NIGERIA: ONLY KNOWLEDGE CAN SAVE US, NOT CRUDE OIL

Bill Clinton once marvelled at how Japan, a country that produces no steel, manages to churn out a great deal of durable and competitive steel based products. We all wonder how countries like Malaysia and Thailand in East-Asia are recording so much success without a huge reserve of resources driving their economy. We must also not suffer in amnesia or forget the Asian Tigers like Singapore and Taiwan. It may be shocking to discover that in the 70’s the USA economy was about 4.9trillion dollars, but today it’s over 15 trillion dollars. One thing that we need to account for is what the major economic activity was in the different periods. The 4.9trilllion period was dominated by exchange of goods, the 15 trillion dollars period was dominated by exchange of goods and services, but services accounted for most of the growth. The core of this text is to provoke the question as to what accounted for the success of this various nations without huge reservoir of natural resources or failure of its employment? It’s called knowledge, yes knowledge. In an era that in increasingly globalized, where countries are involved in international trade and financial markets are intertwined, a country’s investment in telecommunications, education, innovation and appropriate economic incentives gives it the competitive advantage. Many countries have moved from the resource based economy to the knowledge based. It seems to me that the primary reason for human existence is to be productive, to be innovative and create wealth, not to depend on nature’s reservoir. Though I don’t agree with much developmental rhetoric peddling of the fear that crude oil reserves would dry, I believe we need to harness knowledge, innovate disruptively and reap economic benefits like countries such as India. India derives 42 percent of its revenue from selling of services to other countries. This is possible because of the presence of human capital quality there. Many American countries have outsourced filing of taxes, Human resources functions, software development and customer care service to India! In an increasingly globalized world, the phenomenon of Average, according to Friedman is over! Malaysia for palm-oil seedlings from Nigeria and today they are the largest producer and exporter of the product. Israel a small nation of 7 million people is phenomenal with innovation and export of services. Many information technology firms like Intel, microchip producers and Google; search engine giants have recorded major breakthroughs in the Israel outfits. The Google suggest was developed in Israel, a country constantly at war. Back home in Africa, many professional jobs are outsourced to South-Africa, Ghana and Togo and Benin even provides artisans for Nigeria’s local industry which lacks the requisite skills and knowledge to get even menial jobs done. Nigeria, through its Federal Government outsources jobs worth 960billion naira to neighbouring foreigners and the likes. What is NOTAP and the other agencies doing? We still import software to the tune of 1billion dollars yearly according to the National ICT Policy draft, trust me that is fair.I guess the figure is larger. From the points made heretofore it is apparent that there is a huge gap in our creation, production and distribution of knowledge. This is what the knowledge economy is all about, creating knowledge just like power and distributing for economic gains. It is interesting to note that the government has this within its frame of thinking as the need to become a knowledge economy is included in the Vision 2020 document and the Vision for the National ICT Policy draft is to become a knowledge based economy. The problem with this is that the seriousness is not aggressive. South-Korea has a ministry for knowledge economy, South Africa has a document for knowledge economy policy and Malaysia has one. The Chinese have theirs also. Our knowledge economy policy should not be lost in another policy. Besides, Oil and Gas has PIB and knowledge economy has greater potentials that Oil and Gas if properly worked. The pillars of the knowledge economy are: i) Education ii) Innovation iii) ICT iv) Economic Incentives. This was developed by the World Bank. Our education system no doubt needs a serious overhaul, with rapid improvements in curriculum to meet present day challenges. We need to revive vocational centre and encourage private innovation. Thomas Friedman in his book: Lexus and the Olive Tree espouses that transportation encouraged economic growth in past centuries with construction of huge railway lines and creation of retail cars for mass market. Today, telecommunications with miniaturization, computerization, fibre-optics, GSM and the internet in place, opportunities abound for people to interact and conduct business worldwide. The mystery of capital is such that opportunity and time creates it and telecommunication advancement just ensures that borders are almost non-existent and people can now endow other areas with their knowledge. Innovations in other ICT areas such as broadband, fibre-optics increase in micro-processor power-Moore’s law and software development must be encouraged in Nigeria. We need research facilities that would be manned by our cream of professionals and academics. General Electric has a facility in India that is staffed with over 1,800 people, a quarter of this have PhD’s. Yet our private institutions are enjoying the services of just 40 percent of lecturers with PhD’s. We need to wake up. We don’t have a purposeful innovation system. The other countries I have highlighted do. Israel’s innovation system is driven by a military-civil complex. The military facilitates most of the growth in terms of innovation. The same is to be said of the world powers. Most of the innovations in manufacturing, finance, management and particularly operations research for producing war equipment were created during the Second World War. What role is our military playing asides maintaining peace in neighbouring African countries? What has happened to our agricultural research institutes? IITA has fared better than them. What about our lecturers and professors? Something revolutionary needs to be done. Economic Incentives come in the form of research grants, technology development grant, protectionism, access to credit and favourable fiscal , legal and other policy frameworks. However, the most important economic incentive is national marketing of local innovations. What is the essence when local innovations suffer from the popularity of Chinese products and other American innovations. Finally, it is important to bear the facts mentioned in mind for calling our leaders to the table of accountability. Labour and natural resources used to ensure adequate welfare and sustainability. Today knowledge does that better, not because it has never been there but because the world is now hyper-globalized and you are a citizen trying to compete with an Indian, Chinese, American, British, Portuguese. The knowledge economy is real and it would be delusional to depend on bottles of crude oil for spiritual and welfarist satisfaction.