It is apparent that we cannot discuss the execution of the Awolowo economic programmes in a few words if we are to learn some lessons to resolve the present national economic quagmire. Join me next week as we go through the agriculture and industrial agenda.
If Chief Obafemi Awolowo was alive today, we would be preparing for his 115th birthday which would have come up on March 6, 2024. But that is not to be. Death, the unwelcome, yet unavoidable guest of all time, has ensured that he would not witness such birthday, even if marked by the living.
It was because of people like Chief Awolowo that history must be taught in schools today to showcase our own rather than Mongo Park who was credited to have found River Niger as if people were not living there before he came or Henry Morton Stanley who dubbed Africa the “Dark Continent” because what he saw on arrival in Africa were strange. Many Nigerian leaders would not want their history to be written and presented to unborn children, but historians are kind people. They hardly present the dark side of the dead. But today, we can browse the net and read newspapers to find out more about our leaders’ activities while in office.
Whatever historians or paid autobiographers hide, archival specialists will expose. Not even when Google is alive and running. Whatever is uploaded can be downloaded. It is now an open world without hiding places. Those who put Nigeria into this prolonged and sustained underdevelopment have their records stored in ‘One Drive’ or in the web for posterity!
Two or three statements from eminent Nigerians describing Chief Awolowo at different occasions remain glued into my memory and are likely to remain there forever. The first was when Awo, as fondly called, resigned from the military government of General Yakubu Gowon. The newspapers screamed “I respect your sagacity” – Gowon. As a young boy, I was more enthused with the grammar than the import of the statement until later in life. When Chief Awolowo was released by General Gowon from jail for a groundless accusation, he assumed as the Commissioner for Finance and possibly the coordinator of the economy as we know it today. He had the responsibility of playing a major role in the civil war to the extent that the country did not have to take foreign loans to prosecute the war. He was instrumental to the creation of states as we have it today. That creation was not only to engineer economic development but to implicitly create an identity that could facilitate the end of the civil war. The Gowon statement was an appreciation of Chief Awolowo’s invaluable contributions to the success of the government.
The second statement came from Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegu Ojukwu who needs no special introduction. When Chief Awolowo died, Ojukwu described him as “the best President Nigeria never had.” A statement that remains to be controverted. Former Military President Ibrahim Babangida once said that a politician is either for or against Awo. Throughout his political career, Awo remained the focal point, the enigma, and the subject matter of democratic discourse.
What made Chief Awolowo the quadratic equation did not start at Nigeria’s Independence. It was a long time before that. And it was because of the uniqueness of his economic development programmes that transformed the Western region. The economic plans required and still require some deep study and in-depth analysis to become a guide for our future development progressions. This write-up is just an attempt at scratching the surface of what good governance can achieve in a short time. How long did Obafemi Awolowo and his team lead the Western Region?
The starting point of the Awolowo economic programme was to anchor economic development on the productivity of labour. Economic theory tells us that output growth reflects growth in both labour force and labour productivity, but growth comes more from the increase in labour productivity than from increases in the labour force or capital accumulation. The increase in output per man hour implies an improvement in living standards over time. If a country has a huge stock of capital or physical natural resources without skilled labour, the natural endowments will remain useless. But the presence of human capital or skilled labour without physical resources, like in the case of Japan, can turn stone into food. Literacy level in Japan is almost 100 per cent since the last four decades but it has no commercial mineral resources. The country imports its raw materials and with highly skilled human capital and labour productivity return the raw materials into valuable finished goods, exported globally.
Robert Solow, a Nobel Laureate in Economics, argued in one of his economic writeups that labour-augmenting technical change in production that leads to economic growth is caused by the accumulation of knowledge, education, and better organisation of labour. A country that plays with education, like Nigeria, cannot go far in its development trajectory. This is because the labour productivity that is required will remain untapped and in constant inertia.
So, the first development programme of the Action Group Party headed by Chief Awolowo was free education and free health services, to develop enlightened and healthy citizens that would unleash their potential on available dormant resources to bring about sustained economic growth. The two programmes remained the cardinal agenda for all political parties, up to the Unity Party of Nigeria, led by Chief Awolowo.
The free education programme started in Western Nigeria in 1955 under the Action Group party and it lasted till 1966 when the military coup truncated democratic governance. Again in 1979, when democracy returned, the UPN made primary education, among other levels of education, free in all the five states controlled by the party. It was conjoined with free health services. In tertiary institutions where education was not free, the UPN governments provided bursary to students from the states under its control. The bursary was enough to cover school fees and accommodation. Many of today’s state governors from Western Nigeria, who had their education in Nigeria, benefited from the arrangement.
At the commencement of the free education programme, new schools were constructed to reduce the distance students would cover to get to school and thus remove transportation costs. Many primary healthcare centres sprang up to bring healthcare closer to the citizens and reduce pressures on general hospitals. The education slogan emphasised hard work, productivity, and ethics, and abhorred indolence. We were taught largely in our mother tongue at the lower classes.
A song like ‘Iṣẹ́ àgbẹ̀, niṣẹ́ ilẹ̀ wa, ẹni kò ṣiṣẹ́ á mà jalè. Ìwé kíkọ́ láì sí ọkọ́ àti àdá, kòì pé o, kóí pe o’, emphasising the need to work hard and practise agriculture, was always part of the morning devotion. Some proverbs and Yoruba admonitions like “Iṣẹ́ kìí pani, ìṣẹ́ ní ńpa ènìyàn” (hard work does not kill but poverty does) and “… múra sí iṣẹ́ ọ̀rẹ́ mi, iṣẹ́ ní ńsọ’ní di ẹni gíga …..” (work hard my friend, it is hard work that leads to greater height) were committed to memory by all primary school students. By the time one was graduating from primary school, your appetite was already developed to imbibe agriculture as a vocation or for the fun of it and to know that hard work pays.
All those ethics and admonitions are not taught anymore and the Yorubas that abhorred begging, indolence and stealing are now at the forefront of “Ebi ńpa wá” (we are hungry), wailing and waiting for pepper and tomatoes to arrive from the northern states, and getting imbued in laziness, alcoholism, ‘yahooism’ and kidnapping. The shame of a new generation of Yorubas.
There is no doubt that the early attraction of foreign industries and the rapid growth in industry and commerce in the western region of Nigeria was due to the availability of skilled and productive manpower among other factors. Though the initial concern of the Western region government was to start primary school successfully, it quickly moved to expand the secondary schools and established the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) and The Polytechnic, Ibadan. Also, in anticipation of the need to train more teachers and technicians or artisans for middle-level manpower, the Western region government established teacher training schools and technical colleges. Neglect of education in the South-West by modern day politicians has destroyed these institutions.
It is apparent that we cannot discuss the execution of the Awolowo economic programmes in a few words if we are to learn some lessons to resolve the present national economic quagmire. Join me next week as we go through the agriculture and industrial agenda.
