Nothing has accelerated human development as much as World War Two. What that conflict also taught us is that in adversity man is at his most creative, so why is Nigeria an exception?

Ayo Akinfe

If you ask me, there is something fundamentally missing that fails to explain our intellectual laziness. Faced with the constant threat of terrorist attacks, Nigerian munitions manufacturing should be thriving in an unprecedented manner at the moment.

It is a given that during conflicts, countries exceed themselves with engineering and productive ingenuity. During World War Two for instance, all these leading edge technology aircraft were mass produced:

[1] Spitfires (Britain)

[2] Hellcats (US)

[3] Hurricanes (Britain)

[4] Wildcats (US)

[5] Zero (Japan)

[6] Messerschmitt (Germany)

[7] Mustang (US)

[8] Focke-Gulf (Germany)

[9] Curtiss P-40 Warhawk (US)

[10] Mosquito (British)

What should be happening now is that we should be churning out prototypes of bombers, helicopter gun-ships, drones, etc for the Nigerian Air Force, who should then approve the best ones. Then the likes of Innoson Motors and Dangote Industries should be asked to mass-produce these aircraft.

Now, this is how a normal country operates during conflicts. It is standard procedure, which leads me to ask if there is something missing in our human DNA.

As we speak, Ukraine is expanding its military capability. We have been fighting Boko Haram since 2009 and have not managed to manufacture one helicopter gun-ship. This is simply not normal human behaviour!