Indeed, Nigeria needs and, therefore, would be glad to receive support from the Commonwealth in very challenging areas, the biggest of which comprised of security and agriculture.
Thus, President Muhammadu Buhari, rightly asked for support from the Commonwealth. The President spoke during a bilateral meeting with the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Baroness Patricia Scotland, at the sidelines of the Global Education Summit in London, United Kingdom.
He said Nigeria is doing its best to achieve food security, through investment in agriculture, and confronts the security issues in the country in multiple but systemic fashion.
Still, Nigeria needs assistance and the President said, of course, that the country welcomes the offer of assistance made by the Commonwealth scribe in the process of addressing its challenges.
Baroness Scotland, thankfully, outlines the how the Commonwealth seeks to provide its assistance to Nigeria. According to her, the body has developed programmes on agribusiness which has potential to add value to agriculture products and attract young people to get involved.
She also talks about climate change, criminal justice reforms, police reforms and security and calls on Nigeria to endeavour to benefit from technical assistance provided by the Commonwealth.
Significantly, Scotland touched on the main area of interest to President Buhari – anti-corruption. Recognising his strength in that area and aversion for corruption, she describes Buhari as the ‘Champion for Anti-Corruption in Africa.’ Accordingly, she says that the Commonwealth has developed some anti-corruption benchmark tools and, respectfully adds that the Commonwealth would like to work with Nigeria in both public and private sectors to curb menaces of corruption.
Other areas the Commonwealth could assist Nigeria, according to Baroness Scotland, include countering violent extremism, trade and fashioning of modalities for implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA).
However, irrespective of the offers of assistance made to Nigeria by the Commonwealth, in truth, Nigeria must share the largest burden for its development and process of finding solutions to its challenges.
Truth, again, is that Nigeria needs to quickly find solutions to its problems, especially in the economic sector. Nigeria is, indeed, going backwards economically with the situation getting worsened by a combination of anaemic growth and a fast-growing population.
This development means the economy has been shrinking in per capita terms while the security situation is unstable, despite some progress made by the Buhari-led administration against Boko Haram, bandits and kidnappers and separatist agitators in the South-east and South-west zones.
Agreed, like many other fair-minded people say, the job Buhari inherited from his predecessors is next to impossible. Nigeria has, at least 200 million people and though it is by all rights the continent’s wealthiest nation, it has more people living in absolute poverty — defined as below $1.90 a day — than India.
Oil has ruined the country, making it a rentier rather than a production economy. The business of government becomes that of divvying up revenue, a task that has corrupted the institutions of state supposed to carry it out.
President Buhari has understood this well and made it his cardinal objective to fight the cankerworms of corruption that wreaked development. He is trying to address problems of the manufacturing sector, which currently lacks ability to produce the simplest goods because of the lack of electricity, dire roads and absence of manufacturing inputs.
Rightly, the President is diversifying the nation’s economy and he needs support for farmers and this is what the Commonwealth offers to do. Unfortunately, the government, up to now, uses a statist solutions to these issues. That has involved allocating foreign exchange to favoured industries and this approach is not a good solution when institutions are weak, as they are in Nigeria.
Nigeria, in effort to boost rice production, has since the administration of ex-president Jonathan, funnelled capital to farmers and clamped down on imports of cheaper rice. Production has leapt 60 per cent since 2013, though ordinary Nigerians now pay more for the produce. Imports of smuggled rice are so large the government has taken the drastic step, at a point in time, of closing all land borders.
However, there are some glimmers of hope. Nigeria is vying with Kenya as Africa’s most dynamic tech hub. Recently, its fintech companies attracted nearly $400 million from foreign investors and Aliko Dangote is investing $12 billion in a petrol refinery that could help curb the ludicrous practice of exporting crude oil and reimporting finished products.
Gladly too, the government has begun to implement long-delayed reforms to the oil industry, seeking to remove the petrol subsidy, which distorts the economy and helps the rich the most.
Distorting many things in Nigeria too is the prevalence of rampant poverty, making it incumbent on the Buhari-led administration to try to improve the efficiency of the state and its ability to provide public goods. Turning things around does not mean micromanaging or getting in the business of capital allocation.
Rather, it means reducing the space for arbitrage and non-productive activities such as speculation. It also means providing the infrastructure, decent health and schooling that are the foundations of any national project. The task is, indeed, formidable, but are there any other options left for the country?
Nigeria, painfully, is confronted by socio-economic and political instability, high degree of corruption and poor macroeconomic management, and continues to display the attributes of a country in crisis.
Regrettably, until President Buhari came, successive governments lacked the political will to initiate or sustain policy or structural transformation, or to embark on sound economic reform to reposition the state for greatness.
Of course, with the weakness of the country and its ineffectiveness, it became challenging for the Buhari-led administration to eradicate impoverishment, engage in infrastructural development and stem the tides of insurgency and terrorism.
However, in spite of the problems inherited by the Buhari-led administration, the right things must be done to develop the country. The system that excludes a large majority of the country, where over 100 million people are living below the poverty line, has to end for Nigeria to chart a new course.
Otherwise, the government would continue churning out fancy policies, begging and getting assistance and making new targets for achieving development milestones that would never be attained.
