Femi Olufunmilade
I just watched an amazing Chicken Farm established by the Cross River State Governor, Prof. Ben Ayade, on Channels TV.
The farm processes 24,000 chicken per day. I saw an automated processing plant that kept my mouth agape and held members of the House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture on an inspection tour of the farm in awe.
There is a massive poultry backup for the plant. The value chain in terms of jobs is humongous. Hundreds, if not thousands of jobs are created, from the planting of maize and processing of fishmeal etc to compound poultry feeds, to the slaughter house, packaging and marketing.
This is one out of other similarly awe-inspiring agro-based industries of the Ayade administration. The cocoa plantation and chocolate processing factory is another. Yet another is the rice farm and rice processing plant. Each on a gigantic scale.
Ayade is bringing my thoughts back to what I will call the Awolowo Investment Model. Most of the companies set up to create jobs and earn revenue in the defunct Western Region of Nigeria under Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s Premiership were state-owned. They were set up by the Western Nigeria Investment Corporation. Later, most of the investments were brought under the umbrella of the Oodua Group of Companies, which remains a leading conglomerate till this day with interests in banking, hotels, manufacturing, agriculture etc.
Awolowo’s foray into state-owned investments was borne of the need to provide jobs for the teeming masses of the youths he had all put on compulsory free education. His refrain was jobs had to be created by all means for those being educated at an unprecedented rate when they graduated from school!
Another reason why Awolowo had no scruples in setting up state-owned businesses was ideological. He was a socialist who believed the state must play a leading role in economic development, rather than leave the economic fortunes of his region to the whims and caprice of foreign investors, which Nigerian government today wastes so much energy on, trying to “create an enabling environment” for them to be attracted. You hear of “ease of doing business” ad infinitum. How many investors have come?
Coincidentally, the Awolowo Investment Model is akin to China’s investment strategy. Most of the Chinese banks and companies African governments patronise for loans and infrastructure projects are state-owned. Those state-owned behemoths are at core of the economic model the world today celebrates as the Beijing Consensus, as opposed to the Washington Consensus that stipulates strictly that “government has no business in business”. The Washington Consensus is promoted, if not enforced in some abject quarters, through the agency of the World Bank and the IMF.
Over 20 years ago, I published an article in The Guardian OpEd page in which I argued that the Nigerian state must renew its capacity to play the leading role in the creation of businesses in critical sectors of the economy. I proposed a model that would entail the sale of such businesses, once it’s thriving, to members of the public, while the accruals are channelled into incubating new businesses. I proposed this in an article titled, “New Mandate for BPE”.
BPE is the Bureau of Public Enterprises. Ayade is rekindling this tested model of state intervention in my thoughts. I think it’s criticality has never been more urgent than now!
If I were president I shall target 100 new companies per state in my first term rather than waste huge funds on the jamboree of wooing foreign investors or putting hundreds of billions of loans into the hands of so-called indigenous entrepreneurs who would never do any business nor repay the loans.
—Prof. Olufunmilade is Director, Buratai Center for Contemporary Security Affairs, Igbinedion University Okada, Edo State.
Email: femiology@gmail.com
