In continuation of the series that began in this column last week, the first order of business is of course to correct the glaring error that I made in giving the figure of 80 billion dollars as Forbes’s estimate of the net worth of Aliko Dangote. The correct figure that I meant to write was 18 billion dollars; how my fingers typed 80 instead of 18, I do not know, especially as no billionaire in the world has reached the figure of 80 billion as his or her net worth. Perhaps my fingers were being preternaturally ‘prophetic’ in an unconscious prediction that Dangote will one day make it to 80 billion dollars. The only thing that militates against the likelihood of my fingers acting as the unconscious medium of such a ‘prediction’ is the fact that for me health is wealth. In other words, I am asking the reader to please read the superabundance that my fingers mistakenly typed for Dangote’s wealth as a wish for his health!
And indeed, no slogan is more appropriate for the things that I wish to reflect upon in this continuing piece in the series than the well known adage, “health is wealth”. This is because if it is the case that no woman or man can dispute the wisdom undergirding this adage of “health is wealth”, the reverse – wealth is health – is far from being unquestionably true. This becomes even more so when the wealth of the nation is appraised in terms of the health of the nation: overwhelmingly in our country in the last five decades or so, the wealth of our nation has been a relentless generator of the ill-health of nation. This is as true of the specific topic of this series – the collusion of our economic elites with our political rulers in investing billions of dollars in electricity generation and distribution to little or no avail – as it is true of the massive privatization of national assets, public utilities and collective resources in areas as diverse as air transportation and civil aviation; public sanitation and waste management; road construction and maintenance; health services through private hospitals and clinics; mobile telecom services; education at all levels from the primary to the tertiary; and even the collection of taxes for some of our governments by private firms. And with regard to the specific topic of this series, let us not forget that if responsibility for power generation still largely remains with the state, power distribution has in large part been privatized.
My main focus in this series is on how our business moguls can come to the realization that as much as they have been collusive with “government’” in being part of the problem of the transformation of the wealth of the nation to the ill-health of the nation, they may yet play a role in being part of the solution. But before moving to this center of gravity of my reflections in this series, I would like to make one final comment on this alleged role of our business elites as part of a problem that is often solely ascribed to “government”, to the state.
It is tempting to describe the nefarious symbiosis between, on the one hand, our political rulers and, on the other hand, our business elites as crony capitalism. But the matter is far worse than that. Crony capitalism exists in every region and nearly every nation in the world, with perhaps the exception of Cuba. As bad as it is, crony capitalism does not typically treat consumers and citizens with the combination of greed, cheating and extremely inferior services with which the alliance of “government” and business elites treats Nigerians in general and the poor masses in particular. In my view, it is perhaps nearer the truth to use the analogy between the real economy and the shadow economy to describe our political rulers as the real government and our business moguls as the shadow government. In contemporary capitalism of the advanced economies of the world, in many respects the shadow economy has become more central, more determining than the real economy. So it is with the “shadow government” in our country. In other words, what the “real government” does to the people through corruption, arrogance of power and mediocrity of services rendered the “shadow government” of business elites does on a more grandiose scale through their total disregard for consumer rights. Indeed, the Nigerian consumer, the Nigerian people are so unprotected from the kind of services provided by our “shadow government” that even the business elites themselves have to run for cover from the services they provide to their fellow countrymen and women. For education, they send their children abroad; for “real” health services they go to India, Europe and America; for safety of travel within and outside the country they buy private jets.
If the profile I have given above of the “shadow government” constituted by our business elites gives the impression that I am of the opinion that nothing good, nothing patriotic, nothing decent and genuinely altruistic can be expected from all our business elites without exception, let me quickly state that this is in fact not the case. Just as I have not given up on the “real government” run by our political elites so have I not given up on the “shadow government” run by our business elites. To think otherwise is to have a rather low and cynical view of human nature. Human nature is not static; it is not unchanging, especially in relation to the collective institutional challenges for cooperation, peace, justice and survival that we face as a nation. This view holds true as much for rich men and women as it does for the poor and the wretched of the earth even if, quite often, the wealthy and the powerful in our country think and act as if what applies to human nature in general does not apply to them at all.
