The late Sonny Okosun of Nigeria asked this question in one of his most celebrated songs, and that brings me to some of the most vexing issues of the day.
The most common route and the most common practice to achieving productive efficiency in most industrialized countries is PRIVATIZATION. When we have tried it in this country, we have butchered it very badly and now I am hearing what appears to be DEPRIVATIZATION with regard to the Dangote refinery.
Examples of mismanagement abound in the power and Steel industries. The unbundling of NEPA was done so badly, that its offshoots are a waste. Ajaokuta is a monumental waste and failure, even in the face of further attempts to throw good after bad money. Today, we have many idle power plants due to a lack of gas supply in a country where gas is flared every day. We have spent billions of dollars in the name of upgrading the government refineries that no one seems to want to work.
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In that time frame, Dangote has built the largest refinery in Africa, but we are unable to supply it with crude oil. The same can be said about the power sector where we have spent billions of dollars with nothing to show for it. When NEPA was broken up, the pieces were sold below market value to new owners, who had little interest in making the investments necessary to make them productive and more efficient, but were more interested in sucking profits out of them. This can be said of many other government owned entities that were sold off to private individuals or groups.
This explains why, sixty-four years after independence, we cannot generate 10,000 megawatts of electricity or consistently transmit our pathetic current generation without the national grid collapsing.
The lowest hanging fruit that we can pluck as a country is the crude oil that God has bestowed upon this country. Instead of exploiting it for the greater good of our citizens like other oil producing countries, it has almost become a curse, leaving our people grossly impoverished and drowning in environmental degradation.
I can’t remember the last time we reached our OPEC allotted daily quota of 1.8 million barrels a day. Last month’s average daily production was less than 1.3 million barrels. Most of what we currently produce has been mortgaged as collateral for loans, leaving very little for current revenue. This explains why we are constantly borrowing to fund our massive deficit budget and why we cannot supply the local refineries with needed crude oil. The crude oil amount that could bring us up to our approved daily quota and generate substantially more revenue, is being siphoned through various “rat holes.”
Instead of Nigeria being among the top OPEC Countries in terms of development and a destination choice for tourists, we have managed to weaponize poverty, forcing many of our citizens to die across the desert trying to get to Europe. We have managed to create the massive exodus of professionals out this country and reduced what was once the largest economy in Africa to number four in just 3 yrs.
We now buy palm oil from countries that we once taught how to plant palm trees. We manufacture very little and import almost everything, such that every little change in the exchange rate leads to higher prices at home. Our few manufacturers are leaving in droves. We have automobile manufacturers in Nigeria, yet our public officials spend billions of taxpayer funds buying foreign made vehicles. We have the most bloated government for a country in financial trauma and our governments’s choices for spending scare resources in these very difficult times, have not been the best.
To cap it all, it is almost impossible to make a clear distinction between the executive, legislative, and Judicial branches of government. Instead of focusing on how to find real solutions to these problems, government spokespersons are busy chasing shadows and casting aspersions on patriotic Nigerians.
Onunaku is a public interest advocate
