Honourable Uzoma Nkem-Abonta represents UkwaEast/Ukwa West Federal Constituency of Abia State in the House of Representatives. In this interview by KEHINDE AKINTOLA, he says Nigeria has no pleasant narrative to offer on the occasion of its 59th independence anniversary.
As Nigeria celebrates 59 years as an independent nation, how will you assess its journey so far?
It gives me mixed feelings to talk about Independence Day celebration in Nigeria. In a few days’ time now, we will be 59 years, but if may ask you, what changed positively within this period? If you compare Nigeria 50 years ago and today, you will see retrogression and then what independence are you celebrating? Are we not celebrating what we cannot keep? Therefore, I should think that rather than go into large scale celebration, we should have a sober reflection. There’s nothing to celebrate.
There is a lot to think about. I see neo-colonialism on the highways of Nigeria on the high speed and I don’t think whether our road safety will be able to caution the neocolonialism we are heading to in Nigeria now. So, are we celebrating independence when we are now buying dependency in all perspectives? I think we should rethink very fast! I think that we should go back to the drawing board and think out the pragmatic approach to assert our independence. I think that we should do certain things that will make us giant indeed and not things that we make us dependent on other nations.
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We are 59 today, in the 1950s and 60s, we were at par with China, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia were under us. We were rated higher than these other countries, but when you mention Nigeria, Japan, China 50 years ago, today we are far behind going to these nations that we were at par with; and you say we are independent? Independence does not mean rule yourself, it means having financial, political, good well-being of the people that makes you independent. We are begging for medical tourism, we are begging for one loan or the other, we are begging for rail station or the other, so where lies independence?
So we should think and know what to do, we shouldn’t just be celebrating and doing march past and all what not, because we are just marching around, we should have a sober reflection and think what do we do to be really independent! If you say you are independent what does it mean? That you are in control of yourself, but with a leaking pocket, you can’t be independent. A hungry man cannot be independent. You will be dependent on people to see food.
But are you saying that Nigeria can be self-sufficient and does not need to collaborate with other countries?
I am saying not only that we are not doing enough, I’m saying that we are confused in the things we’ve been doing. We are not just doing enough, we are confused in the doing. We must come out with a clear cut guideline policy and what we want, not trial by error. We should sit down and decide what we want and what purpose. We should prioritise or needs, our wants and move towards that.
No country can be an island, we must collaborate with others even we must sit down and look at what we do. We must have a critical analysis of what we do. America will tell you, in the year so, so, so, this is the balance sheet of the trade, where is our own balance sheet? Is our trade with other countries favourable? Are we buying more than we sell? Are we buying more than we consume? Are we getting something from these other countries that we give them? You must be able to counter-balance it, to get more than you give.
Are you independent, are you doing the needful? I see neocolonialism on the highways approaching Nigeria. They’ve crossed the borders, we must be able to stop them now because we are getting more than what we give. In agreement, a trade should balance, the deficit is too huge on Nigerian side. One of the Ancient Tigers reminded us that our debt profile is so much, that we should be careful. So, we are not just doing enough.
In the half we are doing, we are confused. So, we must pick up and begin to do the very needful now. We have a planning sector, but how are they planning? The Federal Ministry of Budget and National Planning should be able to do that. Look at our budget, can you call that a realistic budget? If we budget N7 trillion, we implement N4 trillion or N5 trillion. We should be able to do a realistic budget that will face our needs and the realities of time that will focus on the core areas,. We shouldn’t budget for the sake of budgeting; we should budget for the sake of our need, something that is doable, otherwise it will be rhetoric.
What exactly at do you mean by buying independence?
Yes, we’ve entered into several agreements with a lot of countries, including the United States of America, United Kingdom and the Republic of China to be specific. Those contractual agreements for them to provide us infrastructure, do they really favour us? I filed a motion in the House that we should review all the contractual agreements we entered with the Chinese firms with some other Asian Tigers and all what not. We should also be careful how we import the so called technology and transfer.