This seemingly counterintuitive view that some or a segment of our business elites can be part of the solution to our problems and crises was in fact strengthened by some particular comments that Aliko Dangote made during his lecture at Harvard on October 29, 2015. I may be wrong, but I very much doubt that he or any of our business moguls make these sorts of statements at home to their fellow Nigerians. Let me add here that since some of these statements were given in the context of an unwritten speech that was delivered without reference to any notes, it may very well be that Dangote was in fact speaking straight from the heart. At any rate, let me inform the reader at this point that Dangote made these particular observations at moments in his speech when he was at his most relaxed, witty and engagingly unselfconscious. What were these observations?
First, as an acknowledgement that businessmen and women are always deeply involved with government, Dangote stated that he in particular and many other businessmen in general had to be very careful during the era of military rule not to be perceived by the soldiers as an actual or potential financier of coups. To my astonishment, Dangote added that nearly every coup was financed by a businessman. At any rate, the main point in this particular observation is that he, Aliko Dangote, had stayed away, both in principle and in practice, from the “business” of coup-making during the military era. Second, was Dangote’s sharp observation that corruption is so deep, so antithetical to the possibility of our country’s transformation into a developed modern economy that it is far more deadly than the Boko Haram insurgency for our collective survival.
The third of these observations or assertions by Dangote at his lecture of October 29 was on the surface more mundane. To me, however, it was the most revealing: he stated that though he was one of the handful of Nigerians who succeeded in obtaining licensing from the government to launch a corporation for GSM or mobile telecom services, he was so uninterested in that line of business that he was quite happy to sell off his license so he would not be tempted to get into the fraternity of MTN, Glo, Starcomms, Etisalat and the other mobile telecom providers in Nigeria. I must add here that I was surprised by the figure that Dangote gave for the sale of his license, this being 250 million which, I am certain, was in dollars, not in naira. However, against my wonderment that one could make a cool 250 million dollars without having produced anything at all, I squared off the significance of Dangote’s self-avowed decision to stay focused on industrial manufacturing of goods in the real economy. As a matter of fact, it was on the basis of this self-declared determination to be a producing industrialist rather than an idle-rich GSM provider that Dangote pitched his remarks in his lecture on his determination to be completely self-dependent in electricity supply for his industries.
If the connection of these musings about Dangote’s lecture at Harvard to the issue of the solution to the crises of incomplete and imperfect electrification in our country and our continent is not (yet) clear, let me now spell it out unambiguously. I don’t know if it was intentional on his part but to me, the drift of Dangote’s lecture was a separation of his brand or mode of industrial and entrepreneurial activities from the more common and much better known tribe of “emergency” contractors, businessmen and operators. This separation is not exclusive or personal to Aliko Dangote; rather, it is historic and every country or region of the world that has successfully or substantially erected industrial production at the base of its economic production has had to go through it. Sadly or tragically, the distinction between real producers and “emergency” contractors and businessmen and women in our country seems either nowhere in sight or is indeed non-existent.
Every modern amenity, utility or infrastructure in colonial Nigeria was put in place primarily and sometimes exclusively on the basis of how the particular amenity, utility or infrastructure prepared the groundwork for the industrial or commercial exploitation of the country, its peoples and its resources. This is the root of what at the end of last week’s column I described as the separation of industry from life in our country and our part of the world. To take only the case of electrification here, within cities in particular and the whole country in general, only those segments of the population and areas of the country crucial for the commercial exploitation of the land and its resources enjoyed electrification. This pattern of placing “industry” over “life” has not only persisted in post- and neocolonial Nigeria, it has worsened immeasurably. In next week’s concluding piece in the series, we shall explore Dangote’s implicit separation of “real” from “emergency” producers as a basis for both overcoming the separation of “industry” from “life” and rapidly and successfully making incomplete and imperfect electrification a thing of the past.
NATION
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