The sale of land in traditional African setting must involve the whole community. Two individuals, with their respective witnesses, cannot complete land transactions without the involvement of the local chief, elders and youths, consummated in a feast sponsored mainly by the buyer to recognize transfer of title deeds.
Community efforts in Africa precede individual efforts. Farming activities are done collectively—land preparation, weeding, harvest, etc., are all done as a community; they are occasions when plenty of food is prepared for the labourers even if cash payments have been made to them. In some communities in Africa, first fruits from the farms are presented to the community chief before every other person partakes.
African culture does not separate between public and private affairs. That is why, for instance, marriage is considered as an agreement between two families rather than between a man and a woman, to share affinities together, with the couple involved being only representatives of such new relationship. Accordingly, the break-up of the marriage usually involves the two families and is not the decision of only the man and woman directly involved. Marriage in Africa cannot be “privatized”. Resolution of conflicts between marriage couples in Africa involves family members.
Private ownership in Africa is not in the strict sense so; family members consider themselves partners as well, even if only symbolically. Thus, we have expressions such as “our wife”, “our children”, etc. Discipline and upbringing of children in Africa used to be community efforts. There is a saying in Africa that, “A child once born belongs to everyone.”
In Africa, we do not privatize care of the elderly. We do not cede care of our elderly fathers, mothers, uncles, and aunts to Old People’s Homes. We collectively care for them. It is a public affair. In Africa, family means so much. Family comes before business; people come before profit; and corporate human sympathy comes before company shares.
I have provided those examples to explain that in Africa, there is hardly a difference between private and public efforts, and between the public sector and private sector. The word “privatization” has no translation in the African languages, or at best, it means “selfishness”. We have learned and adopted foreign ways, and it is just not working. And these new but foreign adoptions have rather increased the number of the poor on our continent, reduced life expectancy, increased greed in Mother Africa, and brought about the cheap and easy transfer of the commonwealth to a few, who have the backing of foreign business interests and governments that either advanced loans at huge interest or counterpart funding at huge price. Capital flight out of Africa is the result of the wave of privatization and trade liberalization that not a few African leaders have blindly accepted from the 1980s to date. Many jobs have been lost thereby, productivity has fallen, imports have multiplied, and export of finished products from Africa has not matched the huge imports of almost everything, including what we have. All these have resulted in increased violence and unrest in our cities, towns, and communities.
I have heard claims by acclaimed economists, political economists and development experts that, “the private sector is the engine of growth.” I am sorry to announce that I disagree. We African scholars must start creating the knowledge that will liberate our continent; and we should help spread this knowledge. We should be courageous enough to question certain assumptions and “facts” that are being spun to serve foreign interests. Bodies of knowledge that are taught in our universities came about through gradual claims by scholars. They are not sacrosanct, and can be challenged.
The public sector is the engine of growth for any economy. The private sector cannot flourish and benefit the local economy without a strong and productive public sector. If the private sector is a function of the public sector, how then can it be the engine of growth of any economy? We are witnesses to how the public sector came to the rescue of the crumbling private sector in America from 2008; how Main Street came to the rescue of Wall Street. Africa cannot afford to surrender her future to the organized private sector whose main focus is profit-making. Corporate responsibility theory is a creation of a guilty conscience. Such acts are not altruistic. So-called corporate responsibility acts are only self-preserving as private investors can tell you that they are part of business in order to create a conducive and safe atmosphere to do business without violent reaction by the local communities.
A continent that has taken ownership of lands from the people, contrary to African culture, should be ready for a backlash in the near future. A continent that now uses the police to harass the people whose only crime is that they have asked private business people to not destroy their environment and water resources through their reckless business activities such as oil exploration and exploitation, and mining of solid mineral resources must be prepared to hire the whole world to maintain peace at home. The private sector is now the tool that corrupt African rulers and warlords are using to enrich themselves. African children are being turned into child soldiers and diamond miners, with ready foreign traders in the product. Public resources such as the police and army are being used to protect, not the people, but rather, the private sector in order to sustain the rape of the continent.
In 2013, Nigeria’s President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu launched his co-authored book, “Financialism: water from an empty well”. At the book launch, he made some interesting assertions as follows:
We must reform our economy. To do this, we must first reform our philosophy about economic development.
What I advocate is not starry-eyed socialism. I seek clear-eyed yet progressive capitalism. Here are just a handful of key things we must do:
*We must reform the financial sector so that it becomes an effective artery that sends funds to the heart of the real sector once again.
*The national government must formulate a national industrial policy that focuses on developing labour-intensive industries. This is not textbook capitalism, but we do not live in a textbook. This is how the United States developed under Alexander Hamilton’s “American System” and how modern China reached spectacular growth.
*We must restructure our educational system to prepare our youth for the present challenges of this economy and not to educate them in a manner more appropriate for another land.
