EDITORIAL: A Trip To Turkey
The President has just come back from another investment drive. This time to Turkey, a country that has made considerable progress in the last seventy or so years. Any investment drive to bring in funds to stimulate and deepen the economy of Nigeria is welcome. However, it is not out of place to do a cost-benefit analysis of the impacts of these foreign trips of the past four decades and more.
There is a school of thought which depicts the excursion as “Junketing”, mere indulgences to massage egos and allow a hordes of freeloaders in the entourage to pick up estacode as part of the spoils of being part of the political network.
In doing a Cost-Benefit Analysis of these trips, it is not out of place to recall the position of the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, when he made his unsuccessful bid for the presidency of Nigeria in 1979. Chief Awolowo stated that if elected as President, he would not go out of the country or receive foreign visitors in his first two years in office.
The time has come to ponder upon chief Obafemi Awolowo’s statement. As far as Chief Awolowo was concerned, “During a Period when you’re reconstructing the house, it will not be appropriate to receive visitors.”
Given the absence of verifiable data that the foreign trips date back decades, it is time to consider whether the reconstruction of the foundation should not come first.
Nigeria must reconstruct a shaky, debilitating foundation first before the perennial quest for a largely illusory quest for foreign investment.
The country lacks basic industries, and this in itself is a problem. Most important of all, the “suspension” of the 1963 Republican Constitution, which was based on production, has led the country away from a system based on productive activity leading to shared prosperity and into unfortunately with disastrous results into a rent -seeking increasingly impoverished rent-seeking state.
This has to be redressed if we do so and go back to the spirit of the 1963 Constitution, foreign investment will come in and local entrepreneurship will be upscale. This is the route that has been taken by countries such as India, which is now the fifth largest economy in the world, Malaysia and so forth.
The time has come to face our foundational difference and break away from illusions.
