Concept Note on: Knowledge Economy Solution to Nigeria’s Economy and Security Dislocations.
“When a country runs into a
situation where every new government that emerges makes the tenure of its
predecessor to look more like an age of gold’, writes the Great Plato, “it is a
clear indication that the development knowledge that is guiding the country’s
growth work has grown obsolete. Unless the elite community uses the genius in
their collective capacity to fix a new development knowledge, even a team of
angels seconded from heaven cannot get the country out of the vicious cycle”.
Of course, this is the nature’s law and it cannot change because it is now the turn of Nigeria.
This project, therefore, seeks to answer the national call for dialogue on a new strategy to resolve our nation’s economy and security dislocations and to guide the process to elite consensus on the advance economy knowledge to upgrade our national economy from primary resource trap, which is everywhere prone to crises, to knowledge economy where real and sustainable economy growth resumes, when a country completes its term in the transition phase, to end transition crises permanently which will then restore real peace and inclusive prosperity that will sustain through ages in the nation using the Applied Growth Solution that emerged from our forty years conclusive research work on the subject as a precision guide. It particularly seeks to get the universities to play the lead role in the consolidation and expansion of the economy at the knowledge phase of development as is the case in successful economies. This will then dislodge the obstacles that nature and conventions do place on the path of new knowledge in transition societies to set the nation permanently free from transition crises.
Now Knowledge Economy is the next and only secure destination for economies at the peak of their transition crises like our nation Nigeria. While Applied Growth Solution (AGS) is the nature’s formula to transform and grow a transition economy when local population grows beyond the size that can be sustained by primary resources alone, particularly, where the transition crisis of the economy has grown severe complications as is the case with Nigeria of today. AGS is indeed the fortified version of the alternative to our current orthodox development concept, the growth strategy for knowledge economy and every country grows into the knowledge phase of development once its local population grows beyond the size that can be sustained by primary resources alone. Unfortunately, our current orthodox development education has no lessons on alternative concept and that is where the economic progress of Africa not just Nigeria have been trapped.
The primary aim of the project is therefore to upgrade the intellectual content of our base knowledge so that our collective reason will begin to function broadly and optimally on development issues, particularly, on production and productivity capacities which jointly drive real growth at the knowledge economy which is our next destination.
What makes this intervention even more imperative is that our studies have discovered the obscure monster underlying Africa’s intractable economic crises: it is the unimaginable scientific hypnotism designed by ancient philosophers as the success strategy of imperialism in that age when growth morality permits everything including slavery and wars, and disingenuously planted into our current orthodox education to prevent Africa’s economies from growing beyond the primary resource trap so that the continent will become perpetual market for industrial products of imperial economies. It is this scheme, more than any other factor that sets and sustain the foundation of today’s hydra headed troubles in Africa; the studies also produced the knowledge economy solution to neutralize the hypnotism and reverse the economy and security dislocations it has caused our nation. But like John Keynes rightly observed from the rich experience of Europe of his age, getting a transition country to escape the old knowledge is the biggest challenge of economic transformation.
The process everywhere involves deliberate and collective effort of the elite community, which can only be activated by broad national reconciliation conversation and that is a key part of what this intervention seeks to facilitate.
The first step in the intervention will be to put the new concept to key stakeholders’ interrogation and reconciliation conversation to generate preliminary consensus that will form the basis for a broader national engagement. Next will be to put the new concept to broad national dialogue, which will involve the Universities, so that it will undergo comprehensive interrogation, beneficiation where necessary and certification, beginning with the ten prong multidimensional solution to the current economy and security dislocations plaguing the nation today, before delivery to the government. This will then persuade government and the political class to accept the new concept and its entry into the nation’s transformation and growth work, development knowledge and education will provoke no resistance.
