By Olu Akanmu
The debate about whether the recent World Economic Forum
Global Competitiveness Index (GCI)
rankings is fair to Nigeria, whether our 120th position out of the
144 countries rated reflect our true reality is too critical to ignore. There
are real dangers that rather than reflect deeply and inwardly on the lessons of
the GCI , on its ranking pillars such as institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic
environment, health and education among others, we may end up living in a
denial of our true reality. We tell ourselves that the world does not really
know us, that our realities are better than the ranking. We then begin to act
like the proverbial ostrich that buries its head in the sand.
While we must acknowledge the positive rankings of 42nd on macroeconomic environment and 32nd
on market size, it is important to be
sober on our 129th ranking in
institutions, 135th in
infrastructure, 146th in
health and primary education, 120th in higher education, 108th in
technological readiness and 100th
in innovation. Why should we argue with
such relative obvious rating of our economy?
Perception is reality if containers take seven hours to do a maximum
five kilometer journey from our busiest sea-ports in Apapa to Mile 2.
Perception is reality if the three km road from our busiest international
airport in Lagos to Isolo junction remains sub-motorable, un-repaired in years with
several pot holes welcoming international visitors.
Perception is reality if the Nigeria state continues to fail
its citizens by not guaranteeing them security of life and property as its core
social contract with the people. Perception is even more reality when it’s military
takes a tactical detour under enemy fire to another country in its
counter-insurgency operations. The state and its institutions
have failed to protect the people to pursue their economic activities in peace.
Impunity and corruption remains pervasive as our judicial and law enforcement
institutions remain weak, unable to bring high profile economic crimes to
justice. The rule of law applies only to those who are weak, who cannot work
around the law. Even the state does not respect its own contracts as we saw in
the near imbroglio concerning
the Transmission Company of Nigeria in the power sector.
On the political front, our weak democratic and electoral institutions
continue to throw –up our worst, or at best our averages for leadership. While
there are semblances of democratic elections, weak internal political party
democracy and its capture by narrow elite ensures that our political parties do
not sufficiently reflect the wider will of the Nigerian people. We are also
seeing the potential capture of our regulatory institutions by a narrow elite
that may not see our regulatory institutions balance properly the interest of powerful
elites with the wider interests of the people with implied potential policy
flip-flops.
Given
that most of us who are having this competitiveness debate send our wards to
private schools locally and overseas, it is difficult to appreciate the real
crisis of primary and secondary education, another pillar of the competitive
index. We are what we are today because of the foundation of great public
primary and secondary education that we received. Today, our dysfunctional
primary and secondary education system has become a mass factory for producing
young illiterates. 1.2 million of the 1.7 million students that sat for WAEC in
June 2014 failed Maths and English. Yet we are quarrelling with World Economic
Forum Global Competitiveness ranking. President Goodluck Jonathan should have
declared a national emergency! It should have been a core agenda issue for the
National Council of States. The mass
failure trend in secondary education has been there for some time. Only 38% of
students passed Maths and English with Credits in 2012, it declined to 37% in
2013 and now to 30% in 2014. Higher education is even in a bigger crisis with
poor infrastructure and sub-standard academic faculties in many universities
and polytechnics. There is no Nigerian university among the top 1600 in the
world. Yet, we argue with our competitiveness rankings! We need to be sober and
reflect deeply on how low our great citadels of learning previously known globally
for their scholarly work have sunk. Formal vocational education until recent
efforts to revive it has nearly become history as we keep producing graduates
without relevant employability skills for the needs of industry and the larger
society. Hotels in different sizes are springing up everywhere as result of our
economic growth, yet there are very few employable formally trained chefs and
hoteliers among our young people. Our factories and constructions sites lack
technical people who can fix our machines. We have to import tonnes of Indians,
Chinese and Israelis to do jobs that should have employed our people. A poorly educated workforce can definitely not
make its industries and economy competitive. If our GGI ranking is a perception, it needs
to also be a sober reality. Rebased economy or not, a key lesson of the GCI
ranking is that just because an economy is big, does not guarantee its
competitiveness, or competitive return on investments relative to other
economies.
The
other side to the crisis of our dysfunctional education system is that it will
breed and reinforce greater inequality in our society as the typical social
mobility that education provides to move up the social ladder disappears for
the majority of people. Our social inequality is rising very fast further
compounded by massive unemployment and underemployment. This can only lead one
direction; greater social crises and misery that become an even more fertile
ground for extremism, crime and insecurity that could spread far beyond North
Eastern Nigeria. National competitiveness
can definitely not get better under the context of such leading indicators.
What
needs to be done? The first thing is to accept our sober reality and not to
fight it as a perception. Of all the twelve pillars of the GCI ranking, the
foundation issue of our national competitiveness seems to be largely a problem
of failed governance and democratic institutions. It is on top of this that all
other issues of the other eleven pillars sit. We need to fix our broken and
dysfunctional electoral process that throws up the worst or at best our
averages for electoral offices. Political parties as critical electoral institutions
need to reflect the true plurality of the will and aspiration of the people.
This has not happened largely because of their weak internal party democracy
and their capture by very narrow elites in both the ruling and opposition
parties with largely similar self-interests. Our elections are therefore largely
becoming a choice between blue-black and black-blue. Fixing this limited
plurality problem in our electoral process and ensuring free and fair elections
that drive true accountability and real consequences for poor performance will
create genuine incentives for good governance. Civil society and the free press
must push for necessary electoral reforms to achieve this. We need to revisit
the Uwais Electoral Reform Commission report that addresses these issues. We
must ask President Jonathan or whoever the next President is to reopen discussions
on electoral reforms.
