As we celebrate Eid-El-Fitr we should bear in mind that French philosopher Voltaire probably had Nigeria in mind when he said: "No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking"


By Ayo Akinfe

[1] Today is unique in that it is a Sunday when Nigerian Christians are worshiping and Nigerian Muslims are also celebrating the end of Ramadan. Had it not been for the lockdown, they would have been passing each other on the way to their respective praying grounds and churches. Poverty, insecurity, erratic power supply, poor roads, inadequate healthcare, no education facilities, etc, do not discriminate against anyone, so all these mindless divisions over religion and ethnicity are just senseless

[2] As a nation, our problems are essentially economic. If you want to narrow Nigeria's problems down to one, it is the fact that we are not productive enough. This creates scarcity, which is why government officials need to resort to corruption so they can afford to educate their children privately, why our youth resort to crime, why we have become over-dependent on crude oil to survive, why there is so much ethnic mistrust and why the state has no resources to fund education, healthcare, transport infrastructure, housing, etc

[3] If 200m Nigerians took it upon themselves to resolve all these problems, we would find a solution within a month but alas, we are scared to confront the issues. After World War Two, the Japanese sat down and asked themselves how they were going to rebuild and they found a solution in the automobile industry. Likewise, the Germans took it upon themselves to transfer all their technological know-how into manufacturing and alas, within 20 years had gone from becoming a bombed out country of ruins into Europe's largest economy

[4] We are in the middle of a global pandemic with Nigeria facing unprecedented economic ruin as nobody wants the one resource we have to sell, so it is time for a national "lightbulb moment." As a people we have to be prepared to think the unthinkable and come up with an economic model that will take us from being poverty-stricken nation that is a dumping ground for goods manufactured elsewhere into a global industrial producer

[5] It is simply not possible to feed, cloth and supply with finished goods a nation of 200m people. Many of our smaller neighbours like Ghana, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Senegal, etc can get away with it but our size imposes on us the obligation to become a global producer. It is simply not possible for the rest of the world to manufacture enough laptop computers, mobile phones, aircraft, pharmaceuticals, automobiles, railway carriages, medical equipment, etc for 200m souls. Their factories are simply not set up for such huge exports. Even if they were, they will never be able to get us the quantities we want, at the time we want them, of the quality we desire and at the price we want

[6] I want 200m Nigerians to take today as the genesis of the Nigerian rebirth. Consider today the genesis of our "thinking period" or if you like the start of the "African enlightenment period", when we come up with ways to mass-produce processed foods, consumer goods, clothing, automobiles, aircraft, ships, railway carriages, medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, etc

[7] I am trying desperately to walk in the footsteps of Voltaire but alas, they are huge shoes to fill. Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, histories and scientific expositions. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets. His polemics witheringly satirized intolerance, religious dogma and the French institutions of his day. Known as Le Roi Voltaire, he was at constant risk from the strict censorship laws of the Catholic French monarchy for his outspoken views

[8] Were Voltaire around today, he would have asked every Nigerian Christian and Muslim to donate all the money they intended giving to the church and mosque into an industrial fund and use that capital to start off an industrial revolution. He would also have attacked this penchant for expecting the government to solve all our problems when our individual brilliance can easily come up with solutions to our woes

[9] Voltaire's writings led to the French Revolution of 1879, during which the masses rose up and overthrew the elitist order oppressing them. At the time, corruption, poverty, police brutality and disease was more rife in France than it was in Nigeria today. However, look at how the French overcame all these problems and went on to become the land of liberty, equality and fraternity. France has given us so many things, I do not know where to start from. Be it the Bill of Rights, Peugeot, Citroen, the one-time fastest train in the world, Marie Curie, etc. These should be the goals we set our sights on in Nigeria

[10] It is actually a good thing that we cannot go out to the church and Muslim prayer ground today. Let us spend the time at home reflecting on the way forward and come up with solutions to our plethora of socio-economic problems. Our main one should be how do we grow our GDP from its shameful pittance of $375bn to say a befitting $2trn.

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