Our Success Guarantee lies in the Following:
First, all important constituencies have agreed that a new approach that will provide multi-dimensional solution to our current economy and security dislocations be adopted including the taciturn military;
Second, since 2001 when the effort of African leaders to develop a new approach which is the knowledge economy solution derailed, all Nigerian governments across partisan line had also confirmed that a new concept is indeed required to arrest our economic decline; confessed that government is not in the position to develop and implement the advanced concept without organized support from the elite community, which is absolutely correct and had called on those who can to come forward and assist, like their counterparts in model countries do when their economies run into big problems to no avail apparently;
Third, in his address to the nation on the 31st of July 2023, President Tinubu confessed that “…I wish there were other ways (to solve our nation’s problems). But there is not. If there were, I would have taken that route as I came here to help not hurt the people and nation that I love”.
Nothing could sound more apparent, given that the call by his predecessors for advanced knowledge support to enable them fix this problems since 2002 did not produce any result, apparently too, which could explain the lamentation of his Vice, Senator Kashim Shettima ten months earlier at the Carnival of the 95+1 Yoruba Tennis Club in Lagos to the effect that “…The greatest challenge facing Nigeria’s nationhood is the inability to build elite consensus on the best way to organize and jointly chart a path to progressive development appropriate to the country’s varied populace.”, which is precisely what this intervention seeks to facilitate.
Fourth, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, the wife of the incumbent President, who was before now, a ranking Senator, on the 25th of March 2024, declared that getting Nigeria’s economy back on track requires collective effort: coming at the heels of her husband’s acknowledgement that “We Don’t Have All the Answers” at the inauguration of his new Economic Advisory Council, which was a subtle way of calling for new knowledge support to help the government address today’s hydra-headed troubles, one could safely conclude that she was speaking the mind of her husband.
Fifth, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, the Chief of Staff to the President and, until his new appointment, a ranking member of the National Assembly, also declared on the 23rd of August, 2024 that National Dialogue is required to resolve the systemic problem that brought our nation to where we are today, apparently, given that current education did not address the subject but;
Sixth, the icing on the cake was the declaration by the Vice-President, Senator Kashim Shettima in Kaduna on the 12th of August 2024 that “Nigeria Needs Total Overhaul” which is the other expression for economic transformation, so that “If the politics we are running are not conclusive, (we) change it. “If the system we are operating is not producing good leadership, peace and security, (we) change it”. This underscores the fact that government is serious, not just about a National Dialogue but also alternative or Advance Development Concept to drive it, which absence caused the failure of past National Dialogues.
What all of the above have established, essentially, is that Nigerians and their prime leaders had indeed been on the same page on the imperative of a new approach to our economic development that will work for all. The problem has been the scientific hypnotism that skewed Africa’s knowledge of the economy and how it is developed, the current orthodox governance structure that has no windows for alternative knowledge, knowledge gaps stimulating doubts as to whether there is indeed any alternative approach, the question of who between the government and the people should play the lead role or has the duty to provide the advanced knowledge that will guide the change in the approach and how the new knowledge will be delivered; all of which were not addressed by our current orthodox development education. But history has ample evidence that it is the people who play the lead role and this shall be established in the conversation. Thus, once we are able to mobilize broad elite consensus on the core elements of this Knowledge Economy Solution, the particulars of its implementation, build them into a clear transformation agenda and deliver it with the right attitude, government will not hesitate to adopt the new concept just as nature will also step in to facilitate the change that we need and this will resolve the other collateral issues to restore real peace and inclusive prosperity that will sustain through ages in our nation to the glory of God and posterity.
It will be recalled that this scientific hypnotism was first spotted by a study team set up by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in 1986. The leader of the team, Professor Ade Adefuyi described it as “British Orientation of Nigerian Universities”, and insisted that “it has disoriented the products of Nigerian Universities such that they could not really serve their environment.”
