…anyone familiar with the private sector in Nigeria cannot but notice how so like the bigger economy it is. It is a very corrupt place. Which, truth to tell, is not a Nigerian failing. For the whole point of a robust public sector is the ability to enforce standards for products and services safety on private sector operators in the interest of the consumer.
The dominance of political considerations in our national life over the last couple of months has nudged perennial worries over the economy’s outlook backstage. Which, when you think about it, isn’t as bad as it sounds. Not only have we struggled (and continue to labour) as a people to make good on the economy. Six decades after the fanfare of being granted flag independence by the British, we are still undecided which growth\development objectives are consistent with our resource endowment, and what we must do to bring this endowment up to scratch (or put simply, what the optimal routes to growth are). Beyond these hurdles, even at the height of discussions about the economy, i.e. during the softer parts of the political cycle, the national penchant is to approach this clutch of problems from the public sector’s vantage.
True, the public sector executes mandates that take funding out of our collective heirloom in the expectation of spending these resources in ways that then push consumption possibilities higher; thus, (hopefully) creating relationships of accountability and public oversight between governments (and the institutions around which their activities are organised) on the one hand, and citizens on the other. After a fashion, this binary reading of the matter creates a different order of difficulties. To understand this order of difference, one needs only recall that the four-yearly political performance review sessions (general elections) invite a deeper appreciation of what government has done and is doing to ameliorate or improve general welfare conditions across the economy.
At this intersection, it then matters that at some points in these conversations, we have looked to private sector supply responses as probable solution to the economy’s woes. The private sector is advertised in parts of the ensuing narratives as possessed of more efficient resource conversation processes. By extension, this logic includes the argument that with the right regulatory environment in place (i.e. a competitive one across sectors of the economy), private sector operators have a huge incentive to invest (their often-considerable resources) in research and development that drive innovations. This, in turn, reduces their costs and/or generates new products and services; thus, driving increases in domestic productive capacity.
“Regulatory capture” does not quite capture the causal relationships involved here. For in certain sectors of the economy, anecdotal evidence suggest that it is more a case of a debauched regulator imposing impossible requirements on operatives in the industry as part of an elaborate process of rent extraction. Does this qualify as “industry capture”?
The problem with this ideal is that anyone familiar with the private sector in Nigeria cannot but notice how so like the bigger economy it is. It is a very corrupt place. Which, truth to tell, is not a Nigerian failing. For the whole point of a robust public sector is the ability to enforce standards for products and services safety on private sector operators in the interest of the consumer. But the problem is not just that, shorn of proper regulatory oversight, our private sector captains cut corners in order to boost quarterly earning reports. Nor is it that perpetrators are never outed or punished.
Nearly always, it is that the respective regulator is in hock to the industry in question. “Regulatory capture” does not quite capture the causal relationships involved here. For in certain sectors of the economy, anecdotal evidence suggest that it is more a case of a debauched regulator imposing impossible requirements on operatives in the industry as part of an elaborate process of rent extraction. Does this qualify as “industry capture”? It really does not matter, for the net outcome is invariably the same: Shoddy deployment and consumption of scarce national resources.
Still, by far the bigger problem with our private sector operatives is their mimesis of another attribute of the public bureaucracy. A bureaucracy may need the institutional arrangements that a tenure-based worker reward structure supports. Nonetheless, it is doubtful that the private sector responses that are advertised as solutions to the stasis afflicting the Nigerian economy can thrive on the gerontocracy that this nearly always results in.
…our private sector is then run by elderly Nigerians who cannot write a line of code, nor recognise such lines if these were shoved in their faces. Inevitably, these “captains of industry” then have their companies make a hash of their online product/service offerings. Still, they remain to be persuaded that our youth are qualified for the work that they (our C-suite staff) do!
Yet, across key private sector enterprises in the country, “old men” hold sway. One instrument by which this cohort continue to support its tenure (and its resistance to change) is the familiar canard that our local universities do not always equip fresh graduates for the kind of work that they are expected to carry out in the private sector. Nearly always, these companies then set up their own training academies, where these kids are re-acculturated.
All of which would have been fine, if we did not have evidence across the country of successful tech conurbations run largely by young graduates of the same Nigerian institutions. And in the new technology-driven economy, what talent is to be prized more than that on which these young entrepreneurs thrive? Counter-intuitively, our private sector is then run by elderly Nigerians who cannot write a line of code, nor recognise such lines if these were shoved in their faces. Inevitably, these “captains of industry” then have their companies make a hash of their online product/service offerings. Still, they remain to be persuaded that our youth are qualified for the work that they (our C-suite staff) do!
Should we worry about the training that this class of Neanderthals then purport to give to our children in those workplaces? Should we be concerned that it is likely to crimp innovation across the economy? Yes. Without any doubt. But, from here to fixing this problem is an eternity perhaps as long as it has taken us to address the other problems of the economy.
Uddin Ifeanyi, journalist manqué and retired civil servant, can be reached @IfeanyiUddin.
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