By Sunny Ikhioya

EVERY country that strives to attain true independence must be able to feed herself. There must be industries in place to produce both agricultural-end products and spare parts that will keep the engines and tools working.

It is therefore heartwarming, that our Ministers – trade and industry, finance and agriculture – have taken a critical view of our present situation of total dependence on imported items and have chosen to adopt import substitution measures. What this implies is that, the government will either ban out-rightly, or impose heavy duties on items that can be locally produced here in Nigeria. This will encourage growth for our local industries and also create opportunities for the army of youths out there, looking for employment.

Right from the days of Yakubu Gowon, as head of state of Nigeria, our policies have never lacked planning; we remember, the rolling plans of yore in the seventies and most recently vision 20:20 and the NEEDS of the Soludo era. Nigerians are in fact great planners and thinkers. When you go through these plans on paper, you cannot but, give credit to the minds that have conceived it. The question now is; why have we failed to translate all these great concepts into reality? If something has been conceived as workable – having gone through the highest ruling body in the country – it is assumed that the processes to make it work, have been included in the planning. If all of these ones have been taken into consideration, why do our plans fail to work?

After the second world war, the United States of America introduced a Marshall plan to bring Germany and other war ravaged areas back to main stream living – through infra structural developments and other means.

The execution worked according to the plans and today Germany has the strongest economy in Europe. Why do plans succeed elsewhere and fail in Nigeria?

Can we say that it is a sabotage on the part of a negligible few people,feeding fat on the system? Is it a lack of political will on the part of people in government or a lack of proper focus and vision? Is it a testimony of our vagrant civil service, lacking in patriotism and integrity? Is it in our multi-ethnic configuration, that will not make us see anything good, apart from our ethnic leanings? Is it a conspiracy of the Super Powers to keep us dependent on their technology – comatose Ajaokuta steel and others – knowing that a giant Nigeria is a threat to their interest? Finally, is it the ineptitude of our combined uniform services – Army, Police, Navy, Air Force,Customs, Civil Defence, Immigration et al – to keep away the unwanted from our shores?

Let us attempt to find some answers, with case studies of two of our recent policies aimed at boosting local production. I am talking about our policies as it affects rice and the ” tokunboh”  (fairly used imported) vehicles. Our government increased the tariff for imported rice in January, with a view to encourage local farmers to plant and cultivate the product. In doing this, the government placed a ban on importation through the land borders. If everyone had thought that this policy will work, they were jolted by the activities of rice smugglers. All through the year, almost zero rice was imported through our official channels, yet foreign smuggled rice flood the market. Our farmers now, cannot sell their products to the rice millers at a profit, as they cannot compete with smuggled rice prices. So, local production is stalled.

As I write, smuggled rice is still coming in droves, even at day times. Our local importers are losing revenue, our ports are losing revenue and revenue that is to accrue to the government through the Customs is lost. The smugglers are happy, Customs men aiding the smugglers are smiling to the bank. The policy has backfired, for one year, our importers who are key players in the business, failed to bring in rice. What is responsible for this? The government is not being truthful about situations on ground- too many lies. They failed to carry key players along. If they had done that,they would have discovered that our local production is not yet up there and so, would have carried out the policy in phases. Make the marketers, distributors, millers, importers and the farmers partners and work towards a realistic time frame for implementation. With the backing of the above listed, there will be little room for external forces to sabotage the plan, as they would have taken care of all the chains in the business.

The haste to impose heavy duties and the embarrassment that comes with the policy failure would have been avoided, they would have been properly advised that, the only way to curtail smuggling activities along our borders, is to make our duties at par with neighbouring countries, that way, government will earn revenue from import duties, instead of a few unscrupulous individuals, sabotaging the economy.

The failure of the rice policy can be traced to the inept security at our borders, the exclusion of key players in the industry- who are knowledgeable in the business, and can help make it function properly – and the over- zealousness of government officials, who feed wrong information and statistics to the ‘ogas at the top’, as compared with true pictures on ground. We cannot make progress if we do not record accurately, the true market picture. The way it is now, all is propaganda.

Another disaster is about to take place in the motor industry, the government says, it wants to encourage local production, where are our local assembly plants? It is expected that, a country that wants to go into production in the steel sector, should begin with spare parts, how many vehicle parts are being produced in the country presently? If we have, how many of them have passed the international quality standards? Do we have a true picture of the numbers of “tokunboh” cars coming into the country? Can our supposed local manufacturers meet the demand? Do we know that over 80percent of cars driven into the country are “tokunboh”, driven by the so called “middle class”? How affordable will our locally assembled cars be to the masses.

An advise to those in position of authority; let us first see real production going on, let us see if what we produce can service the market, let us see that, this policy will not serve as an avenue, to again increase smuggling along our borders, with all the attendant risks – so many Custom men have died, due to smugglers activities – let those in position of authority, liaise with the real players in the business – I mean the importers, both of “tokunboh” and new vehicles – the local manufacturers, the dealers et al. Let the policy be acceptable to all before implementation.

A good policy doesn’t need any prompting to work. Let us keep politics outside this business.

*Mr. Ikhioya, a commentator on national issues, wrote from Lagos.