Nigeria: It's Called Colonial Mentality

25 May 2014
opinion

No, I'm not making any excuses, but it seems we don't know what we are doing in this country. And because we don't know what we are doing, we keep doing things that hurt us. And because we keep doing things that hurt us, we keep going round and round in a vicious circle. I'm not making any excuses, I insist, but how can we defeat a mentality that perpetually keeps us under â"€ such that when we are making progress, we nullify it with another wrong step or a series of wrong steps? You will understand my argument as you read on, and I will cite two examples to make my point in this brief discussion on colonial mentality â"€ that mental illness that makes us think that the worst of our colonial masters is better than the best of us.

I'll start with the recent guidelines issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on rating agencies in Nigeria. In advanced economies, ratings are an integral part of the operations of the economy. There is the significance of placing companies or corporate entities in their proper categories, helping investors and customers make informed decisions, and setting benchmarks to engender competition and growth in the various sectors. But an addition to these "technical benefits" is that ratings are a full business on their own, a potential multibillion naira component of the financial sector. In other words, there are jobs to be created, there are taxes to be paid into government coffers and there are millionaires to be made, as in banking and industry.

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