There are only two problems that I can see concerning full employment in every State, and throughout the Federation. They are the problems of planning, and of executive capacity. Both can and must be overcome, if we are to generate a sense of economic security among our people in their entirety.
The second and third are free education at all levels and free health services for all: So far as is known, man is the only dynamic and purposive agent on our planet.
All other things—the lower animals, vegetations, and minerals – are static by nature, and purposeless without man. In all economic activities, man is everything—the supplier and demander, producer and consumer; initiator, innovator, motivator, accelerator, multiplier, and distributor, the be-all and end-all; the Alpha and Omega. The more educated and healthier he is, the more productive he becomes an economic agent, and the more useful and effective he is as a member of society. I f all these propositions are true, it follows that the education and health of every Nigerian citizens are indispensable to our rapid economic progress, political stability, and social harmony.
It is my advocacy, therefore, that we should embark on these schemes in every state without further delay. If we do, I am convinced that in a matter of fifteen years from now illiteracy and mass ignorance, as well as preventable diseases, would have become a thing of the past; and in twenty years from now, the present yawning, dangerous, and explosive educational gap between one part of the country and another would have been totally closed, putting all ethnic groups in Nigeria on equal footing with one another in educational and intellectual attainments. I would like to remark, however, that if education and health are n0t free at all levels, it will be difficult to devise a generally accepted formula for allocating revenue for these vital purposes, and to ensure equal progress among the States in education and health. In this event, the inequality which we want to eradicate, and the gap which we are anxious to close, will remain, and continue to poison inter-State and inter-ethnic relations.
A good deal of detailed calculations have been done by some experts on the financial effects of these schemes. It will, for instance, cost £8,000 to provide a health centre for a population of 10,000, and £4,000 per annum to run it. With the health facilities provided at this centre, preventable diseases will be wiped out and kept out, infant mortality will be reduced to the barest minimum, and the health of the people will be considerably enhanced. The only obstacle here, it will be seen, is not money but the lack of qualified personnel. We must train them, and begin to do so now.
It is also estimated that, on the very outside, the total recurrent cost of free education, over the next five years, will be £405 million, whilst capital costs will be of the order of £150 million. As against the recurrent cost, the anticipated combined recurrent revenue of the Federal and State Governments, on a conservative basis, is about £1,931 million. The estimated recurrent cost of education thus forms 21 per cent of the estimated total recurrent revenue. As regards the estimated capital cost, I have no doubt at all in my mind that we can quite conveniently carry £150 million in our stride in the next periodic plan. I hasten to concede, before the point is raised, that the cost of education will certainly accelerate in the succeeding years. But so (if not much more so) will our GDP.
and then