By Dele Sobowale

“It ain’t the things you don’t know that cause the problem, it’s what you think you know that ain’t so”.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882.

One of the reasons we are getting nowhere in Nigeria lies in the fact that too often our conversations, discussions or disagreements are conducted with dubious data as the basis for discussion.

Let me quickly start with a subject which is very dear to the hearts of virtually all Nigerians – unemployment. Everyone apparently agrees that joblessness is one of the major causes of social unrest including armed robbery, militancy and terrorism. But, when one asks about the level of unemployment, it is simply astonishing the wide variations in the responses one receives – starting from the government officials charged with solving this monster and apparently intractable problem.

Two nominees for ministerial appointment, who will have considerable influence on job creation spoke on the same day at the Senate confirmation hearings. Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who became Minister of Finance said, “We have un-employment rate of about 14 to16 per cent” and the Senators did not laugh.

Mr Olusegun Aganga, the immediate past Finance Minister gave a figure close to 20 per cent on the same day. Enter the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria who was reported in THE NATION on July 18, 2011 to have announced that 41.6% of youths are unemployed. The question now is this: for planning purposes, which of the figures do we accept as a starting figure and how do we know if we are making any progress with such disparate figures by our policy makers?

Food production is another aspect of our lives on which the figures tossed around by top policy makers vary depending on who is talking and references to periods under review also change rapidly. During his confirmation hearing, the current Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, announced that Nigeria spent N1.314 trillion on food imports in three years. One newspaper (name withheld) almost gave me a heart attack when it published N13.14 trillion. It is unimaginable that anyone would imagine that we were spending out entire national budget on food alone in the last three years.

When the mind turns to power generation, now or in the future, one is simply bewildered by the unending trope of nonsense that government officials dish out. The most recent was the announcement by Professor Barth Nnaji, our Minister in charge of Power.

As if delivering an earth-shattering message, the Honorable Minister announced that we would have 6,000 MW of power supply by December of this year. That is five months away. In addition, he projected that the nation will generate over 12,000 MW by 2014, it was impossible not to feel embarrassed on behalf of the Professor, who means well, but who, like others before him in that Ministry, simply does not remember even the most recent history of the power sector.

Professor Nnaji probably does not recall, or is he pretending to forget, that as far back as 2006, Governor Lyel Imoke of Cross River, as Minister of Power, promised Nigerians 10,000MW by 2007. If he fails to recollect that, he certainly should be able to remember that in 2008, the Yar’Adua/Jonathan administration vowed to increase the power supply to 10,000MW by 2011. With five months left to go in 2011, the 10,000 MW target had been thrown into the dustbin and a new unreliable figure had been substituted.

I have selected three issues, job creation, food security and power generation, among the myriad of variables that must be vastly increased before we can rank among the top 20 economies in 2020, which is a mere eight and a half years away. Every one of the top twenty countries is highly industrialized. Manufacturing and support services provide close to 70%  of the employment.

The invisible trades (smuggling, drug and arms running, money laundering, prostitution and human trafficking) constitute very little of their gross domestic productivity. By contrast, over 70% of our workers are engaged in the informal sector, mostly subsistence agriculture, trading and invisible trade. One uncompleted study reveals that close to 40% of Lagos workers, the nation’s largest economy, are engaged in illegal or invisible trade.

Almost all the medicine stores in the state would close if all fake drugs, food and drinks as well as pirated art works are removed. Yet nobody has undertaken a study to estimate the pool of people so engaged. Just as important, and perhaps more so, is the rough census of the unemployed or under-employed. To aspire to the twentieth spot on the economic league table we must by 2020 create employment opportunities equal to that of Indonesia – all in eight years.

Food is another parameter of national status. Although no nation has attained autarchy, that is, total food sufficiency, the characteristic shared in common by the top twenty is the fact that they at least produce surplus of something which they then export to pay for what they don’t produce.

The principle of Comparative Advantage is still very much in force, despite all the efforts of politicians in every country to subvert it. The new Honourable Minister spoke about our failure to add value. He is quite correct. But, in my view value addition is secondary to generating such surplus of, say, cassava, that even the export of the commodity would defray the cost of importing rice or sugar or whatever. The USA is largely a wheat exporter. But, what a wheat exporter!

Finally, we return to power, the one topic about which more lies have been told than any other topic in Nigeria. Even if Nigeria were to start generating 25,000 MW by 2020, which is most unlikely, that level of power output will not bring us anywhere near the top 30. Economies run on power, modern electrical power.

Virtually all equipment, machines, installations in the modern economy depend on power. Except in parts of India and rural China, no machine meant for production comes in the manual mode anymore. Almost everything is automated and power-driven. Even, an SS3 student should understand that under the circumstances, a nation without adequate power supply can never compete at the highest level.

Clearly, instead of continuing the national self-deception on VISION 20:2020, we should take a realistic view of our potentials, and plan accordingly. And the place to start is power. Professor Nnaji should aim to be the exception to the rule. Unlike Chief Bola Ige, Engineer Lyel Imoke, President Obasanjo, President Yar’Adua and others before him who promised vast additions to power supply and who failed to achieve, he should keep his words for once. Investors and planners can plan on 6,000 MW in 2012 – if it is certain to be delivered; nobody can plan on 200,000MW of official lies.

STILL WAITING FOR STRIKE?

“They came forth to war, but they always fell”.
James Macpherson, 1736-1796
James Macpherson was the grandfather of Sir John Macpherson, who many of all old “soldiers” will recollect was a Governor General of Nigeria in the 1950s. That piece quoted above was not intended for the current leaders of our NLC but nothing can be more apt. I was at a favourite watering hole on the day before the three day “warning strike” was scheduled to start.

And I was betting one crate of Gulder or Guinness Stout to one bottle, that there would be no strike. Instead, the leaders of the NLC would go in threatening fire and brimstone but they would emerge purring like cats after snatching some “fish” – if you know what I mean. GEJ has N1.5 million a day to provide food for visitors. It is difficult to remember what you came to do after a bellyful of pounded yam and bush meat! The rest of us can keep waiting. But remember nothing will happen as long as they go to Aso Rock.