Daily Independent (Lagos)
Daniel Kanu
23 June 2009
interview
Abuja — Charles Marcus, the Publisher of 'African Success' Magazine is a management thinker, consultant and development economist. He held a summit recently in Lagos and shared some of his views on the way forward for Nigeria and Africa with SENIOR CORRESPONDENT, Daniel Kanu.
Below are excerpts:
Recently, you had the Africa Success Summit. What was it all about?
Africa Success Summit had to do with the articulation of ways and means of solving the problems of the African continent. We looked at the African continent as one that has been lagging behind over the years, and we had a time in the history of Africa when the currencies in use in the continent were as high as the American dollar and in some cases were higher and our economy operated fairly well.
We have conducted researches into this basic problem of leadership involving African leaders we have seen that the only way forward is to look inwards. We verily believe that the energies we need to move this continent forward are obtainable locally and we are looking at the vastness of natural endowments that this great nation has as well as the natural resources that equally abound in other African nations.
The Africa Success Summit therefore tried to promote the natural resources, not just the human resources alone but the human and natural resources. The natural resources have to do with natural raw materials that are available which God in His wisdom has thought fit to bestow on this nation. So, we believe that the Africa Success has come of age.
The last programme that was held here in Lagos centered on the recession. We looked at how best to manage the recession and also overcome it. We looked also at how we can prosper, even in the midst of the recession.
We found out that there is a general consensus that we should look at diversifying agricultural productivity. Agricultural productivity has been at very low ebb for quite sometime now and that is because all leaders of our time now focus on the single resource, call oil.
The money we derive from oil also depends on the interplay of foreign market forces and so the price of oil could be up today and down tomorrow. And so if you want to run down the African nations that are largely dependent on oil you simply push down the price of oil and we will come to naught.
So we are saying that agriculture holds the key to rapid industrialisation of the African nations. And also we have seen that the human capital aspect must not be ignored, as efforts must be made by the leading governments to see to it that the manpower resources that are wholly obtainable locally are harnessed to international standard. We should throw away the politics of technology transfer.
No nation ever develops by copying another nation. Old attitudes as I have been made to believe re-assert themselves as soon as the external pressures are removed. So when you have foreign technologists, industrialists, technocrats coming in here to give us a lead on how to develop technologically, the moment they leave there is a tendency for a greater portion of that knowledge to leave with them and you will go back to square one.
Don't forget that at this particular time money must have been spent to import the technology, import the human capital to the nation and so governments are thinking aloud now on the need for public/private partnership. Public/private partnership has to become a slogan that has been bought by almost all state governments in Nigeria and some parts of Africa like Ghana and South Africa.
We are all thinking of public/private partnership. How does it work? Will the government still dictate the pace?
If government dictates the pace, government also should be the greater investor in that kind of partnership. But if you are looking at how the private sector has faired over the years, how it weathers the storm, how the sector has managed to keep afloat in spite of all vicissitudes, all problems, what we know now is that the present recession is not going down easily. It is not something that we can get by wishful thinking by saying it is over. So, strategies must be developed. The last summit we had centered on ways of moving Africa forward in view of this recession.
You mentioned something on agriculture especially when you talked of diversification. How do you see the agricultural sector in terms of development in Nigeria?
Time was when agriculture was the mainstay of this nation. And that was before the discovery of oil and since we discovered oil we have virtually left agriculture into the hands of subsistence farmers and in some cases government comes in with mechanised system of agriculture. We need this mechanised system of agriculture on a very large scale. At the moment the standard is low and our productivity also is low. We are looking at the possibility of having what could rightly be described as food glut and we looked at what we call food security, akin to food glut. You have need for food, you don't have the means to access the food; the food is not available to you at the right quantity, the right quality. So, of course, you can't say we are doing well in agriculture. We should be able to have so much food locally so as to export. We should be able to earn large sums of money as revenue from agriculture.
But at the moment the standard is low and what we are deriving from agriculture is equally low. Agriculture accounts for less that 22 per cent of the anational gross domestic income. Therefore we should think of ways of moving this nation forward through agriculture because the progress with oil revenue depends on interplay of market forces at the international level. So once the price is pushed down, our projection suffers. The budget also will suffer. We will suffer budget deficits once the projections will no longer come to pass and that is why we have to be doing something that does not suffer from lack of demand.
