No short cut to sustainable economic development

What I read every day in newspapers is the injection of dollars into the economy, multiple foreign exchange rates regimes, and why banks are retaining double digit interest rates, etc. Yet, the inflation is double-digit, unemployment has not dropped, population is increasing and people are still wallowing in poverty. One day, I told a friend that Nigeria has not learnt any lesson. Are we saying Nigeria is in short supply of those who understand development economics?

I heard the price of crude oil will not rise to US$ 100/barrel, perhaps, in the next 10 years or more. When I ponder on why some nations are getting richer, while others get poorer in nanoseconds, I recall immediately the philosophy of James Dyson, the British inventor and industrial designer, who says that “next to the gift of life is technology, for it is the greatest of God’s gifts as it offers to the poor of the earth a short cut to wealth, a way of getting rich by cleverness rather than by back-breaking labour.”

For more than 4 decades, various regimes have been dancing around monetary and fiscal policies in Nigeria. I pity those in government because they have been concentrating much energy in areas that will certainly not lead the nation on the path of sustainable development. I align myself with a policy analyst who says that fiscal and monetary policies can only give about 30 percent of the requirements for sustainable development. The remaining requirements are tied around science, technology and engineering that will enhance production.

The difference between technologically advanced and economically backward nations is not the age of the nations under consideration as some analysts may want us to believe. Let’s consider nations like India and Egypt which are more than 2000 years old. In fact, research has shown that about 1000 BC, Egypt was the most economically developed place on earth. You’ll recall Egypt’s pyramids and temples were rated as architectural masterworks, while its constitution was one of the most sophisticated in the world at that time.

Today, Egypt is one of the countries categorized as “third world,” while India is an industrialized nation. India is an industrialized nation because of sustainable linkage of research institutes to end users in the productive sector and the will of policy makers to commercialize modest inventions in the productive sector. Other reasons include strong commitment to research and development activities, upgrade of science laboratories and engineering equipment in tertiary institutions resulting in quality science, technology and engineering graduates. For some decades, governments in India have displayed the political will to mobilize science, technology and engineering manpower in the pursuit of national economic objectives.

Over the years, Nigeria has been applying all manners of permutations and combinations for economic growth. Instead of economic growth, Nigeria’s debt profile is rising at an alarming rate. According to reports, Nigeria’s debt management rose to US$ 11.4 billion in January 2017, from US$ 10.7 billion in 2015. One may argue that there is nothing wrong in borrowing to provide infrastructure. But borrowing for several years without improvement in infrastructure is of grave concern to me.

I hope it would not be too late before policy makers in Nigeria realize that science, technology, and engineering are essential for transforming a society from backwardness to modernity; from becoming a liability in the league of nations to becoming an asset; from being a non-industrialized nation to an industrialized nation; from a dependent economy to self-reliant one; and from an import-dependent economy to that which is export-oriented.

The level of penetration of science, technology, and engineering, into any society enables the world to categorize nations into first, second, and third world countries. The first prime minister of Singapore, Lee Kwan Yew, a lawyer from Oxford University, London, understood that engineers, scientists, and technologists are very key to his industrial strategy. Does Nigeria have anybody in the government who understands sustainable development like Lee Kwan Yew?

As I write, the Minister of Education and his colleague in the Ministry of Science and Technology are currently in the passive mode. Nobody should blame the Minister of Science and Technology because the federal government appears not to understand the role the ministry should play in a nation aspiring to be industrialized. Someone recently told me that the federal government understands what the science and technology ministry should do. He said, the federal government lacks the political will as it is only interested in constructing new roads and reconstructing old ones.

You can understand why the federal government is unwilling to revamp the education sector including that of science and technology. The minister of Science and Technology has however, told Nigerians that by 2018, the first made-in-Nigeria pencil will be produced. I am waiting for the made-in-Nigeria pencil to be sold in the market. I do hope that the pencil will have eraser, and will be cheaper than those produced in China. Why must pencil be manufactured by the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI)?

Why should NASENI be the organization to manufacture solar panels for use in Nigeria? Are there no private organizations interested in manufacturing pencils and solar panels in Nigeria? Private sectors are the engine of growth in any economy. In Nigeria, governments want to monopolize everything, but only little is done. Private investors are not investing in the long term in some critical sectors like education, health, manufacturing, transportation, etcetera, because of high entry barriers into these sectors and lack of clarity of economic policy of government.

I only pray that Nigeria will not be categorized into the “fourth world” because the nation has “technically” accepted defeat on matters relating to science, technology, and engineering in pursuit of economic growth. This article is to remind policy makers that technology determines the leaders of the world, while the technological laggards are the “follow-follow” nations of the Twenty-first Century.

MA Johnson