A lecture delivered by His Excellency, Dr Orji Uzor Kalu (MON) organised and hosted by Nigerian Economics Students Association (NESA) at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, on March 11, 2014
Preamble
I feel greatly honoured to be considered worthy by this community of intellectuals in Nigeria’s foremost citadel of learning to give this lecture. My thanks go to all those who made this exchange of ideas possible. It is my sincere hope that we shall all leave here much more enriched at the end of the programme.
Definition of Terms
Ladies and gentlemen, as we find ourselves in an academic environment, it is important that we clearly define the key words in the topic of the lecture. In so doing, all of us will better appreciate both the unique direction and emphasis that we hope to establish as we proceed.
Youth Empowerment
Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, describes the concept of youth empowerment as “attitudinal, structural, and cultural process whereby young people gain the ability, authority, and agency to make decisions and implement change in their own lives and the lives of other people, including youth and adults.” According to the portal, youth empowerment is often addressed as a gateway to intergenerational equity, civic engagement and democracy building.
Many local, state provincial, regional, national, and international government agencies and nonprofit community- based organizations provide programmes centred on youth empowerment. Activities involved therein may focus on youth-led media, youth rights, youth councils, youth activism, youth involvement in community decisionmaking, and other methods. The phrase comprises all efforts geared towards enhancement of life through the pursuit of goals that lead to the realization of innate potential. Any assistance or intervention that facilitates the process by financial or nonfinancial mechanisms is a form of empowerment. It could be from individuals, foundations, corporate citizens, the organized private sector or international donor agencies.
Good Governance
According to web definitions, Good Governance is an indeterminate term used in international development literature to describe how public institutions conduct public affairs and manage public resources. Governance is “the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented”. There is no single exhaustive definition. Simply put, it is being responsive to present and future needs, being transparent and accountable, effective and equitable in the management of national wealth, among other things.
Economic Development
Economic Development generally refers to the sustained, concerted actions of policy makers and communities that promote the standard of living and economic health of a specific area. Economic development can also be referred to as the quantitative and qualitative changes in the economy. I crave your indulgence to dwell mostly on this first leg of the theme because on it rests the composite elements of this lecture.
All the political parties in Nigeria have one provision or another that seeks to promote youth empowerment – which is also a key component of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which every country, excluding the U.S. and Somalia, is a signatory. A lot of youth-based activities take place all over the world – be it in homes, at schools, through youth organizations, government policy- making and various community initiatives involving young men and women.
Therefore, Great Lions and Lionesses should be involved in popular education. What do I mean by this? Nowadays, unemployment has become a global challenge with the implication that years after graduation, there are very few jobs for our teeming population of fresh graduates from different streams of educational pursuits. In the light of this borderless problem, it has become imperative for undergraduates and postgraduate students to embrace entrepreneurship. Anyone who goes through the tertiary institution should work towards self-employment and even recruitment of others, depending on the nature and scope of the business or enterprise. In fact, the threshold has gone beyond self-employment.
The latest trend is to have multiple streams of income whether as an employee or an employer. Naturally, we are all insatiable. There is the burning desire to keep growing our income base, resources, investments and financial portfolios generally. The society has become so competitive that one source of income or none at all could be disastrous.
Life after Graduation
Just as the nation is struggling to diversify after more than 52 years of catastrophic dependence on oil, I implore you to begin to think outside of the traditional assumptions – the false assumption that university education or degree certification is the key to a bed of roses! That has become a part of our centennial history.
The reality on ground calls for creativity in the engagement of your years of scholarship hereafter because the opportunities out there are so limited that even a first-class degree does no longer guarantee automatic employment, let alone other classes of a bachelor’s degree. Age and professionalism are there to contend with, too. Indeed, the more connected you are to the movers and shakers of society, the more professional mobility, success and ultimate self-dependence is assured.
This is a tragic truth but our society has sustained this nonsense to the point where it counts far more than your educational attainment! If I had the opportunity to entitle this lecture, I would have chosen “self-empowerment’ and not what we have here which seems to generalize and almost water down the critical circumstance of this matter (I say this with great respect to the originator of the topic).
You see, I am not an academician. I am a practical man engaged in the merciless world of cut-throat international business. There is no kindness, sympathy or generosity out there. Survival is no longer a collective or communal thing – each individual must personally and fundamentally sort out himself or herself before seeking external interventions, which may not even be available in most circumstances. As individuals, especially now that you are young undergraduates, you must begin to establish yourselves gradually such that, on graduation, you are already equipped, even if not financially, but with creative ideas that will change your life and hopefully change the world. I know that all of you are in that frame of mind because I can see it in your eyes.
