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- The Black Man’s Burden (4)
The Black Man’s Burden (4)
- By Alex Ekemenah
- Published March 15th, 2009
- Comment & Analysis
- Unrated
It is tragic that we are still sleepwalking in the groove of our mental backwardness. We have misplaced the sign-posts of development. We are yet to get our priority right. This is why we have been hostile to some of our policy makers in recent times. Do let us ask ourselves again: What has been the totality of achievements since the return to civil rule in May 1999? We often like to point to the banking consolidation and the telecommunication sector. Should that be all? Were they not inevitable? Where would the banking sector be today if the consolidation exercise has not been carried out then? (My madam at home cynically tells me that the Nigerian banking sector would have been wiped out in the current global financial crisis!).
Even with Vision 20:2020, one doubt whether it will liberate the country from the yoke of economic backwardness. Let us ask: is Vision 2020 the limit of our collective dream? Is that how far we can see – just 12 years away from now – where others can see twenty – fifty years ahead?
Can Nigeria really continue to claim leadership of the black race on earth in light of what has recently happened in America viz: the presidential electoral victory of Barack Obama, the first black President to be so elected? Do we really think that Nigeria can become one of the top-20 world economic powers by 2020 when, for instance, South Africa is already the 17th largest economy in the world? Which countries among the top-20 world economies are we going to push off the table or scale? As at present the top-20 world economies include the G-8 countries, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Spain, China, India, South Korea, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa. Why do we go about day-dreaming when we know that even if we can grow the economy by 13% growth rate annually from now till 2020 Nigeria cannot become a top-20 world economy but just a middle-income earner? I have often wondered at the kind of economic mathematics with which we arrive at this tendentious economic goal: am yet to understand the mathematics!
But more worrisome is the kind of national political leadership with well known mental deficiency or disease of sluggishness. There is no evidence that the current administration in the country would be able to move the country an inch nearer the goal of a top-20 world economy going by its peculiar mental characteristics. A government without a philosophical appreciation of urgency and/or time cannot achieve much, so to speak! Between now and 2020 we will have only two more administrations in the country, if for instance, the current administration is allowed to do a second term in office. The risks would be too much then because Vision 2020 would be a story of the proverbial camel struggling to get through the eyes of the needle! Do we then realize the enormity of work that has to be done between now and 2020 to achieve the radical change that we all desire? How can we achieve that within the space and time of 12 years? How can we tackle electricity “gridlock” (!) in the country to drive and power a top-20 world economy? Do we realize the amount of infrastructures that we have to build and sustain to drive and power a top-20 world economy? The questions are legion.
But there is still something more dangerous lurking round the corner, ready to make mess of everything that we might have put together to achieve Vision 20:2020. This is the problem of human capital needed to drive and sustain a top-20 economy. From where are we going to get this human capital? Naturally from our educational sector especially its tertiary institutions of learning. But that is precisely where the problem lies. I am afraid that our hopes are very slim in achieving the goals of a Vision 20:2020 if we predicate it on our educational sector and the current pool of human capital in the country.
I say this authoritatively because we are in the ivory tower where we experience on daily basis the crisis of the educational sector in Nigeria. How can we even get the executive manpower at the governmental level, manpower of unquestionable integrity, pedigree, probity and discipline, to drive the entire process when for instance, our current crop of leaders or ministers are a bunch of collective failure in the last two years or so?
We had earlier written that “Our educational system has in totality failed to provide the instrumentality of highly-educated skilled and productive manpower that determine, direct and shape economic prosperity, general well-being and reproductive capacity of a nation. It has failed to provide and produce an educated bulwark against dictatorship of military rule and its thieving leaders.
“We have to realize the negative enormity of military rule on our educational system over the decades. We are yet to realize the satanic zeal with which military rule destroyed our educational system, the stupefaction and stultification or the intellectual crimes committed against the university system in the country. We are yet to realize the lost opportunities to build an abundant pool of human capital agents to drive a 21st century economy.
Our university system could no longer break new grounds in (independent) knowledge acquisition or scientific or theoretical discovery of magnitude and significance. Why is it that we have not been able to produce another Nobel laureate after Wole Soyinka got his in 1986 – more than two decades ago? Why is it that Africa as a whole has only been able to produce few Nobel laureate that we can count on our fingers whereas certain countries in Europe and America have produced more than dozen each? What is wrong with us? (BWI, September 24, 2007, p.8).
We raised this specter once again just two weeks ago when we asked propitiously the question: Can (the) educational sector rise to the challenge of Vision 20:2020 (BusinessWorld Intelligence, January 19, 2009 p. 46-47).
In summary, from whichever angle one cares to look at the hydra-headed monster of the contemporary problems confronting our educational system, it is very obvious that they are all intertwined requiring a holistic approach at understanding these problems and providing “heuristic” solutions to them. According to Kaplan: “Those who are serious about capacity building, who are intellectually honest and who approach their practice with a certain rigour and discipline, will recognize that effective capacity-building approach conform with what is observable – if we are prepared to look - and even with “common sense”. The fact that they are demanding, challenging and strategically complex does not provide anyone with the excuse to opt for ways, which clearly have little effect. It does seem though, that we have to pay more respect to the complexity of development work than we have hitherto” (Kaplan, 1999)
Thus in the circumstances obtaining as at present, befuddled as we are by crass theories on leadership, tarred with the brushes of corruption and fat-cattery, pseudo-shamanism masquerading as science, political rascality on the rampage, African intelligentsia is forcefully presented with the challenge of making an extensive analysis of the historical situation around us particularly our economic, political and social conditions and consequently employing the analysis to expose and explode the philosophemes and mythologemes evolved over intellectual time and space by the Western antique ideologies and cynical opportunism (ideologues) and to arm ourselves against the dangers of such philosophemes and mythologemes meant to blind us and prevent us from obtaining blue-sky clarity about the world around us. This intellectual challenge is one of the tasks already identified about the urgent need to construct an alternative model or platform of development and progress different from what the erstwhile Western models have taken us through and to help our Governments to chart a new path, foster the conducive atmosphere and policies for human, social and economic development through our educational system.
