Ewi of Ado Ekiti’s lamentations

LAST week, the Ewi of Ado-Ekiti, Oba Rufus Adeyemo Adejugbe, lamented the lack of factories in his domain and Ekiti State in general. The foremost traditional ruler, who spoke at his palace in Ado Ekiti during a courtesy visit by a team of journalists, said that it was regrettable that Ekiti lacked factories in spite of its designation as Nigeria’s Fountain of Knowledge, and that many of the youths had become idle and prone  to crime. Recalling that when he ascended the throne in 1990, there was a textile factory in the city that employed more than 1,000 people and ran three shifts per day, the traditional ruler said: “Go to the city, you will find many jobless youths where they are smoking. Some of them have postgraduate degrees. Many of them ride commercial motorcycles. As parents, we are not happy about this. It was not like this during our days.”

Oba Adejugbe added: “It is difficult for us to compete with people in Ibadan or Lagos. Many of the towns here sink boreholes. You would think power supply is general. Our case is peculiar. I use diesel to run my generators all the time. BEDC is standby. Generators are my source of power here. There is no way you can produce here with that source of power and compete favourably.  For us to be part of this country, these things must be in place so that when we eventually appeal to our sons and daughters that are well-to-do, they will come home. There is no airport. We have a lot of farm produce here. If we had a functional railway, it would have been very easy to transport these things to Lagos. It is very bad that in Ekiti, there is no factory.”

To all intents and purposes, the Ewi of Ado Ekiti’s lamentations are a metaphor of Nigeria’s sad state of affairs. There is indeed a paradox in being a state tagged Fountain of Knowledge yet lacking factories and industries, but that is part of the Nigerian paradox. Across the country, youths are living miserable lives, either searching for non-existent jobs or struggling with underemployment. The statement by the Ekiti traditional ruler to the effect that graduates and even holders of postgraduate degrees ride motorbikes (okada) for a living is far from cynical; it is rooted in realism. Truth be told, governments across the federal, state and local government levels have not created jobs. Rather, they have killed jobs, rendering their respective jurisdictions prostrate through visionlessness, incompetence and corruption. While mouthing platitudes about job creation and reviving agriculture, they live obscenely opulent lives while the populace wallows in poverty. It is no wonder then that  as the euphoria of victory in general elections heightens in Government Houses across the country, so does the misery of the general populace for whom life remains poignantly lustreless, drab and devoid of meaning.

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As we noted in our previous editorials, the number of unemployed Nigerians rose by 3.3 million in the third quarter of 2018. It rose from 17.6 million in the same quarter in 2017 to 20.9 million in 2018. That is a 19 per cent increase in one year. Youth unemployment reached an all-time high of 38 per cent in the second quarter of 2018. In 2017, Nigeria emerged as the  country with the third highest unemployment rate in the world, following South Africa and Greece in the dismal performance on this socioeconomic statistics. In 2018, it ranked 157th out of 157 countries, according to the latest Commitment to Reducing Inequality (CRI) index, a global ranking of governments based on what they are doing to address the gap between the rich and the poor.

As we pointed out, following the failure to pass and put into practice, policies that will narrow the gap between the ultra-rich and the poor, manage resources efficiently and equitably and reduce the high cost of governance that panders to vested interests at the expense of ordinary citizens, more than half of the Nigerian population grapples with extreme poverty, while the few elite enjoy ever-growing wealth. Time and again, we have insisted that creating jobs is not down to the government alone; it is the forte of the private sector. When government provides the enabling environment for the citizenry to thrive, they would necessarily harness their creative energies both for job creation and retention. In this regard, the questions of infrastructure upgrade and a favourable ease of doing business index becomes crucial.

We salute the Ewi of Ado Ekiti for putting on the front burner, issues that affect the development of his people. There is no doubt that a people-centred traditional rulership is crucial to the advancement of the country. We urge the Ekiti State government to take the Ewi’s lamentations as a challenge and facilitate the industrialisation of Ekiti State. Ekiti at the moment is a largely agrarian and civil service state, but the story can begin to change with visionary and proactive leadership. If anything, the very rich human resources of the state can be harnessed in the realm of ideas for the purpose of transforming the state, but precisely the same can be said of many of the states in the country. However, with the current unitary arrangement in place, there is necessarily a limitation imposed on the ability of the sub-national governments in the country to become centres of verifiable, people-driven and lasting development. In this regard, we have not been persuaded to drop our agitation for the restructuring of the country. As a matter of fact, more than ever, the time has come to return the country to the pathway envisaged by its founding fathers. The kind of development that Nigerians envisage is simply impossible with the present arrangement.