It Is Sad We Are Still So Far BehindChief Philip Asiodu, retired Federal Permanent Secretary belongs to the generation of Nigerians who witnessed British colonial rule and saw Nigeria emerge as an independent country, full of hope and promise in 1960. Today, he looks back in a chat with GBENGA SALAUWhat is your opinion of Nigeria at 52'FIRST, I thank God that we are still Nigeria, after so many things that had happened. For people of my generation, we saw the pre-independence struggles, promises of our leaders, the caliber of our leaders and the messages they conveyed. We witnessed the time the British knew they had to leave and they genuinely embarked upon transferring power, especially with regional self- government around 1951 to 54 and responsible government in the centre in 1957.And for those of us who knew how much progress was made in the decade before independence, the promise which we had, the potentials, the caliber of our leaders, the respect that we enjoyed in the world and then immediately after independence, the rate of progress continued until, unfortunately, with the split in the Action Group and the worsening crises within the coalition between NCNC and NPN, leading us to the military coup in 1966.But before then, seeing the pace of development and expectancy, the happiness and knowing what was possible, people of my generation are extremely sad that the country is very, very far behind where it should be. In fact, if you ask me, in terms of economic and material development, the welfare of the people, per capital income, we are 50 years behind where we should be.As you know, after the military coup of January, there was another one in July 1966. The January coup that saw the killing of the Prime Minister, Finance Minister, the Premier of the North, West, including many of the army officers from the North, it was bloody. The July 1966 coup, counter coup, typically wiped out whoever they could see of the Eastern, Igbo origin in the officer cops. And so, it was a nation with an army rent apart, but thanks to the civil service. Since semblance of law and order was maintained and gradually the country stood together, functioning as a country, apart from the Eastern region, where the military government did not accept the Gowon administration and authority, which of course led to the civil war, which was also bloody. We lost a lot of people.But luckily at the end of it, thanks to the 'no victor, no vanquish policy' of Gowon and the preparations made in advance for the three Rs, rehabilitation, reconciliation and reconstruction, the country received rapid progress from 1970. We were growing at 11 percent per annum. Industries were beginning to flourish. If we had continued the pace of development for another twenty years, we would have escaped from poverty, and today we would be like the Asian tigers. But unfortunately, we had this coup of 1975 against General Gowon, which removed Gowon, but that was not the big tragedy. The big tragedy was that, unfortunately, the administration, which succeeded Gowon, the Muritala-Obasanjo embarked on a massive purge of the civil service. This destroyed the confidence, professionalism, non-partisan, competent, merit-driven civil service we had then, which would have been able to help keep the country together. It also abandoned the critical 1975-80 plan, which was to lay the basis of genuine industrialization, economic diversification, adding great value to agriculture and agro-allied industry, oil and gas etc. It abandoned that plan, but worst still, abandoned the discipline imposed by the plan. And the discipline was tampered with. The whole civil service brought up in the strict compliance of official instructions, conformity to pre-identified priorities, that money was spent on one thing and not on something else, cost-effective public procurement, with discipline visited on any earring officials, that was set aside and that was the beginning of relative degradation.That is when we parted from counties like Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, with which we were at par, and today, we are importing things from these countries. Our industries are completely destroyed. Our power sector, if you imagine that in the late 1950s when United Nations (UN) helped us get the head of Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN), Nigeria was generating more electricity, then, than Taiwan. Today, Taiwan is generating 30 to 40 thousand mega watts and we are singing about 4 thousand.Since the consumption of electricity per capita is almost synonymous to the level of industrialization and economic diversification, by consequence, standard of living and the welfare of the people, you can see how far behind we have gone. But for the fact that there are private generators in homes, hospitals, hotels and industries, which may account for about 12 thousand mega watts, but for that, Nigeria would be an impossible place to live. And these private generators, mainly on diesel, it means that we are getting power at ten times the cost of what normal efficient large-scale generation gives. And that means we cannot be competitive. This is why our industries are closed down and we are now flooded with made in China goods, which are cheaper. You can imagine a nation like this; endowed by God with solid minerals, iron, lead and zinc, we have limestone, gemstones, oil, gas; we are on the coastline. So when we begin to talk of alternative sources of energy, we ask when are we going to use the new