By Adekunle Adekoya

EVERY time I pause and think about the state of affairs in my dear country, I simply end up despairing, even though I know I should be optimistic. Indeed, I am optimistic, for when there is life, there is hope. It is this hope that one day, Nigeria will get it right that keeps me, and I guess, millions of others going.

We are a blessed country. Whichever way anyone wants to look at it, we are blessed. We have thousands and thousands of kilometres of arable land, even though food here is still costly. We have many minerals that even the superpowers are envious of. But we have chosen to focus only oil, while buccaneers take care of the rest.

Even the oil, the nation shares with pirates. And then, the most important resource any nation must have, human resources. That we also have in abundance. Nigerians, whichever points of the compass they come from, are engineers, mathematicians, architects, doctors, economists, historians, name it. But since we don’t value them at home, they are in the diaspora enriching other nations.

What is clear, and which it seems all Nigerians agree on is that of all the resources a nation needs to grow, Nigeria has almost all, except one. You know what I am talking about.

It is the lack of this particular resource that has generated all the problems we are grappling with. It is the reason why nationals of this country will spend more than N90 billion in 2012 educating their children in a neighbouring country; it is why, despite acreages of arable land nationwide we spent more than N98 trillion importing food between 2007 to 2011.

It is also the reason why, despite the occurrence of limestone in leviathan proportions in many parts of the country, we still import more than N30 billion worth of cement annually. It is the reason for so many other things, like endless queues at embassies of western nations for visas, the unending drug trade, kidnappings, robberies, ritual killings, and a legion of other woes.

In other words, we have failed woefully to appreciate that which is ours, or grow with that which is ours, what our “ogas at the top”call local content.

But I am strongly convinced that all along, even those who drafted the local content policy do not believe in it. Those also charged with implementing it equally do not believe in it. If they did, they would not sit in offices cooled with air-conditioners from South-East Asia, they would not wear Italian shoes, French suits, or write with pens made in far away England.

They also would not use computers whose hardware and software come from Silicon Valley. Just ahead of the 2011 elections, President Goodluck Jonathan isued a Buy Nigeria directive, announced by Information Minister Labaran Maku. Since then, how many offices in the Presidency parade made-in-Nigeria computers? How many banks in Nigeria run software developed in Nigeria?

Now the 2015 elections are coming, and politicians are already at each others’ throats over an election that is at least 22 months away. For that election — watch it — INEC will submit a gargantuan bill. How much of that will end up in the pockets of foreigners? The National Identity Management Commission recently awarded a contract to MasterCard. If we believe in local content, shouldn’t local card firms have been given right of first refusal over such?

Our OEMs are struggling for survival, and in the face of massive unemployment, especially of youths, can’t we use the local content policy to generate employment?