Even with Vision 20:2020, one doubt whether it will liberate the country from the yoke of economic backwardness. Let us ask: is Vision 2020 the limit of our collective dream? Is that how far we can see – just 12 years away from now – where others can see twenty – fifty years ahead?
Can Nigeria really continue to claim leadership of the black race on earth in light of what has recently happened in America viz: the presidential electoral victory of Barack Obama, the first black President to be so elected? Do we really think that Nigeria can become one of the top-20 world economic powers by 2020 when, for instance, South Africa is already the 17th largest economy in the world? Which countries among the top-20 world economies are we going to push off the table or scale? As at present the top-20 world economies include the G-8 countries, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Spain, China, India, South Korea, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa. Why do we go about day-dreaming when we know that even if we can grow the economy by 13% growth rate annually from now till 2020 Nigeria cannot become a top-20 world economy but just a middle-income earner? I have often wondered at the kind of economic mathematics with which we arrive at this tendentious economic goal: am yet to understand the mathematics!
But more worrisome is the kind of national political leadership with well known mental deficiency or disease of sluggishness. There is no evidence that the current administration in the country would be able to move the country an inch nearer the goal of a top-20 world economy going by its peculiar mental characteristics. A government without a philosophical appreciation of urgency and/or time cannot achieve much, so to speak! Between now and 2020 we will have only two more administrations in the country, if for instance, the current administration is allowed to do a second term in office. The risks would be too much then because Vision 2020 would be a story of the proverbial camel struggling to get through the eyes of the needle! Do we then realize the enormity of work that has to be done between now and 2020 to achieve the radical change that we all desire? How can we achieve that within the space and time of 12 years? How can we tackle electricity “gridlock” (!) in the country to drive and power a top-20 world economy? Do we realize the amount of infrastructures that we have to build and sustain to drive and power a top-20 world economy? The questions are legion.
But there is still something more dangerous lurking round the corner, ready to make mess of everything that we might have put together to achieve Vision 20:2020. This is the problem of human capital needed to drive and sustain a top-20 economy. From where are we going to get this human capital? Naturally from our educational sector especially its tertiary institutions of learning. But that is precisely where the problem lies. I am afraid that our hopes are very slim in achieving the goals of a Vision 20:2020 if we predicate it on our educational sector and the current pool of human capital in the country.
I say this authoritatively because we are in the ivory tower where we experience on daily basis the crisis of the educational sector in Nigeria. How can we even get the executive manpower at the governmental level, manpower of unquestionable integrity, pedigree, probity and discipline, to drive the entire process when for instance, our current crop of leaders or ministers are a bunch of collective failure in the last two years or so?
We had earlier written that “Our educational system has in totality failed to provide the instrumentality of highly-educated skilled and productive manpower that determine, direct and shape economic prosperity, general well-being and reproductive capacity of a nation. It has failed to provide and produce an educated bulwark against dictatorship of military rule and its thieving leaders.
“We have to realize the negative enormity of military rule on our educational system over the decades. We are yet to realize the satanic zeal with which military rule destroyed our educational system, the stupefaction and stultification or the intellectual crimes committed against the university system in the country. We are yet to realize the lost opportunities to build an abundant pool of human capital agents to drive a 21st century economy.
Our university system could no longer break new grounds in (independent) knowledge acquisition or scientific or theoretical discovery of magnitude and significance. Why is it that we have not been able to produce another Nobel laureate after Wole Soyinka got his in 1986 – more than two decades ago? Why is it that Africa as a whole has only been able to produce few Nobel laureate that we can count on our fingers whereas certain countries in Europe and America have produced more than dozen each? What is wrong with us? (BWI, September 24, 2007, p.8).
We raised this specter once again just two weeks ago when we asked propitiously the question: Can (the) educational sector rise to the challenge of Vision 20:2020 (BusinessWorld Intelligence, January 19, 2009 p. 46-47).
In summary, from whichever angle one cares to look at the hydra-headed monster of the contemporary problems confronting our educational system, it is very obvious that they are all intertwined requiring a holistic approach at understanding these problems and providing “heuristic” solutions to them. According to Kaplan: “Those who are serious about capacity building, who are intellectually honest and who approach their practice with a certain rigour and discipline, will recognize that effective capacity-building approach conform with what is observable – if we are prepared to look - and even with “common sense”. The fact that they are demanding, challenging and strategically complex does not provide anyone with the excuse to opt for ways, which clearly have little effect. It does seem though, that we have to pay more respect to the complexity of development work than we have hitherto” (Kaplan, 1999)
Thus in the circumstances obtaining as at present, befuddled as we are by crass theories on leadership, tarred with the brushes of corruption and fat-cattery, pseudo-shamanism masquerading as science, political rascality on the rampage, African intelligentsia is forcefully presented with the challenge of making an extensive analysis of the historical situation around us particularly our economic, political and social conditions and consequently employing the analysis to expose and explode the philosophemes and mythologemes evolved over intellectual time and space by the Western antique ideologies and cynical opportunism (ideologues) and to arm ourselves against the dangers of such philosophemes and mythologemes meant to blind us and prevent us from obtaining blue-sky clarity about the world around us. This intellectual challenge is one of the tasks already identified about the urgent need to construct an alternative model or platform of development and progress different from what the erstwhile Western models have taken us through and to help our Governments to chart a new path, foster the conducive atmosphere and policies for human, social and economic development through our educational system.