technology, which involves electricity from wind, sea waves and solar, we have a lot of sunshine and arable land. More than that, we have a fantastic geographical location; the Koreans, Japanese have to travel 11, 000 kilometers to deliver manufactured goods to Europe and America, ours is only 3, 000. To imagine all these blessings, and we are just meandering as we still are, with increasing impoverishment. At independence, less than 25 percent of Nigerians lived below the poverty line. Today, we have over 75 percent. But at the same time, we have got one or two people listed on the Forbes book; that is not the measure of the progress of a country. Progress and stability depend on how many people are able to live a decently.You talk about the civil service being destroyed and the abandoning of the development plan; what other things made us miss the mark'Those two are critical because if you abandoned the plan and proper use of resources, you allowed your educational establishment to deteriorate. With the little amount the colonial masters had, they built the schools that we went to, from which we went to the best universities abroad without apology. When the Queen visited the Teaching Hospital, Ibadan, it was either number one or two in the whole of commonwealth. When thirty something years later, in the time of Ibrahim Babangida, a delegation went with the Head of State and at the banquet, the Queen asked of the wonderful hospital in the wooded hill, the woods had disappeared, there was a decline.Recently, because of vision 20:2020, government was trying to return to planning and we now elaborated the 2010 to 2013 implementation plan of vision 2020, but that would be the fifth national development plan. It was Nero, who was a good friend of Balewa, the first prime minister that helped to influence him to embark seriously on planning and we got one or two economic advisers from India and we started our own plans later on. In fact, this last plan I was talking about, the 1975-80 Plan was really fashioned by the Ministry of Economic Planning with people like the late Prof Aboyade working on it.But while we are now trying to launch the fifth plan, the Indians have successfully completed the eleventh, five-year plan and see where they are today and see where we are. So, that abandonment of planning, the destruction of the civil service, which was used to very frugal management of resources, means that development in the key sector that will help accelerate national development fell out. We were not investing I power, education. I can tell you because I was the first chairman of NEPA, and by 1973, we had commissioned Motor Columbus of Switzerland and Motor Engineering of Canada to do a projection of Nigeria's power requirement from 1975 to 2002. And they did and they discovered sites for dams, and they indicated the magnitude of investment involved. Did we follow it' No.In fact, it requires practically, from 1975 an upward investment of about 2 million dollars yearly, on generating and transmission. And there was no investment. Can you imagine, if only it took the increase in population of three percent per annum and you say you produced two million new Nigerians every year; and each one of them only consumes one bulb and no investment to be able to take care of them. And we wanted to industrialise' I led a delegation in 1974 to Japan. Greater Tokyo was consuming about 21 thousand mega watts. Nigeria then was 1.9 thousand mega watts, but as I said, Taiwan, which was less than us engaged in investment and accelerated development and by 2000 AD, they had gone to over 30 thousand mega watts. Now, by coincidence in 2000, I led another delegation to Japan, this time, greater Tokyo was now being served by 38 thousand mega watts. Nigeria was still singing about producing three thousand mega watts; it is ridiculous.In fact, I am ashamed when Nigerian leaders, especially, government leaders open their mouth and say we are aiming for four thousand mega watts. A six million tone casting metallurgical establishment will consume that amount of electricity. And here we are, 170 million people, wishing to industrialise and improve the quality of our people, we should have at least 40 thousand mega watts today. It is really terrible if you think about the lost opportunities and the time wasted.Now, take our education facilities; I told you how the Teaching Hospital Ibadan was one of the best. We went from our schools straight to Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard; today, it is a shame that some of us had to send our children to Ghana, those who can afford it send their children abroad. Meanwhile, that is only for a minute, may be 0.3 percent of the population. But the constitution says every child has a right to quality education.Take the public schools, America is capitalist number one, but there is no part of America, where a student cannot have access to good public financing, either by local government. Of course, there are expensive private schools for those who want to go, but the state has a duty to ensure that the people are educated. Education is the root for upward mobility; it is the root to international competiveness. And if you remember; one of the great things, pre-independence and independence Nigerian leaders did was the expansion in facilities in the education sector.The Western region under Obafemi Awolowo introduced free primary education, the East did the same, though they could not afford to go beyond standard three and in the