*We need to overhaul our agricultural system and put in place a price support mechanism so that those who toil on the land and who feed us do not go continuously poorer the more they toil.
*We must establish commodity exchange boards exclusively for farmers, which will go a long way to support them and provide agricultural pricing support mechanisms and consequently enhance food security.
*The challenge before our nation today is how to protect millions who toil on the land, and to ensure they make reasonable returns and boost agricultural production.
*Instead of stealing from our children and stealing the pension fund of the retired, this government must answer the moral call of providing one meal per day for our school children up to high school level. Feeding our children will improve nutritional in-take and work better for their educational development. Ultimately, it will eliminate child abuse and take the children off our streets.
*The demand for farm products to feed the pupils will be a catalyst to generate demand, create wealth, elevate production of agricultural goods and fuel associated industrial growth. The establishment of these activity- and small scale agro-industries will generate significant employment in our rural areas.
*We need to provide primary health care, taking it upon ourselves to fight malaria so that our children can develop properly and our labour force becomes more productive.
*In the final analysis, our development rests with us. Foreign investment is welcome but will not lead us to prosperity.
So, about 10 years ago, Tinubu let us into his philosophy about development—not only economic development, but also social development. Going by his philosophy—clear-eyed progressive capitalism— which I have reported above, what should Nigerians expect of the Tinubu presidency?
President Tinubu’s administration will not rely on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to drive Nigeria’s economy nor will he allow a free market economy without some form of protection of local producers or price control mechanisms, which, partly, shall curb inflationary spike, with consequential boost in the real income of citizens and residents. As I have captured above, Africans have too quickly embraced foreign principles of doing business and social engagement while dumping profitable and socially safe African philosophy of ownership and production. Although the private sector is an important sector of production in Nigeria, it is misleading to claim that it is the “engine of economic growth”. The private sector is driven by profits, not service. President Tinubu’s philosophy suggests that he will instigate a transparent, efficient, and highly principled public service, which is the engine of socioeconomic growth and development. Every nation’s economic fortunes rise or fall on the strength and principles of its public service. The agencies of government are the agents of economic growth. If the agents are weak, even the private sector will be frustrated, profits shall be reduced, government revenue shall dwindle, and quality of life of the citizens shall fall.
The laws setting up agencies of the federal government need to be revisited if Tinubu’s philosophy will be fulfilled for the benefit of Nigeria, and if those agencies will not be obstacles in the way of the private sector. Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of those agencies must be persons of practical knowledge, unassailable principles, and tremendous managerial skills if those agencies will fulfill their missions for the wellbeing of Nigeria and Nigerians.
In reforming the “financial sector so that it becomes an effective artery that sends funds to the heart of the real sector once again”, Nigerians should expect the cost of borrowing (lending rates) to fall under Tinubu’s presidency. This means the monetary policies of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) must be harmonized with Tinubu’s philosophy so that, for instance, Minimum Rediscount Rates (MRRs) and Cash Reserve Requirement (CRR) percentages are systematically reviewed downward so that commercial banks can have sufficient liquid cash to lend, and to lend at significantly low interest rates, preferably, at single digit rates.
It seems to me that Tinubu has long been aware of the history and causes of the contradictions and obstacles in the Nigerian economy. At the same Tinubu’s book launch in 2013, Idika Kalu Idika, a former minister of finance of Nigeria, said: “We have gone through one crisis after another over the past 50 years. We saw how we started, we brought in broad-based agricultural economy, and we saw how we managed that under very low technologies to save and to make progress across this nation, in the West, in the North, South and East.
“I thought we should have leveraged on that to invest more in the real sector, in order to achieve improved production, improved quality, improved services, improvement in the rural areas, improved infrastructure, power, name it. We didn’t do it.
We went on to try a lot of political reforms, but one threat to all these reforms was the inability to organize the political leadership to focus on the needs of the people without which we cannot move forward as a great country.”
This time, we must “organize the political leadership to focus on the needs of the people”.
President Buhari, since May 29, 2015, has focused on agricultural development (resulting in reduced food importation and increased food sufficiency) and infrastructural development (building roads, bridges, and railways). Although he could not improve on Nigeria’s electricity generation and distribution, by signing into law a landmark constitutional amendment in the twilight of his administration to include electricity generation, transmission, and distribution in the Concurrent Legislative List, he has freed the electricity industry from the leashes of underdevelopment. What Nigerians expect is that President Tinubu should apply his socioeconomic philosophy and his professional and human management skills to help them recover their real income, which has fallen by over 500 percent in the past 8 years, by a combination of deft economic moves that could reduce inflation, push up the value of the naira, reduce the tax burden of taxpayers while broadening the tax base, reducing or not increasing further the Value Added Tax (VAT), and reduce cost of living generally.
Leonard Karshima Shilgba is a mathematics professor, writer, author, Bible teacher and pastor.
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