By Dele Sobowale

“On earth there is nothing great but man; in man there is nothing great but mind”, Sir William Hamilton, 1788-1856.

The Honourable Minister for Trade and Investments is one public official who, at the beginning, appeared to be cast in a superfluous role in an over-bloated cabinet of over forty Ministers and countless “Advisers” – mostly free-loaders. But, he has since demonstrated two qualities indispensable for public officials anywhere in the world, especially Nigeria.

He works hard at his assignment and he is a good listener, who does not become impetuous when criticized. Instead of the silly rejoinders beloved by the “Special Assistants” of other Ministers, the Minister reaches out to his critics and explains his position.

Inevitably, a fair-minded critic soon discovers that the Minister has two points in his favour. First, he works within a system which waters down his own best efforts. Second, as a low budget Ministry, MTI does not have the funds to promote itself; no advertisements to place in the media and few workshops to organize.

That means that most of its best efforts are under-reported and their impacts on our future development are seldom appreciated. Yet, in the absence of a Ministry of Economy Development, MTI has been given the mandate to determine the future of the Nigerian economy at a time when we are certainly transiting from a world in which America imports oil to one in which the USA will increasingly export oil in various forms.

For Nigeria this is the most significant news of the year and how this country deals with that monumental change will determine our future as a people. The person charged with the responsibilities of charting our navigation from over-dependence on crude oil exports to a more diversified economy must be exceptional in more ways than one.

Every other Ministry can be headed by at least five hundred Nigerians without anyone noticing the difference. The number of Nigerians who can handle MTI can be counted on the fingers of the two palms of our hands and we still will not count all the fingers. One of them is on seat right now. A little bit of digression is required to illustrate the power of the MTI.

JAPANESE MITI AS MODEL

In the I950s and I960s, there was a fierce debate among economists about the superiority or otherwise of strictly planned economies (mostly socialist and communist countries like the USSR, East Germany, China, Yugoslavia etc) and free economies (mostly  capitalist countries  like the USA, UK and Western Germany etc).

The two competing models of development were the most prominent and for about twenty years the planned, socialist economies delivered higher GDP growth rates such that at one point the leader of the USSR, Nikita Kruschev, boasted that the country would soon overtake the United States as the leading economy. The dream was understandable because at the time the USSR was growing at about ten per cent annually while the USA was averaging three to four per cent.

For a while, the world was divided into planned and free economies until the Japanese, still under US administration, came up with a third option – a semi-planned economy. This approach to economic management imposed elements of a planned economy on the basic free market; as will be explained shortly.

Before long, this approach to economic development had propelled Japan from the ruins of the Second World War to the third largest economy. The engine room of the Japanese Miracle was the Ministry of International Trade and Investments, MITI. So powerful was MITI that the Ministers, in those days, was regarded as the Deputy Prime Minister as the brief description down-loaded and summarized will demonstrate.

“Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry, MITI, was formed in 1949 from the union of the Trade Agency and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry in an effort to curb post-war inflation and provide government leadership and assistance for the restoration of industrial productivity and employment.

MITI held primary responsibility for formulating and implementing international trade policy, although it did so by seeking a consensus among interested parties, including the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Finance. MITI also coordinated trade policy on issues affecting their interests, with the Economic Planning Agency, the Bank of Japan, and the ministries of agriculture, construction, forestry and fisheries, health and welfare, post and telecommunications, and transportation”. It might be added that MITI also had control over foreign exchange allocations.

“MITI facilitated the early development of nearly all major industries by providing protection from import competition, technological intelligence, helped in licensing foreign technology”. MITI also assisted with research funding to help selected Japanese industrial sectors to catch up with, and even surpass the achievement, of advanced economies.

For instance, it was MITI which selected iron and steel manufacturing as well as ship building in the early 1950s and electronics and cars in the 1960s. Companies such as SONY and TOYOTA became top global contenders thanks yo MIYI. At the time, Japan was not a major global competitor in both sectors.

But, by the early 1970s, Japan was the world’s leading ship builder and was one of top three steel makers. MITI had the power to direct banks to lend to selected companies in targeted sectors at low interest rates and also to get the country to ban the importation of foreign goods while developing its own industries rapidly.

Unlike Nigeria today, the coordinating Minister for economic activities was not the Ministry of Finance; it was MITI. And, the result was there for all to see. One thing is clear from the brief summary of MITI. Only individuals with the greatest minds can cope with the mountain of concerns which the Minister has to handle. Few possess such minds and some have gone from MITI to become Prime Minister in Japan.

NIGERIA’S MTI: FIGHTING LIONS WITHOUT ARMS

For Nigeria to benefit from the creation of this Ministry, only people with great intelligence, broad exposure and a high capacity for managing complexities should be appointed. It is not an assignment for dullards or one to pay benefactors or even to please the party. Few people can handle it.

Although ministerial briefs are not published in Nigeria, it is certain that the current Minister of Trade and Investment does not enjoy the clout his counterparts in Japan did in the 1950s to 1970. Aganga is not even the coordinating Minister and the only bank he can “bully to submission” is the Bank of Industry, BOI, and may be not even that one.

Whereas a MITI Minister could walk up to the Prime Minister of Japan and ask that American compact cars should be prohibited from import to encourage Japanese car manufacturers and it was done, Aganga has to plead and beg to get any item on the prohibition list.

So, for example, our textile industry dies and battery manufacturers pack up and go – taking productivity and jobs with them because our MTI lacks the power to protect them. The importers are too strong here. What we had done with our MTI, after borrowing a good page from the Japanese play-book, amounts to sending a gladiator into the arena to fight lions (read foreign competitors) without sword or shield;
not even a pen knife. Nigerian MTI is as naked as a new-born baby and almost just as helpless.

In short we had done everything to ensure that Segun Aganga or any other person occupying the seat at MTI will fail totally. We have created a Ministry in which only a miracle worker or an extremely exceptional person could succeed. Many are bound to fail.

The cross-reference to Japanese MITI had been made in order for the Federal government, other Ministers and the general public to understand the handicaps facing the occupant of this seat and appreciate that against all odds the incumbent Minister had largely succeeded in his assignments.

As the Chinese advise, “if you are given lemon, make lemonade out of it”. Nigeria’s MTI minister had made a lot of “lemonade” out of baskets of lemon handed to him. Apart from being a workaholic, almost killing himself with work, he operates on the level of big ideas – the sort which actually bring about true and sustainable transformation.

I has listened to him talk on two occasions. I was invited the first time; I just walked in the second time and I discovered the second reason why he had made something out of almost nothing at MTI. He is a great salesman and a spell-binding speaker. And to sell broad visions, meaning things unseen by others, you need great salesmen.

Like one of my colleagues, Harry, at the Boston harbor in 1969, in a fish company called Slade Gorton and Company; he would sell all the fish already in the warehouse and, again, sell fish still to be caught. He went on to amass millions in legitimate sales commissions.

Aganga belongs in that class of salesmen; people who provide optimism when it is in short supply; who bring water out of stone. Granted, he had stretched the claims once in a while, and he had been cautioned right here on these pages. But, on the whole he is the best Minister in Jonathan’s cabinet of under-performing Ministers.

Let me leave you with a few of his accomplishments which would have appeared ordinary until you read the hurdles placed in front of the MTI Minister. Then those achievements become extra-ordinary. Space would not permit me to explain fully the benefits of each of these landmark achievements at the moment. Perhaps another opportunity will present itself.