The Nigerian government of President Muhammadu Buhari is scratching its head on how to quickly recover from recession and make significant economic growth. It has now mandated multinational companies in Nigeria to employ qualified Nigerian graduates understudying expatriates or face sanctions.
A recent statement by Chairman of Special Ministerial Task Force on Monitoring and Enforcement of Nigerian Expatriate Business Permit and Expatriate Quota Administration, Mr. Bola Olori, reveals the mindset of foreign investors and the need for leaders in sub-Saharan Africa to be cautious in picking foreign partners to help them in their economic and political development.
He said, “We have discovered that some of the companies are not sincere, they just want to keep renewing the permits of their expatriates at the detriment of Nigerians. We want to know whether they are circumventing the expartriate quota policy or adhering to it.
“The problem is that some of these companies are either not employing Nigerians at all or using schoolcertificate holders to be understudying expatriates who are managers. How can a school certificate holder understudy a manager? What they are aiming at is that when the time comes for the expatriates to exit, the companies will say those understudying the expatriates do not have the capacity to become managers and you will agree with them.
“What that means is that Nigerians will not get to such positions and the expatriates will be there forever. But they do that deliberately to defeat the purpose of the federal government’s policy.
The federal government frustrated the underhand dealings of multinational companies in the country have continued to rubbish her policies to attain economic independence is now asking the companies to submit details of Nigerians understudying expatriates to verify their sincerity or otherwise to her policy on expatriate quota or face sanctions from her.
It is this self-serving attitude of foreign investors that helped trash Nigeria’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP), which is a medium term plan set for 2017 to 2020, developed to restore Nigeria’s economic growth at the backdrop of the negative growth recorded in 2016 when the economy formally went into recession. Rather than build on the expected gains as originally envisaged in the plan, the Finance Ministry was forced to totally trash the plan as the results of the efforts made as well as estimated.₦6.4trillion capital expenditure outlay in its three-year life did not yield any gain to build upon.
This is the experience of most African countries,. The major powers are engaged in competition for African resources and there’s no doubt that the new U.S. administration believes supporting American companies would give America a competitive advantage over China, France or Germany.In July 2020, the former U/S President, Donald Trump initiated negotiations for a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) of the U.S. with Kenya, the first country in sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) to so do. This shows Trump’s signature brand of foreign trade policy with priorities to countries that bring economic interest to the United States.
This was done under the shadow of the flagship U.S. trade legislation – African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) expiring in 2025 which could leave a severe impact on smaller and poorer nations of the continent. Washington normally uses free trade agreement to signal the status of partner states as regional strategic allies. Such agreements with Morocco, South Korea, Columbia and Bahrain were all intended to signal much deeper strategic alliances beyond trade.
It is in this light that once African leaders working in the interest of their people which could be against the economic interest of West, the most influential players among them could force regime changes to secure their interest under the pretense of defending human rights, democratic values, and enhancing socio-political stability in African countries.
The truth is that Western industrial governments have their own secret agenda in Africa when investing in the African youth, Africa’s private sector and funding civil society organizations on the continent. This is why the growing presence of Western countries through many NGOs is currently being hidden but affirmed by the need to fight terrorism, illegal migration, piracy human rights abuses, ecological issues and promoting mutually rewarding partnerships.
But the West’s eagerness to compete with China over investments in Africa has now show-cased their real motive. And that is having limitless access to the continent’s natural resources. A case in point is the approval by the U.S. energy firm, Amadarko Petroleum Corp, in 2019 for the construction of a S20 billion gas liquefaction and export terminal in Mozambique.
It is the largest single LNG project and FDI approved in Africa. So, U.S. sees investment opportunities in Africa and wants to tap Africa’s potential of $2.5 trillion GDP with 1.2 billion consumers which is projected to reach 1.7 billion consumers by 2030.
Many countries in Africa in the last decade experienced a big spike in religious and ethnic conflicts, terrorism, piracy, banditry, smuggling and other security threats. These threats have been steadily increasing with little achieved so far despite the deployment of AFRICOM forces since 2008. In fact, radical elements see the increased deployment of foreign troops on the continent as a direct invasion and interference in domestic affairs of Africans. It is believed that is what triggered the recent growth of activities of Islamic terrorist groups in sub-Sahara Africa.
And Nigeria and other African countries have been paying a huge price as Islamic terrorist groups have been invading their countries trashing their economies and impoverishing their people through insecurity that has made Nigeria and others fertile ground for imperialist machinations through multinational companies under the beguiling guise of foreign direct investment. It is on this ground that Africa has been under the economic yoke of terror.
Isenyo writes from Dutse, Jigawa state