Today, can the Immigration Service tell us the number of Chinese that are residing in Nigeria legally? Go to Yaba; go to Idumota, go to inside Lagos, there are a lot of Chinese, doing what? Go to Ondo, you will see Chinese, picking cocoa in the farms, do we have the data? Now, can they tell us specifically the number of foreign firms set up in Nigeria and what they do? We do not have. Can they tell us the number of expatriates in Nigeria?
So, the place is over-flooded. Therefore, we are buying dependency by relying so much on them. We’ve entered into a lot of contractual agreements with them and they are lopsided. How can you sign an agreement whereby the person will provide you materials; he will provide you labour; he will also provide capital; he will equally provide maintenance and other things? At the end of the day, you will become a dumping ground and maintenance will become an issue for you. Then, you will lean on them to train you. Let me give you an example: the Abuja International Airport was built by Chinese. Take a good look at the materials there and then compare them with any other airports abroad, you will see that it does not meet the local wing of BA (British Airways).
Yet, the Chinese are here. It is either build, operate or transfer; they are in control and they are building it. And then the huge cost of it. My worry is this, they brought the materials, they brought the labour, we hear that most of the workers when jailed in China, they serve their sentence in Nigeria! So, are we not now running their prisons for them? Meanwhile, we have labourers here hardly doing nothing. It’s not free money; we are also going to pay back the cost. So, the first thing is dependency we are subscribing to.
I mean we should review them and see that there is an element of survival in it. Some Chinese companies that were proscribed and blacklisted by World Bank are also published by our own Central Bank and are also working for us. We had an issue with South Africa recently. Can Nigeria tell us the names of South African companies working here for us to know? There are plenty of them not only Shoprite and DSTV, and so on, no.
But we need to have the data, the statistics and what are they doing here; are we understudying them, are they of any use to us? We do not have the details but I think the Ministry of Planning and Foreign Affairs including Immigration should sit up and tell Nigeria. The problem is that we do not study the market. We need to study the market and find out the data, find out and be futuristic. What do we need in the next five years, how do we bridge the gap?
But we are not planning and failing to plan is planning to fail. That’s the basis of all the problems we have in Nigeria. So, the little we are doing, we are doing it confusingly. We are not doing it with a vision. It’s a question of, are we helpless? We can turn around Nigeria. What makes China thick? What makes Singapore thick?
What makes Malaysia thick; what makes Thailand thick? Even Ghana? What are they doing? What have they done that we are not doing? The answer simply falls back to agriculture; use what you have to get what you need. That’s why I said my legislative focus is purely going to be on agricultural drive; agricultural entrepreneurship. That is the magic wand Nigeria needs to solve its problems.
So, what is the way out
I make bold to say except we introduced revolution in agriculture, we would face a revolution because hunger cannot define boundary. A hungry man is an angry man. The rich cannot sleep because the poor is awake. The poor cannot sleep because they are hungry. So for us to sleep, we should provide food for the poor to eat and sleep so that the rich also can sleep. If we cannot introduce revolution in the agricultural sector, then we will contend with revolution.
Are we not an agrarian country? Before the curse of oil, of course oil caused Nigeria’s woes, oil cause our problems. Oil came and we put dependency on oil because if we have not gotten oil we could have survived on agriculture. Nigeria has remain to a large extent, an agricultural economy, we were doing groundnut, palm oil, cocoa, but as we talk today, the best and tallest building in Ibadan was built with cocoa money; so what happens today? Ibadan hosted the first television (in Africa) courtesy of cocoa; today foreigners are picking cocoa in Ondo State, foreigners are picking cocoa all over the West.
Have you ever done the analysis of cocoa plantations? Check the cost of chocolate we eat in Nigeria. We merely produce cocoa, shell it, dry it and send it out. Then they turn it into chocolate and bring it back to Nigeria. We lose money, so until we venture into agriculture pragmatically, we can do nothing. How can we say we want to diversify the economy when we are not thinking that way?
Go to India, the total number of tractors in New Delhi is higher than all the tractors in Nigeria. The total number of tractors in a state in India or Malaysia is bigger than all the tractors we have here. So we must have a framework on agriculture.
