Our leaders can either choose to look in the mirror and take full responsibility for their actions and inactions or look out through the window seeking whom to blame… our problem isn’t just corruption, it is mental. We are led by a group of people who can’t see beyond their noses.
The Japanese have a saying that sits right at the very core of their techonogical and economic advancement, “Bad thinking, bad product”. As long as the thinking of the leadership of a country or organisation is faulty, very little can be said of the resulting product. Clearly, we have continually shot ourselves in the foot either by poor thinking or outsourcing our thinking caps to others to do our job for us. Unfortunately for us, push has come to shove and we have allowed the raging bull into our China shop, and except we find the courage to unlearn the past, we are in for a balloon ride.
According to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics, 58 percent of the Nigerian labour force, between the ages of 15 and 24, are either unemployed or under-employed. Furthermore, there are about 26.06 million Nigerians in the labour force that are unemployed or under-employed. Frightening as these figures are, we still have a defective thinking in government that rather than create jobs, it is creating more chaos as demonstrated by the figures dished out by the NBS, which shows that over 4,000,000 Nigerians became unemployed in 2016.
Let me be clear that we are not only faced with a national problem but a regional and continental one, if not actually a global issue. By 2035, Africa will have more people becoming of the working age than the entire world combined. As such, the IMF has observed that Africa will need to create 18 million decent jobs yearly from now up until 2035 to bridge the gap. More pertinently, by 2050, Nigeria Will be the third most populous nation on earth just behind China and India and over 60 percent of that projection will be of the working age. The question is who is thinking ahead and putting policies in place to deal with the elephant in the room?
The Asians, Europeans and even the Americans are rethinking their educational curricula, with a strong emphasis on STEM (science, technology, engenieering and maths) because they realise that future jobs are dependent on people who hold strong skills in these areas. They understand that to advance their economies they must create the next great innovative technologies, and not just consume them, unlike here where we continue to upscale our unquenchable apetite for consumption.
Apple has 246 billion dollars in cash, Walmart had a revenue of 482 billion dollars in 2015 alone; even if we produced and sold 2.2 million barrels of oil per day at the best rate, we could never accrue such revenues as these giant companies, each started by brilliant entrepreneurs whose government had set up a regulatory and policy framework that allowed them to thrive.
Nobody is thinking about massively reskilling our people with capabilities in the construction and repair of basic modern infrastructure. We no longer have skilled plumbers, electricians or carpenters, little wonder the Chinese and Indians profit from our folly. What we see as major public policy is the arrangement of mass marriage ceremonies for widows, as done by a major commercial state like Kano, and white elephant projects that benefit no one.
We are still struggling to create jobs whose take home pays can hardly get people to their bus stops and have totally failed to unleash the creative and entrepreneurial prowess of the people. Apple has 246 billion dollars in cash, Walmart had a revenue of 482 billion dollars in 2015 alone; even if we produced and sold 2.2 million barrels of oil per day at the best rate, we could never accrue such revenues as these giant companies, each started by brilliant entrepreneurs whose government had set up a regulatory and policy framework that allowed them to thrive.
Our leaders can either choose to look in the mirror and take full responsibility for their actions and inactions or look out through the window seeking whom to blame. As I have argued all year long, our problem isn’t just corruption, it is mental. We are led by a group of people who can’t see beyond their noses.
Ayodele Adio is a co-host on a Lagos radio programme.
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