It has been argued that all policy makers in Nigeria should go through basic critical reasoning test before assuming office. I must admit that going by one’s own knowledge of contemporary policy making in Nigeria one will agree with that proposition. It is indeed, imperative that Nigeria gets men and women who would formulate and develop policies based on verifiable and quantifiable national interest. Nothing else will do, prayers will not help. This has to happen if Nigeria is to justify its existence and survival.
It has been argued that all policy makers in Nigeria should go through basic critical reasoning test before assuming office. I must admit that going by one’s own knowledge of contemporary policy making in Nigeria one will agree with that proposition. It is indeed, imperative that Nigeria gets men and women who would formulate and develop policies based on verifiable and quantifiable national interest. Nothing else will do, prayers will not help. This has to happen if Nigeria is to justify its existence and survival.
It is unimaginable that the policy of unbanning of toothpicks, textiles and other basic manufactured items can be justified on sound economic, political or social reasons. This policy reversal is plainly not in Nigeria’s national interest. The policy is malicious and calculated to increase unemployment and lower further the country’s standing in the eyes of the world.
For a country that noisily reminds its citizens that it wants to join the club of the 20th largest economies in the world within the next 10 or 20 years, not able to make common toothpick in 2010, this must pass as one of the biggest jokes of the century. The eighth largest exporter of oil in the world, the largest market in Africa and the largest repository of African manpower, can not replicate toothpick and textile making which our ancestors were able to do 200 years ago with bare hand! What a pity, Nigeria!
The devastating psychological effect of this policy aside, on pure elementary economics it makes no sense whatsoever to lift the ban on toothpick and sundry items. The cost of production of any item in Nigeria may have been deliberately prohibitive because of a stubborn reluctance to invest and develop the energy sector and failure to provide friendly loans to our manufacturers; but it is worst to destroy the faint hope of our budding manufacturers by exposing them to the risk of cheap imports/dumping. The development of a functional manufacturing base is one of the keys to the economic survival of any nation. Even those who are prepared to falsify evidence will accept that in the 21st century no emerging state can develop without having a good manufacturing base, or a strong service sector, or both. No nation can make it by relying on one single raw commodity, whether oil or not. Particularly, if the country refuses to add value to the raw material by controlling the entire process of extracting, processing and delivering it to the ultimate consumer. Regrettably, we have shown that we are not able to do the above with nature’s gift to us.
All those in our league of oil producing countries have used their oil wealth to develop and consolidate their critical economic infrastructure like: transport network, energy, schools, hospitals; and develop their service and tourism sector. But in Nigeria, our so-called leaders have been busy gorging themselves on stolen oil money oblivious of the world around them. We have not managed to develop the most basic of manufacturing sector and our country is neither a shoppers’ paradise, nor a tourist destination, except for those with kinky sense of excitement as Prof. Chinua Achebe once said in a British newspaper.
Out of bloody mindedness our policy makers have conspired to ensure that energy generation and supply is minimal and a complete lack of other infrastructure thereby making manufacturing unbearably expensive in Nigeria. But what they should not be allowed to get away with is to switch off the machines of those patriotic Nigerians that bothered to invest in basic manufacturing. Toothpick making is hardly going to win the Nobel price for technological innovation. It is so basic. Any nation that can not boast of skills in producing toothpick and furniture making, or deny its people the right to acquire those skills is pathetic and devoid of meaning.
Curiously, how many Nigerians have been complaining of not been able to pick their teeth for lack of toothpick imports? Surely, these would not be the downtrodden thronging our big cities wondering where their next meal will come from. It is granted that if you earn 150 million naira in a year (in salary, committee allowance and constituency projects, whatever that means), as a national assembly member you would be happy to import your bathing water from France; but what type of a nation would have such a low view of itself?
It is difficult to be charitable in one’s assessment of Nigeria when crooks who deliberately seek to bring it to its knees continually fail to show any inclination for rational thinking and stubbornly refuse to redeem themselves. The reason for the unpatriotic lifting of the ban on toothpicks, textiles, furniture and other cheap manufactured items, we are told, is that the high duties and tariffs imposed on them will boost our national treasury. That it will also discourage smuggling of these goods through our borders. Somewhere among those reasons, you would also read that it would encourage competition. How insane and pitiful? On whose economic theory is this nonsensical assumption based? Leaving aside economic theories and international trade practices, ask any average twelve years old in Nigeria, why does the country’s tax system not work and how effective is the Custom & Excise in collecting import duties, levies and tariffs? You would be astonished by the chilling clarity with which they will describe the failings of the Nigerian tax system and the above organisation. Conversely, listen to some of our national assembly members on key economic or social issues and you would be shocked by the utter drivel they gush out. Frankly, if there was the intention and desire to curb smuggling they are yet to be demonstrated.
It is doubtful that the decision to lift the ban on toothpick would have been taken if that decision was subjected to the due process. Who was consulted, when and for how long? Where was our right for national economic survival placed in it? The decision is not going to create jobs and reduce our abnormally high unemployment rate. It is not going to generate income to our treasury. It is going to depress further our chronically weak manufacturing base. The decision is so bad, that it is criminally motivated. It is not even about free trade. Free trade is a two-way street. Ask USA, Britain, Japan, including China. If China and India would agree to buy all things made in Aba and Ogbomosho, regardless of their quality then we can all be the disciples of the ‘‘laissez-faire’’ doctrine. The principal countries that are ready to export toothpick and textiles to Nigeria are China and India. But some of the economic miracles of China and India are these; China was a monopolist of ‘‘made-in China’’ regardless of standard. Its banks lent heavily to its entrepreneurs on favourable conditions to make goods. For India, it became economically insular and the State actively encouraged private enterprise. It also became a huge user of its resources. It is baffling that while China and India have been busy pulling their masses out of poverty at a level unimaginable only few years ago with exports to us, we are been dragged into deep poverty with a force to import from them, by those operating in moral vacuum. Before we forget, India had its independence from the same Britain as Nigeria, roughly ten years earlier.
Is there anything in our DNA that militates against intellectual inquiry? There is no former European colony that started at the same or on similar base as Nigeria that has not made impressive efforts at national development. Not India, Indonesia, Malaysia and even Africa’s - Ghana. They have all rendered redundant our willing excuses of colonialism, neo-colonialism etc, as the reasons for our woeful failure at nation building. If those who have seize power through fraudulent, violent elections and abdicate responsibility are in time warp, do we all have to remain in it? I suggest not.
Let those who have expended money to engage in the elementary process of toothpick making, textile mills, furniture etc; be ready for citizens’ action. The characteristic wringing of hands in the air or mere indignation will no longer do. Focus your ire on those who lifted the ban. Your actions must be tempered by due process. Get your lawyers to take a class action and sue for damages. Even in our quasi democracy it is reasonable for the State to protect those that engage in legitimate businesses. It is a reasonable expectation that those in business should make profit and for the State not to wilfully cause financial loss to law abiding citizens. Government can be sanctioned by the courts provided the Judges are on the side of fairness and justice. We are all affected by this policy as it is inimical to our strategic national economic interest. All reasonable members of the national assembly should seek for the immediate reversal of this policy.
Kingsley W. Ogbonda (London )
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