North, there was incentive for anybody, it was like, 'please come to school'. It was automatic scholarship; those were the ways they developed, just before and after independence.When you have no planning and pre-identified planning, money will come and money will disappear. Throughout British rule, the revenue accruable to the government was not more than 40 million pounds, under Balewa, after independence, it rose to 50 million pounds, it was in the second year of Gowon that it reached 100 million pounds. That was the money with which 4,000 kilometers of Railway with telegraph lines, the harbours of Lagos, Warri, Sapela, Calabar were built. The schools we went to were world-class; they were also built from that money. Under Gowon, we added the airports. Since 1975, what really have we added' We have Abuja, 70 percent private sector driven. We have the third mainland bridge. In between, 1999 to 2007, we must have earned more than 300 million dollars; this underscores the fact that a nation without a plan, plans to fail.But I'm glad that with the commitment of vision 20:2020 and the Jonathan transformation agenda, we are returning to planning. But planning is one thing; another is discipline and implementation of the plan. Corruption is also an issue, because if something should cost hundred million and it is said it cost 500 million, it means there is little you can do. And there has been too much of inflated prices of contracts in public procurement, corruption is our number one. It is in all sectors, not only do they over price, people are seeking personal gratification.In terms of security, I know in those days how votes for security trickle down to the extent that even the corporal, the police man in the village square is enabled to pick up vital information. No stranger comes to a village, within hours, the highest authorities in the province will know. And if they have any mischief, prompt action was taken. We are practically blind to getting data in advance so as to be proactive and prevent crime.Go abroad, you see Nigerians in charge, universities, enterprises, we have a lot of talents in the Diasporas and we have people here willing to work. What we are praying for is a divine accident of sufficient section of our leadership saying, 'enough is enough and let us go back to the hallowed and well-known principles of good governance.' And again, that the purpose of seeking political office and leadership is primarily to further the public interest and not self interest, because the more the country moves forward, the more, the more people would feel that there is a future for our children. If they go to good schools, good hospitals, they will be able to do better, then we will have the underpinning stability.But if we continue the way we are, which is creating a bigger gap, between the have(s) and have not, we are creating a very, very dangerous situation. And we must avoid it and it is avoidable if we are not too greedy in the public and private sector leadership, to make sure that we have enough resources devoted to health, education, transportation and other infrastructure.We should also make sure that we respect contracts, implement them and administer our laws promptly; let there be zero tolerance for corruption and where we find it there must be sanctions sanction. Three months of that and leadership doing what is right and within a year or two of proper approach, we would begin to see visible result and we would be on course again to rapid economic development that will improve standard of living and welfare.Some people are talking about we going our separate ways, in an age where Europe is talking about one market, 1.4 billion people in China cooperating, with all the other Asian countries. Brazil and Argentina are talking about one market, why should Nigeria be talking about separation. We are not larger than one or two provinces in India or China, so we must go back to the building blocks of integration.You know, when the National Youth Service Scheme was introduced, it was to achieve integration. The civil service was one and it was a symbol of unity. I was born in Lagos, but within three months, my father was transferred to Calabar. That was where I became conscious; ten years later, we came back to Lagos; that was Customs. But those who work in Railway, it could be Jos, Kano or Abeokuta, so we knew Nigeria and have friends all over the place. There is no part of Nigeria I go today where I do not have a friend. But with the regionalisation of the civil service, that became less. And during Gowon, we introduced the National Youth Service; so that graduates are posted round the country and it became popular. If on the heels of that we were able to introduce a language policy that would have helped to integrate us properly. Like me, I became conscious in Calabar, so Efik was the language. I learned to read and write it and was taught Efik in school. My parents were from Asaba and spoke the Asaba Ibos, and at the age of 10, I began to learn English. But the innovation is that by the time you enter JSS 1, at 12 or 13, if you are from the North of Nigeria, you pick up a southern language, and if you are in the South, you will pick one northern language. Within 15 to 20 years, the situation would have been that when two Nigerians meet, they would have at least, one Nigerian language in common.We must begin to think a little less of ourselves and think more of the public and common good.
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