Food is in daily demand just like oil is in daily demand but then we are not the only country supplying oil and also the buying nations may wake up and say that they have alternative supply of oil and that they no longer need our oil. But no nation can wake up and say that they don't need food. Once it has been part of their stable food they will always go for it. I gave example of Ghana that has invested so much in the development of their fruit section or fruit aspect of their agriculture and are able to export.
We learnt that they have exported up to $7.8 million worth of fruits to other countries. What are we in Nigeria doing as a nation? The quarrels we have in the nation today is because we have oil money. Remove oil money you will become my brother and I will become your brother but the way we are looking at this oil, we are looking at it as something that will last forever. We must also understand that if our unity depends on oil then when oil finishes there is likely to be disunity. So the management thinkers believe and rightly too that it is time for greater diversification of the economy. Let us look at agriculture, let us look at steel development, and let us look at infrastructural development because without the necessary infrastructure, this nation, Africa, is going nowhere.
Let's look at Nigeria and the budget allocation to agriculture.
I must say that I have not thoroughly studied the budget allocation for agriculture. I have only heard of the trillions that the government announced as well as that of the state governments. So I need a little time to study them but frankly speaking no budgetary allocation for agriculture could be too much. Again it is one thing to pronounce a budget it is another thing to see the implementation of that budget. Also it is another thing to see to the fruitful implementation of the budget because budget is not all about spending money. It is about making sure that what has been provided for is made available once the money is being spent so you don't just spend money in a vacuum. You don't just say okay we budget N3 million for agriculture and at the end of the day we have spent N3 million and there is nothing that accounts for that spending. That is part of Nigeria leadership problem.
African Success does reward people that have really given to the society. What other criteria do you use?
African Success is to reward people that have contributed to the progress of Africa and also to the progress of their nation. If we have Nigerians that are contributing to the progress of this nation it is proper to identify them. It is proper to build trust around them, it is also proper to ensure that they are the front liners, they are not put in the coolers but they are put on the front burner as leading lights.
Now we do that from time to time and surprisingly we have never seen any person over the years given the African summit award that has been convicted of any misdemeanor while serving the society. That is why we are all ears and also keep our nose to the ground when it comes to nominating people for African Success Award. You know this is a highly competitive award that their colleagues in other African nations let us say Ghana, South Africa, e.t.c. are also struggling to receive. So it's a kind of nomination that takes into account the people that have contributed to the society in Nigeria, Ghana, West Africa, and South Africa. As many nations as can be covered by us we try to identify them, enter into discussions with them, enter into submission of memoranda and project reports on solving problems facing these nations. African Success is also involved in development economics as in where we are now and where we expect to be in the next, say, one year, two or three years? This is the basic problem facing the African nations.
They have no studies in comparative governance. This is because studies in comparative government will show us where we had been last year and where we are now to enable us assess progress or otherwise in terms of achievement. But you will see that targets are not pursued here rather you see that infrastructure developed last year cannot even withstand the pressure for this year and so instead of you going forward you go back to maintenance which probably is made of poor quality materials. That is what we have identified and it is a common place among governments in Africa. What accounts for this is the level of deceitful politicking that we are having around. This deceitful politicking is largely responsible for our lack of progress.
During your last Award, Alhaja Asabe Yar'Adua bagged an award and she also gave scholarship to six young girls. Are there others that have performed such feat?
I think it is necessary for us to talk about the awards we give. This award as I have said acknowledges the contribution of some people to the building of Africa as a whole. But again Hajia Asabe's pronounced scholarship is yet to be received by us and we haven't equally worked out the modalities of the scholarship and we have to be sure of what she is giving us before I can describe that as a feat she has achieved. Many years ago during the era of former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, his special adviser, Femi Fani Kayode, came to one of our occasions. Then the people we presented were secondary school students. He was excited and he too promised to give them scholarship and all the support but it turned out to be a ruse. So let us wait and see. This kind of treatment does not augur well for the development of Africa. You see somebody who is elderly who ought to be a role model going about to pronounce scholarship and you don't know whether those scholarships are real or not real. In the case of Hajia Asabe we will like to wait and see what happens.
How do we move this country forward?
The only way forward is to render selfless service. African nations generally have only one way to survive and that is effective and efficient service to humanity through good governance. We need a sense of commitment, a sense of direction and a sense of prudent management. There is the need for total respect for the human life and that does not seem to be playing out on the political terrain.
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TONY
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TONY