Rauf Aregbesola

What we can do in the short term is to find alternative sources of funding for our balance of trade deficit through borrowing, restriction on the importation of non-essential goods for which we can readily find local alternatives and disposing off idle and non-performing assets. We should also by whatever means end the conflict in the Niger Delta to be able to ramp up oil production. Adding one million barrels to our production will take us out of the woods. Therefore, plugging leakages and recovering loot, as the government is doing, is a right step to stop the haemorrhaging of the economy and maximise the current situation.

Another short term solution is to, in the Keynesian mode, engage in direct employment of youths. In spite of neoliberal opposition, this policy has never failed in addressing depression in the past. This is one of the innovations we brought to governance. Our administration has carried out the engagement of two tranches of 20,000 youths in public works in quick succession. The OYES cadets were not given permanent employment but engaged as volunteers and given monthly allowance. They were eventually given soft landing in the various empowerment schemes of the government in agriculture, teaching and information and communication technology. In less than two years of taking the youths off the streets, crime rate in Osun dropped to rock bottom. It also reflated the local economy since the N200 million monthly allowances given to them percolated into the grassroots. It is government money well spent. The programme has since been adopted by the World Bank and introduced nationally in a modified form as YESSO.

The long term solution is to get off the addiction to imported goods and start producing what we consume. We have no business importing fuel, for instance. We should be producing refined fuel, not just for local consumption, but for export as well. There should be a national policy centred on local refining of our crude. It will not only reduce the price of fuel, it will create jobs, wealth, foster a value-chain and bring development.

We should also cut the importation of food to less than 25 per cent of the current volume. This is to enable us develop agriculture. It has been the policy of our administration since day one to promote food production in order to be able to feed our people. It is really shameful that in spite of our endowments in natural resources, we are still dependent on imported food items as a nation.

We should return to farming, not just at the subsistent level, but as big business. We should strive to increase agriculture productivity and yield. While Nigeria is the leading producer of cassava for instance, the traditional yield per hectare has been around 10 tonnes while global average in 2010 put at 12.5 tonnes. However, India’s average yield in 2010 was 34.8 tonnes per hectares and Thailand’s yield is reported to be a whopping 120 tonnes per hectare.

If we can double our food output from cultivating the same land size as we currently do, it is possible to eliminate hunger from the country. But this will require innovation in crop science, agriculture mechanisation, extension services, improved inputs and agriculture entrepreneurship. The agriculture knowledge base has to be widened and scientific findings have to be brought to (and applied by) the farmers.

There must also be a transition from producer of primary goods to value adding. Adding values create a value chain that increases the momentum of development. For instance, the value of one kilogramme of cocoa beans that we export is multiplied 5,000 times by the time we import it as chocolate. If we can make the same quality of chocolate, we could have earned 5,000 times the value we derive from cocoa beans in a value chain that includes revenue generation, wealth creation, job creation and spiralling effect of developing ancillary industries around this product.

The primary engine of development is education. This is where innovation is most needed. A functional system of education that develops and put to use the creativity of Nigerians is urgently needed.

I conceive of education as the preparation and development of worthy citizens for the immediate society and the world at large. Education is that infrastructure of the mind that develops our youths to become models of good character, innovation and competence. This is what we call Omoluabi in Yoruba.

Omoluabl is the epitome of virtue. An Omoluabi persona is honest, courageous and rational; one who excels in character, innovation and competence. The educated person is well connected to his or her culture and heritage. Everything he/she does with others, the society, family and friends is driven by the desire to live and demonstrate good deeds. It is only when we interrogate this definition that we can know if we are meeting the objectives of education.

Education has not been an engine of development, rather, it is a system of social stratification where bland certificates are issued in order to separate the political and economic elites from the others. This is one of the factors responsible for poor productivity. Those who have certificates without the requisite skills cannot drive enterprise or provide leadership. They only see their certification as entitlement to privileges.

It is always embarrassing to hear employers say our graduates are not employable. The bright ones among them have to be trained and retrained to be found suitable for the jobs on hand.

Education therefore has received the greatest attention and resources from our administration. One of our first tasks was to convene an education summit, headed by the Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka. That summit produced the blueprint of our education reforms. In a state of roughly four million people, we embarked on an ambitious programme of building from scratch 100 elementary schools, 50 middle schools and 20 high schools. Each of these schools has capacity for 600 pupils, with the high school being a three in one, each designed and equipped to sustain 1000 pupils. These new public schools soon began to displace private schools.

We provided a stand-alone e-learning tablet, which we named ‘Opon Imo’ (tablet of knowledge), for final year students in public schools, in share display of creativity. This tablet contains all the recommended 56 textbooks by the three examination bodies for senior school certificate examinations in Nigeria. It contains also past questions of these bodies, a virtual classroom, extracurricular zone and the themes of Yoruba traditional religion. This tablet was the saving grace in a year when teachers went on strike for eight months and did not prepare the final year students for their examinations.