Professor Chris Onalo, FICA, is the Registrar, Chief Executive Officer, Institute of Credit Administration. He is one Nigerian who believes in adding values to your environment by seeking the necessary and relevant knowledge for greater achievement. As a credit management professional he has contributed immensely to nation building, helping young credit professionals improve their profession as well as entrepreneurs in the country to grow through knowledge seeking. In this interview with Moses Nosike, he x-rays why the country is where we are today.

Excerpts:

Blending our educational system, self employment and Nigeria development…

In my opinion, the Nigerian economy is very big and massive, looking to have qualified people to man the various productive activities of the stakeholders, government and other institutions. The level of manpower needs to keep a serious minded economy going is still inadequate. Where we have problem is these job seekers, I mean those who have graduated from the universities waiting to be engaged by labour market into productive activities so that they can earn income and start contributing to national GDP.

Onalo

Many of the them, almost 95% of them are not employable. The reason we all know – weak university system arising from poor government regulations of the universities. Of course, regulations and lack of care for the tertiary institutions especially those owned by federal and state governments, even the private universities are beginning to take cue from the influences generated by the federal and state universities.

So that at the end of the day, the by product of that weak policies and failure is that products of the universities are not employable, which tend to portray negative impression that there are no jobs.

And the consequential effect is because there are no good brains. The brains we have are weak and in most cases empty. We therefore have no innovation or creativity which are critical elements that drive economy and making it sustainable.

A resilient economy is the type of economy that is governed by best brains with innovative thinkers looking to think out best ideas and as well creating new ideas. In the absence of that, the economy becomes comatose, lazy and dull. That is the type of economy we now have. And then, it goes further to close the opportunity market. As a matter of fact, industries spring up as a result of creating possibilities of people.

People from science, business, medical, legal world and all sorts creating new ways that meet the needs of the modern man. We don’t have that. Assuming there is a sudden wake up for a vibrant economic activity in this country, you would discover that existing opportunities requesting competent brains is larger, richer than available manpower. But what we have is typically defined as dead wood, knowing how to eat food only. While divine books of authority say, ‘there is no food for a lazy man’.

And this man that is now lazy is half baked. That will now take us to the beginning of beginnings, when you were born, and I was born; we were little children. Nobody is marked with a particular gift to say go, this is what you are going to become. Everybody comes as an innocent child with empty brain waiting for parents and human government system to fuse something into us. But in Nigeria, the system that should load the citizenry or the nationals with culture of work, culture of performance with a view to feeding yourself is weak.

Those systems are weak. Those institutions are weak. All tertiary institutions are weak. They failed because government has long ago abandoned the universities. The United Kingdom has not abandoned their educational system despite the years of existence because they believe that a society is nugget because the people are nugget. And what makes people react to the need of the society is what government has offered; policies, laws and implementing them so that it would affect the thinking of their people.

We don’t have that in Nigeria. Consequently, they have a non performing economy. Education system is porous, and I’m looking to see President Buhari laying the biggest emphasis apart from corruption on education. We must go back to the drawing board and redefine our national agenda for reasonable and responsible educational system.

So, that is my thinking. Assuming that educational system is in good shape I see manpower supply in short form. I see it grossly inadequate. I therefore foreseen springing of universities with a view to cope with the demand of the labour market, because opportunities are in every corner in this country requiring discovery an investment. And when institutions have made those discovery and launch out to get loanable funds to finance their project ideas, it throws up employment. It creates wealth and the nation is in its best form.

How do we resuscitate the industrial life of Nigeria?

We have born and unborn industries. The ones that are existing or have been existing and the ones in incubation are there because the brains that would understand where those industries are hidden and what those industries are capable of doing  into the human society are not yet in place. Again, the university graduates who should in their various knowledge sectors discover these opportunities are weak in their capacity level to be able to come up with such project ideas.

So, those industries are lying fallow, undiscovered. Now the existing ones, for instance, the textile industries in the 80s in Lagos. That time, you can move from one corner to the other seeing many of textile companies.  But today, Afprint is dead,  Aswani is struggling and so many of them. So, what are we talking about. Are you saying that those industries are dead with their owners.

There must be remnant looking to see those industries come back again because they were making huge money at that time and they could make more money today because of the world of fashion that has become the gold business all over the world. If the government is serious, they could resuscitate those dead industries. In the 80s in Kano, they were close to 400 industries of which 50 or thereabout were textiles industries. Go there now you cannot see anyone there. It is a pathetic history for this country. And the leaders that contributed to this downfall, I don’t know why Nigerians are quick to forgive them. Some of them are living fat today and we are respecting, giving them all sorts of awards but they plunged us into this problem.

Industries are what drive the economy. The policies to resuscitate them should be put in place and it should not exist in the lips. We should avoid self-centred people that go to lobby for ministerial positions and thereafter begin to steal. So if they have a national agenda that this country must be indeed giant of Africa, you will see industries everywhere and with our massive production we could circulate in the local market and go further to export to neighbouring markets and to the larger global market.

Government appointing unqualified people to key positions, what does that entail to our developmental system?

That is the first symptom of failure. When government is appointing a minister into a portfolio that has no relationship with that person’s fundamental knowledge set up, what do you expect the person to do, to be groping in the dark, swimming from one river to the other spending the money all the way. Why would a serious leader put people into a position they knew nothing about? We have to be realistic, come to the national project and I expect that President Buhari should sustain the momentum.

Do not employ or appoint people politically because you want to appease the party or appease those who cast their votes for you or those who sat with you and draw the strategy for winning election. If they are not relevant to your government don’t create an office for them. If you are to be appointed a minister for industry is because you have field experience in industrial management so that when you come into that office new ideas will flow. You will be able to see areas that didn’t work and you set system that will make it work.

Again politically speaking, government must release herself from being the biggest spender. Let there be policy that transfers economic power to the people and not the government. Let there be a system that makes political government unattractive to many people.  Remove a lot of bottle neck of taxes, levies that discourage indigenous people from going into businesses.

You have to remove them to yield massive incentives even if it is for certain period say 10 to 15 or maximum 20 years incentives. Pull certain cost because the cost of running business here  is too expensive. We don’t have a legend economy. Nigeria is not yet attractive destination because of these deluges of problem. Remove those things as a determinant that we want to concentrate economic power in the hands of the indigenes of the citizens and then you see some of these things working.

Government should not make that mistake of putting wrong people in certain positions that they have no experience, qualification and anything about. Don’t sacrifice the future of this country at the altar of political patronage or god-fatherism any more.