Rasheed Akinkuolie

By Rasheed Akinkuolie

Bill Gates speech at the expanded Business forum during his recent social visit to Nigeria has brought to the open the dismal Human Misery Index (HMI) of the Nigerian people, which hitherto had been hidden under cosmetic statistics and figures.

Bill had simply exposed a few of the problems. The lack of access to potable water by 80% of Nigerians should have been one of the key points of his speech. In some rural communities, water is shared with livestocks from brackish ponds, such that water borne diseases kill more people in Nigeria than malaria and other diseases put together.

This dismal situation should not be the fate of Nigeria, especially as an oil producing country, the largest producer in Africa and one of the largest in the world. Then, what happened to the humongous revenues generated for decades from oil and gas ? So, what went wrong? And at what point did the country degenerate to this state of despair ?

Nigeria thrived during the first and second republics, between 1960-1965 and 1979-83. The issues raised by Bill Gates on education, health care and human capital development were effectively addressed by these governments.

The immunization program started in the years before independence and it was effective. Public water works were working and access to potable water was easy.

Malaria eradication scheme was carried out by health workers who fumigate mosquito breeding grounds in towns and villages, a simple procedure which drastically reduced malaria attacks and deaths.

There was direct government interventions in social welfare matters based on well articulated short, medium and long term developmental plans.

The local currency was strong, government owned enterprises viz : the oil refineries, national air and shipping lines, Housing Authority, utility companies, railways, banks, insurance companies, assembly plants, the aluminum complex employed hundreds of thousands of people and were doing well.

There were two automobile, two truck and one tractor assembly plants in the country.( Volkswagen, Peugeot automobiles, Leyland and Annamco trucks, Steyr tractor ) with local content industries built around them. Some of the plants had already attained 40% local content inputs before they collapsed and went bankrupt.

The fortune of Nigeria changed with the adoption of the economic structural adjustment program, which was well intentioned, but failed in its practical application.

This policy encouraged the reduction of government’s involvement in the welfare of the people and passed most of these responsibilities to private businesses.

This new social orientation created a small group of very rich people, the oligarchs, who took over the control of the country’s economy. They formulated and manipulated policies which would favour, and feather their nests. Government owned assets and conglomerates earlier mentioned were privatized, stripped of their assets, looted and destroyed .

Nigeria became an experimental ground for testing economic theories which are not practicable and workable. Although Nigeria is vaunted to be the largest economy in Africa, yet hosts the poorest people as espoused by Bill Gates.

What, then is the solution to these problems?

The current policies should be reviewed or reversed in some cases. The government should go back to the drawing board to determine where the country went off track. There should be a reasonable mix between the responsibilities of the government and the private sector. The government must work in the interest of the people and for the people and such efforts may only be complemented by the private sector and not supplant it.

Bill Gates has come from far away to help solve some of Nigeria’s social problems. Nigeria’s richissimes bear a bigger burden and should do even more to help the poor and influence people’s oriented policies.

Private jets, the new status symbol in Nigeria is at the last count about 180 in number. Most of these Jet Setters fly over villages where people are dying of hunger and the quality of water is not much better than storm water .

I have seen more Rolls Royces in Nigeria than in the United Kingdom and Europe. I wonder who these Nigerians are trying to impress, the hungry poor or the likes of Bill Gates who view these ostentatious lifestyles with contempt.

The empathy and philanthropy of Bill Gates should be appreciated and his scathing remarks should not be seen, so much as a rebuke, but entreaties of a frank friend, who means well. It is now left for the Nigerian authorities to address these challenges, so that in his next call to Nigeria, Bill would see improvement in the issues he highlighted and have positive things to say about Nigeria.

• Ambassador Akinkuolie Rasheed was the Director of Trade and Investment in Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs