By Dele Sobowale

“Time for muddling through is over”. Robert Zoellick, World Bank President, in a speech delivered at George Washington University, recently. The Nigerian Federal Minister of Finance, our own dear (I mean that sincerely) Dr Okonjo-Iweala, must know Robert Zoellnick better than all 150 million Nigerians put together. He was her boss –until President Goodluck Jonathan took over the role of her ogapatapata.

However, when the matter under discussion is macro-economic in nature, our own GEJ will have to go and seat in the balcony while the professionals slug it out. The attention of the Finance Minister is drawn to the statement from the World Bank President because she might have been too busy preparing the 2012 Budget and whipping undisciplined colleagues into line, as the Senior Prefect Minister, and she could easily have missed what her former boss said.

In actual fact, Zoellnick said some other things which call into question Jonathan’s wisdom in going prostrating before Okonjo-Iweala begging her to return and “help” Nigeria. Apparently, the Americans and Europeans who together controlled the Bretton Woods global institutions, World Bank and International Monetary Funds, IMF, and the international economic system, have actually been messing up the whole world, while giving to developing countries advice which they themselves failed to accept.

One such is their position on subsidy. No Presidential candidate of the United States will have an ice cube’s chance in hell – if he campaigns on removing agricultural subsidy running into billions of dollars. The same is true of Europe whose dairy farmers are seating on mountains of butter and powdered milk. But, the minute they land in Abuja, the first thing out of their mouths is the need the remove subsidies in Nigeria.

But, I am starting the war early. Let us return to the very vital issue of job creation which we have been told is at the top of the national agenda under President Jonathan’s transformation campaign. We have looked at agriculture and agro-allied endeavours.

Last week, we considered how weaknesses in the fallacies drawn up as communiqués after retreats, seminars and workshops on development of agriculture and agro allied industries and small scale enterprises have made it impossible for this country to get ahead in the last 40 years. Like Zoellnick, all Nigerians want from our leaders, under the new Senior Prefect Minister, is to stop trying to muddle through. It has not worked.

Perhaps, nothing points to our pathetic failure in manufacturing and industrilisation than the former bustling industrial estates of Ikeja, Apapa, Ilupeju, Oshodi (in Lagos State); Bompai, Sharada (in Kano State); Trans-Amadi Layout (in Rivers State) and the Anglo-Jos (in Plateau), to name a few, which have become virtual ghost towns.

From my office, as Marketing Manager in North Brewery Limited, Kano in the 1980s, I could, without stretching my neck, observe at least ten companies directly employing over 75,000 people and indirectly providing for opportunities to over six times that number.

Today, none of the companies is in operation. Incidentally, the Age of Manufacturing nationwide coincided with the period of relative peace and security. Few of us, Southerners, had any qualms about going north to work for the same salaries as we received elsewhere. Today, few skilled Southerners, unless there is no alternative, will go to Jos, Maiduguri and, even to some extent, Kano, to work – at any price!!

The obvious question to ask is: where will the experienced workers come from? Mostly Southerners for now, only the most desperate will be willing to take the chance to manage the manufacturing enterprises which might be slated for the North.

Former Vice-President, Alhaji Abubakar Atiku and Honourable Dr Bugaje once organized a seminar and commissioned a study to determine how to revive northern industries. Unfortunately, my copy of the reports is under mountains of other studies driving me out of my house.

Unless, the effort to create jobs will focus only on the relatively peaceful south, while ignoring vast areas of the north, the Minister of Finance will be well-advised to run, not walk, to Alhaji Atiku and obtain a copy of those studies. They will, at least, help us to fulfill the central condition recommended by the World Bank President when he said: “Adapting to this new world is about recognizing that we must all be responsible stakeholders now”.

At the moment, the top government officials, especially Ministers on the “Team” are all still wedded to ignorance and a reality about Nigeria which died years ago. They represent the most irresponsible of all stakeholders. From experience working in at least six of our former industrial estates and seeing what they have become, it is difficult for me to understand where all the optimism being expressed by government officials is coming from. No amount of wishful thinking and “good intentions” will promote manufacturing.

At this point, let us examine the challenges from another standpoint. Manufacturing enterprises can be classified into three: totally private (e.g UAC Foods); totally public (e.g Defence Industries) or Private/Public Partnerships, PPP (e.g crude oil production). The first question government must answer is: how many jobs are expected to be created by each group? A corollary to that question is: have we identified the potential investors likely to make the investments and have they indicated their willingness to undertake the challenge?

To be sure there are thousands of questions waiting for answers including how many will be new or revival of failed ventures; what assortment of products with great market potentials have been identified which will serve as the basis for production and consumption. But one answer is already with us. Government enterprises never last.

Meanwhile, the Team must not forget one of the principles of economies cast almost in concrete has taught us that consumption is the soul purpose of production. Can the enterprises expected to be established produce and offer to consumers brands that are competitive in price and quality? Obviously, if they fail to meet those acid tests, they will soon fold up as warehouses fill up on account of wean consumption – as a few examples will show.

Mr Deru, of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industries, LCCI, should be able to tell the Team a lot about why no battery manufacturer exists in Nigeria today. He was the second to the last Chief Executive Officer, CEO, of Berec Batteries, once a darling of the Nigerian Stock Exchange.

Deru was CEO at the same time that I was Marketing Manager for Ever Ready Battery just starting manufacturing at Kano. Together with WAHUM, we supplied about 85% of the Nigerian market –while import restrictions were on. The balance of 15% came form smuggling. No sooner was the ban lifted than all Nigerian manufacturers were wiped out by TIGER brand batteries.

Today, we live on the labours of Chinese battery producers. More importantly, we have lost the technology transfer, little as it was, gained while we were producing with Technical partners. So, even if this major consumer product is on the list, hopefully there is a list of priority products for interventions, it would call for us to start all over again learning to make batteries.

Believe it, or not, there was a time bicycles were manufactured here; so were car tyres (Dunlop and Michelin). They, like textiles are no longer produced, not because the investors got tired of making products but because they could not meet the two acid tests of comparative qualities and prices. And we all know the reasons why. But, just in case members of the Team are in doubt, let me move forward with the case study of the fish farmer which started last week.

This poor Nigerian in order to run a fish farm has had to dig a borehole and provide his own water; to run the borehole, he must procure litres of diesel everyday because power supply to his farm is seldom more than three times a month and usually for less than two hours when it is supplied. Fish feed and other inputs are imported from Israel, a desert country which nevertheless produces fish.

Two months ago, the poor Nigerian fish farmer, through the Facebook, located a fish farmer in Thailand and communications started. The Thai, producer operates from a fish pond created by government; power supply to the site never fails; and feed millers compete for his business making it possible for him to obtain fish feed at 40% the price of his Nigerian counterpart. The only thing “cheaper” in Nigeria is the labour employed.

There is a global shortage of fish; which is growing everyday. Nigeria, a Maritime nation, internally blessed with several rivers and streams, should have been close to the top of the global as a potential fish supplier to the global community. Instead, we still import fish and will continue for as long as we continue to “muddle through” Thirty years of neglect of our power generation and supply system has left us in a situation in which production, of any sort, especially by small producers has become all but impossible.

The final question, at least for now: can Dr Okonjo-Iweala tell Nigerian that the government of Nigeria has stopped “muddling through”? Without an affirmative answer to that question, it will be wise to find out if her job at the World Bank has been occupied. The US and Europe need her badly—perhaps even more than Nigeria; because if they fail, then whatever her Team has prepared as blueprint will be good only for the dustbin. No European will abandon his country and come to Agbowa Ikosi to invest in fish farming.

1 0802-366-3258 FUEL SUBSIDY

As usual you spoke home truth to Okonjo-Iaweala today on her crazy idea of fuel activity removal. A word is enough for her if she is wise and you already spoke that word for her hearing. Dr Akanni Omole.

2 0806-386-8660 OKONJO-IWEALA

I have just finished reading “Welcome To Okonjo-Iweala” for the 4th time. Thank you indeed for your patriotic teaching, advice, and warning to “madam”. I hope the erudite doctor should be wise also to read, understand and make use of it. Who pays you for this wonderful but instructive road map you have dished out to Madam? Goddy OKonkwo.