if our people spend less time studying, then they will have more time to "do/build" things). There are more corrupt nations out there than Nigeria, but they are progression in some form of measurable benefits. 

MY VIEW AT THE MOMENT IS THAT NIGERIA PEOPLE ARE NOT HUNGRY ENOUGH FOR CHANGE. 

I will use this opportunity to voice my view against the division of my lovely country called Nigeria. I did come across couple of intelligent people recently who have started tampering with that idea. Lets look at Northern and Southern Sudan division, and the fact that the Europeans are making all effort to ensure that EU Project does not fail, as a case study. The bigger(leaner) the better. Links to support some of my view are provided below. 

Long story

China is corrupt, yet on the verge to become the world's biggest Economy by 2020 [a]. Brazil is corrupt, yet it recently overtook UK as the 6th biggest Economy in terms of GPD [b]. UAE is corrupt but they are growing. Ghana is also perceived to be highly corrupt, yet they are casting a shadow over Nigeria. The West is even and ever more corrupt than Nigeria, yet the masses don't think so(Once a country budget to run an election is to the tune of $6bn, you need not look further), the list goes on. A good read is provided in link [c].  

So we all normally argue that Nigeria is corrupt, Yes of course it is corrupt, but the sooner we wake up and conclude that it's not because our leaders are corrupt that we are growing nowhere, the better. 

All the countries I mentioned above have one big major thing we don't, it's called "Long term strategic Plan", coupled with the right visionary leaders to execute it. UAE has one that spans 20 years, China revisit theirs every 10 years. 

There is the saying that "Failing to Plan means you are planning to fail".

Once we have a CLEAR and well defined PLAN, then we can start thinking about growing. It will be a big Programme (National) divided up into Projects (state), which in turn chops down into work-packages(district/area). A one size fit all won't work, but there is benefit in coordinating from the central. The leaders responsible for the delivery will be "change agents by birth, and technocrat by nature".  We should limit the effects of Politics(or Politicians) in this (after all if I know my re-election for the next term is based on me telling the masses what they want to hear, then who am I to be stupid not to tell them). 

Using the lesson learnt from other areas, we can include a dominant section called "ACCOUNTABILITY & Transparency" which will be the sole responsibility of the "Office of Budget Responsibility(OBR) and the PUBLIC.  All budget information for every contract as part of the development programme should be made available to the public (except of course exceptional cases relating to military and cyber warfare hardware acquisitions which might require the public to raise a request for freedom of information). All the data/information should be accurate, reasonable, useful, and in the format that others can leverage for personal use. 

For reference, the CPI (Corruption Perception Index) based on the 2011 analysis by Transparency International for some countries I referred to above are shown below. The lower the CPI, the more corrupt the public sector of the nation is perceived to be. UAE 6.8, China 3.6, Brazil 3.8, Ghana 3.9, Nigeria 2.4. [d]

As one of the members of Baba 70 band once said, Nigeria has rulers, but what she needs are "LEADERS". Once we "fight" to get the right leaders there, we the younger(at this rate I might not be young as time goes on) generation can then be "inspired" to get things going at the lower level. Well if you going to go down the route of "Occupy xxxxx", then it needs to be thoroughly planned, with clear objectives. A refined agile military planning will required. 

AGAIN, MY VIEW AT THE MOMENT IS THAT NIGERIA PEOPLE ARE NOT HUNGRY & THIRSTY ENOUGH FOR CHANGE. There are many more ideas I can bring to the table, but it will become a book. 

Ok, so am guessing you thinking, so you can talk the talk, how are you going to walk the talk?. Well, am now in the process of getting some brains together to start our own brainstorming sessions, and see where that leads us.

[a] - http://www.therichest.org/world/worlds-largest-economies/

[b] - http://www.cebr.com/wp-content/uploads/Cebr-World-Economic-League-Table-press-release-26-December-2011.pdf

[c] - http://www.transparency.org.uk/our-work/publications/10-publications/262-policy-paper-series-3-corruption-in-uk-politics

[d] -  http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/