Go get them, Lions! The society is increasingly becoming knowledge-driven and does not have room anymore for the person who cannot think or be innovative no matter the odds. And make no mistake about it, the odds will always be there. Your primary goal should be to conquer any environment in which you find yourself.
With the development of your mindset that outside this university, life is tough, demanding and with diminishing opportunities, the first crucial step of the journey will have been taken. But, if you go out there unprepared mentally and psychologically, you will be so alarmed and shocked that when you see empowerment you will not be able to recognize it! It could be a traumatic experience seeing your mates flourishing when you have not even started. A stitch in time saves undergraduates, not nine!
Global Assistance
A fortnight ago, the World Bank committed $160 million to the employment and growth project geared towards the development of enterprises in Nigeria. In the same breath, the United Kingdom Department of International Development is providing a grant of $100 million for the same project.
The Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Olusegun Aganga, who made this known while inaugurating an inter-ministerial committee to oversee the project, said the impact of this would manifest in six months from now. He explained that the project is aimed at job creation and increased growth in specific high potential value chain sectors. The project, which is expected to run from June 2014 to September 2018, will create a minimum of about 460,000 jobs. It is estimated that 110,000 of that will be direct employment and about 350,000 will be indirect.
But the larger question is: how many graduates do Nigerian higher institutions turn out yearly? What fraction can be absorbed by this commendable intervention? This remains a tangential solution. In a recent study by Prof. Pat Utomi of the Pan-Atlantic University, Lagos, he stated in his findings that it takes up to 10 years before 10 per cent of a stream of graduates will all be employed. Youth unemployment is one of the biggest social problems in Nigeria with only about 50 per cent of people in that bracket either gainfully employed or, in most cases, underemployed.
The situation is so bad that nobody keeps statistics of it anymore. Even the figures released occasionally by agencies such as the National Bureau of Statistics and National Directorate of Employment (NDE) are taken with disdainful pinch of salt because there is usually no correlation between such data and the reality on the ground. Other countries put ascent on this by monitoring unemployment rates. In Nigeria, there is an indifferent attitude to issues pertaining to unemployment. It is possible to make the claim that only in Nigeria do thousands of graduates of tertiary institutions remain unemployed years after graduation. This is worsened by the fact that each year, we have a surfeit of graduates from different types of citadels.
There is no deliberate effort, it seems, to tackle this social menace as more and more prospective higher institutions get licensed without any commensurate provision for employment upon graduation. The implication of this is that graduates enter the real world without any idea of what the future holds in store for them due to systemic planlessness by the government and other stakeholders for more than 5 decades. This intervention is highly commendable and I hope that government would not abdicate its part of the social contract. How this fund is managed would determine the success profile of this initiative.
Going by the scope of this capital injection, in the services sector we have the information and communication technology burgeoning sub-sector, wholesale and retail trade, hospitality and tourism. All these areas would create a lot of jobs and have potentialities for growth. It is noteworthy that the World Bank has identified these areas of strong influence in the economy that would present a lot of employment.
According to Aganga, the project has been put in place supported by the two agencies to remove the obstacles to growth in those sectors and increase the competitiveness of these sectors, which is a key element in any industrial revolution. I hope, as Aganga has assured Nigerians, that the project would fund localized infrastructure and address gaps in fibre optics backbone for Nigeria to compete in the global marketplace.
The poor quality of service of the telecommunication companies operating in Nigeria for which the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) sanctioned them last week should also be tackled with this fund. We must get it right at home before venturing into the international arena.
Government’s belief that the project will equally evolve a new business model that would provide technical assistance and linkage services to the small producers in the targeted sectors to enable them supply local and global supermarkets chain and also support local construction companies to improve quality, low-cost innovation and production standards culminating in the overall improvement of the business environment can only be realised if the entire scope of this project is pursued vigorously.
With this project, I am rest assured that a new developmental paradigm has been introduced into Nigeria’s entrepreneurial pursuits and the creation of jobs for our teeming unemployed youth much more guaranteed to some extent. It is interesting to note that the Commonwealth of Nations has a Plan of Action for Youth Empowerment (2007-2015) which underscores the work of the Commonwealth Youth Programme that declares thus: “Young people are empowered when they acknowledge that they have or can create choices in life, are aware of the implications of those choices, make an informed decision freely, take action based on that decision and accept responsibility for the consequences of those actions.
Empowering young people means creating and supporting the enabling conditions under which young people can act on their own behalf, and on their own terms, rather than at the direction of others.”