Thirteen years later, UNECA, in its 1999 Economic Report on Africa, produced by another comprehensive studies and endorsed by all stakeholders was to confirm the findings of the ASUU study team, providing even more significant elements missing in the current orthodox development knowledge and emphasized that our current orthodox development concept and its growth strategy, informed by the deficient orthodox development knowledge, which Africa adopted from the onset as a colonial subject are fundamentally deficient and cannot lead any African country to a new economic height that is sustainable, even if the country is managed by angels. Twenty-five years after, Africa and Nigeria have continued with the deficient orthodox concept and strategy in different packages and their economies have also continued their downward drift to confirm, not just that there is indeed a problem with the concept and strategy but also with those who have continued with them as Professor Adefuye noted. This simply established beyond dispute that our economy is faced with the problem that government cannot solve without strategic support from the intellectual and the elite communities.
The good news is that our studies have located how and where the hypnotism was planted and locked and it will take only Knowledge Economy Solution which we already have, supported by adequate dose of citizens’ goodwill to get our nation and economy out of the vicious trap. Thus, once we are able to get collective voices to interrogate, certify and disseminate these new realities with the right attitude, effectively mobilize to help all key stakeholders to understand their full ramifications and how we can collectively resolve them for the long term benefit of all, the estate that is dividing our perspectives on the growth policy options appropriate for our economy going forward, will give way to a genuine commitment of all to get our economy and security back on track with minimal stress and that will resolve the other collateral issues. This was exactly how the people that we admire today made it.
What is more, at turning point massively polluted by partisan acrimony and perverse discourse, only a partnership of the audible section of the elite community and the University can drive fundamental dialogue of this magnitude to broad elite consensus and national reconciliation. Because those who are caught in the web of problems created by knowledge deficit will not realize or believe that they have the problem, including the government, until it is pronounced by the University, which is the custodian of every nation’s development knowledge. The outcome of this process everywhere persuades and enable the government to effectively transform the national economy without resistance. This, in turn, will launch the nation fully into knowledge economy, which will then restore real peace and inclusive prosperity that will sustain through ages in the nation. To this end, we have created dialogue cells in forty-eight Universities across the nation and hope to get others in before the project starts, so that our consensus will carry the authority that it will need to deliver. These are all that our dear nation Nigeria will need to exit today’s complications and precisely what this intervention seeks to facilitate.
A key goal of this intervention is to facilitate the high capacity innovations across a broad range of sectors and factors to activate the large expanse of dormant capacities of the national economy and use them to end large scale unemployment, underemployment and extreme conditions as a deliberate strategy to: (1) complement force in the effort to end wide spread security challenges in the nation; (2) protect the gifted thinkers that the economy will need to contest for more shares of the global resources going forward; (3) expand the shoulders that will carry the burden of essential subsides to make the burden lighter for the society and; (4) to give the economy the comprehensive big push that it will need to take off effectively in the new order and height. All of these will then deliver the new Nigeria of our dream to the glory of God and the black race.
The beauty of the new agenda which will guarantee its acceptability to all stakeholders is that it will:
- Introduce only the fourth and superior arm of the new growth driver which is knowledge; the other three preferred growth drivers being oil and gas, agriculture and solid minerals;
- Knowledge growth driver will run smoothly alongside the three preferred growth drivers until it establishes its superiority by which time government will need no advocacy to make knowledge and factors that support its efficiency first line charges on investment priority, which will then stabilize the economy at the knowledge phase;
- Knowledge growth driver will create far more jobs than the three preferred growth drivers put together and at no extra cost to the government;
- It will boost government revenue on all fronts and;
- It will cost government nothing but its coordinating office to execute, as the knowledge growth driver has the inherent capacity to generate more than enough resources for its full implementation from the dormant capacities of the economy.
Thus, the new agenda is a win-win situation for everyone with absolutely no disadvantage whatsoever. Although all governments had called for and desired this new agenda, they cannot adopt it unless it is supported by elite consensus, and that is ultimately what this intervention seeks to mobilize.
Dr. Emmanuel Anoliefo
Founder & National Coordinator Technical.