We must have a clear-cut policy to say we are diversifying; we want to venture into agriculture. Agriculture can produce 5 million jobs for the youths if we are sincere. Because it is something that if you study how to do and what others did, we can do it. It’s a whole chain, it’s an entrepreneurship thing. So we should even introduce agricultural teaching in our secondary school curricula not to talk of what does not make sense in our curriculum.
We should think fast because if you look at what the Ancient Tigers did, they did nothing different from what we are saying. Thailand can give you one shipload of rice if you want it now, but we cannot in Nigeria! When we tried the rice experience in Nigeria, did it not yield and we gave government kudos for that, it yielded.
Today we are having rice mills here and there because of that so we should launch into agriculture meaningfully and that is the only way to go, there’s no other way. We tried to repeal the law that ban exportation of food, you see that law came into existence because they wanted to ensure food security, and I keep telling them, yes, but that law is now obsolete.
Because you cannot stop me from exporting food if I’m a farmer, I also want to earn dollars but what you can do is to regulate it that is why we need the Commodity Exchange Commission. You can tell somebody say look, okay you want to earn dollars, you want to export your yams, for every 10 tubers you produce, we allow you to export 2, that means if I want to export more I will increase my production, so as not to export two.
But today, we smuggle yams into Ghana and then Ghana will go to UK and Ghana will earn the foreign exchange while we are doing nothing! So we should review that law and allow people to export. In Thailand, they allow you to export your rice but for you to export rice you must have enough production and then export; they will tell you the percentage.
Just like the Central Bank is now saying for you to deposit above 500,000 you pay some charges or for you to draw excess cash above 500,000 you will pay two percent. So also you can say if you manufacture or produce so so yams, you export so so. We must put on our thinking caps, because that’s the way to go to, there’s no other way. That is the way other countries did it, so we must be able to do agriculture.
Then let me use this opportunity to talk about steel, how can we talk about development and we are toiling with the steel sector? The 8th Assembly forced Federal Government to revive Ajaokuta, if they are serious will they play with that? You cannot develop without steel, you cannot even do mechanised agriculture without steel. You can’t do the house without steel, you can’t do a vehicle without steel, and you can’t do anything without steel.
If you know the amount of steel we import in Nigeria, it’s enough to run our budget, yet we have steel materials and resources wasting away. The Indians came here and carted a lot away under fake agreement again. Under fake privatization, so who are those doing these agreements? Are they indigenes of Nigeria?
They are, you don’t do agreement that will not benefit your people. How can you open your eyes and write an agreement to come and revive a factory, but yet they take the raw materials away. That’s what we witnessed in the export of the iron ore. Look at what brought the $9.6 billion debt we are talking about now! We saw no infrastructure; we saw no company; we saw no agreement; it was not fully consummated, a consultation was not there, but before you know it they said $9.6 billion, how much is our budget?
How can you be so negligent in everything we do? We are confused. So I made bold to challenge the government that if they are real, if they are sincere, we should launch into agriculture, we should cause a revolution in the agricultural sector, otherwise we face revolution! We shouldn’t be scared, we should do things that contributes to our economy because I can’t see any other way, since we attained independence!
But the Legislature has its share of the blame as an arm of government for failing to checkmate the Executive arm. What’s your take?
Of course, there should be synergy, we must work together. Our Speaker, Honourable Femi Gbajabiamila says it is a joint task to develop the nation. I agree with him. Legislatively, we have said, do the steel but for reason we do not know the (bill) was not signed. Legislatively we are saying develop agriculture, I will continue to shout. Legislatively, we go to the budget increase it, they give you an envelope and I’m saying now, if the Speaker is also serious, we should tear the agricultural envelope in the budget this time and expand it.
And I challenge government to within some days come out with a framework agriculturally, that they will pass unto states, like Obasanjo did. The major problem in Nigeria is that you are saying we are independent, you want to celebrate, and we have Federal Government practicing unitary system of government. There’s no federalism. Until we practice true federalism and fiscal federalism we can’t be independent. Therefore Federal Government should come up with a clear cut policy on agriculture, which states will adopt.