Good Governance
Good governance is absolutely critical to the entrenchment of strong institutions in any society. Strong institutions lead to due process. Due process leads to discipline which is manifest in both the governors and the governed. Societal discipline leads to the enthronement of merit, equal opportunities, justice and fair play. And you will all agree with me that a disciplined society is one in which corruption, both in its broad and narrow sense, will have little or no oxygen with which to thrive and flourish. In such a society, not only the youth segment will be empowered.
Every strata of society will be empowered. National development will be taken for granted. Individual development or self-enhancement will grow organically and with no impediments except the natural limitations assigned to us by God at creation. In such a state of affairs, what we would have been discussing here today would be the Sustenance of the Gains of Youth Empowerment and Aiming for the Stars.
You would all record the headline that exploded on the front pages of almost every major national newspaper in this country on March 1, 2013: “Nigeria Lost $400bn to Corruption in 33 Years, says Ministry Official.” Now, you must have in mind that this staggering pile of cash was stolen between 1966 and 1999, according to the reports. The figure from 1999 to March 11, 2014 is as yet not quantified or ascertained. I urge you now to unleash your imagination.
And as you do so, bear in mind that this nation has earned more revenue between 1999 and the first quarter of 2014 than it did in all the previous year of independence put together. I urge you again to unleash your imagination. What do you figure? There is a reason why the apple falls from the tree.
It is called gravity – an irresistible force of nature which truly encapsulates the essence of cause and effect. There is a reason why Nigeria is where it is today and why the future of young people is so desperately blighted. It is not just about the government in power today. It is about systemic rottenness at the heart of our wretched republic right from October 1, 1960.
Ladies and gentlemen, speaking as a business man with over three decades of multiple portfolio experience, I can authoritatively tell you that a judicious use of $400 billion would have given us the Asian Tiger economy of our dreams, or the Dubai miracle of our prayers, or the Brazilian self-sufficiency of our aspirations. Again, in such circumstances, your collective future of realised potentialities and life affirmation would have been guaranteed long before you were even born. It is a great tragedy that my generation, and the two generations that went before mine failed you and failed our potentially great nation.
Good governance is cardinal to the attainment of development while true participatory democracy ensures that development is equitable and sustainable. Public institutions need to be able to manage public resources and conduct public affairs in a manner that is free of corruption and abuse; in a manner that upholds the rule of law and that protects and promotes the realization of the rights of all citizens. The true measure of good governance is the ability of a government to realize people’s human rights and deliver sustainable and equitable development. Good governance is derived through transparency, accountability, participation and responsiveness to the needs of the poor and attentive to the aspirations of the youth.
Economic Development
Economic development can only be possible when Youth Empowerment and Good Governance are firmly rooted. Once there are gaps in either of them, addressing economic development may be difficult, if not impossible. The two factors are intertwined and in them lies the foundation for economic transformation. If we do not get our act together at this level, any pursuit of economic development may be a futile exercise as those are the props on which a nation grows. The human capital and the policy framework are the cannons for any meaningful and sustainable development. And as long as there is corruption, economic development may remain a mirage. We must all work towards the eradication of poverty because its gives rise to crass accumulation of ill-gotten wealth by a few to the detriment of the majority of citizens.
The Nigerian government must keep to its side of the social contract with its citizens. Abdicating its responsibilities with regard to terrorism, functional education, health, economic development generally, youth empowerment, the people’s social well-being, security, combating corruption, mediating in conflicts, conserving the environment and even battling HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections, which affect the youth most, is the antithesis of the essence of leadership.
Conclusion
For there to be any credible economic development, governments at all levels must empower the youth and at all cost ensure that there is good governance without which there can be no significant transformation. The three constituents of the subject of this lecture, as I have pointed out, must synergize if we are to make any national progress. They are like a tripod: once one leg is malfunctioning, it affects the other two legs.
Similarly, if two of the props which are the veritable tools for economic development are weak, the remaining one cannot stand at all. And in Nigeria’s current case, the three legs are feeble! Again, I must thank everyone here for the privilege of addressing you and for the esteemed audience granted me. It gladdens my heart that this kind of interactive forum will throw up ideas on the path forward for our country, particularly as it affects our youth and their future.
Finally, I hope that the undergraduates in this hall would have set their minds at work by re-engineering their thought processes such that they will begin to see themselves as prospective employers of labour—and not endless job-seekers. If the target population here leaves this hall without redefining their economic goals in life and the methodologies for accomplishing them as espoused here, then this session would have been in vain. I am confident it will not be because of the inherent benefits espoused. I thank you all once more.