WHY IS NIGERIA NOT DEVELOPED

To understand why Nigeria is not developed, we first have to understand what needs to be in place for development to occur. I call these factors of national development.

To be developed there has to be consistent and sustained production. For this to happen the factors of production must be in place - Land, Labour, Capital, Resources and Management. We have all these in abundance in Nigeria except the last one. We have zero management. Management encapsulates the ability to make things happen. Our leaders have totally mismanaged the country. That goes without saying. And thats the ONLY reason Nigeria isn't developed. Let me explain why ….. do I really need to? I think it's obvious but I’ll list a few points to highlight factors of national development. In literature elsewhere, you’ll probably read about the classification of the factors of development into political factors, natural environment, debt and economic activity. I don't necessarily agree with this because its too generic, it diverts attention away from unique root causes and hence doesn't quite do justice to Nigeria’s situation. Besides, the factors listed can be controlled or managed one way or the other. If they can be managed then they fall into one category - Leadership/Government.

Much like factors of production, certain things need to be in place for development to take place. These include…. in order I rank most important first

1) Good Leadership/Government. Simply put, leadership is the ability to organise and achieve a desired goal. It requires vision, passion, objectivity, consistent/persistent national enterprise and direction. Nigeria has never had this. Also see Dave Ebi's answer to Why is Nigeria a poor country?

2) Infrastructure - from design technology and processing to hardcore resources like power generation, transportation technology, roads, housing, telecoms, national psyche/culture orchestrated by government (see Dave Ebi's answer to How can we transform Nigeria?), hospitals, agriculture, etc. This emcompasses everything that leads to manufacturing/production and distribution of goods and services. Education should probably come before Infrastructure in order of importance if we want to self develop. However, we can hire expatriates in the interim. Also, both goals can be targeted simultaneously.

3) Education - Nigeria’s education curriculum must be revised. Graduates have exceptionally poor oral and written communication skills. It is so disastrous. Heck… even the president’s speech on his return from the UK is said to be full of errors. There are so many sub factors responsible for this but they are outside the scope of this write up. The key point is you can’t have development without effective communication enshrined in the education system. With reference to 2. above for instance, it is impossible to attain development with a technology process that is full or errors, poorly communicated and totally misunderstood. The education system must be revamped to generate quality graduates that can take Nigeria to where we want it to be. Our education system must be able to compete with the rest of the world if we really want to develop. Did I hear you say impossible? I guess you’re thinking university “handouts” can’t produce quality graduates. Well now … there’s a thought!

4) Culture - Nigeria’s culture of master vs servant or politician vs masses or traditional ruler vs ordinary people is a major factor working against development. It encourages oppression and denies people endowed with natural talents and flare for certain things the opportunity to express themselves, thrive and develop their skills even further. This includes subjugation of women, forced juvenile marriage, mutilation and other horrific practices that cause terror, deprive people of opportunities and destroy aspirations. When aspirations are destroyed, dreams are killed. Such dreams could be doctor, engineer, economist, accountant, scientist, chemist, physicist, technologist, artist, teacher, lawyer, etc that we actually need to develop the country. This culture also promotes nepotism, tribalism, regionalism and hence total lack of federal responsibility and accountability which ultimately results in enshrined CORRUPTION of the highest order. This is why the incidence of questionable characters being appointed into government offices is so rampant in Nigeria. This also goes for traditional rulers - they must be held up to public scrutiny/accountability. You can never attain development when unqualified idiots who have no idea what they are doing are allowed to hold public offices in the system. These people hinder development and drag the nation back. To attain development, competent people must be appointed into offices they are qualified for. There also must be an open and credible system of performance evaluation that ensures removal of incompetent people from the system. This will ensure competition in the system, promote efficiency and hasten national development. Cultures that don’t lead to development should be destroyed just like slavery, killing of twins and albinos, etc. If such practices had been allowed to continue we wouldn’t have had the likes of P-Square

 today and we certainly wouldn’t have been enjoying their contributions to national development today.

5) Sense of national pride - this is presently virtually non existent in Nigeria. Except perhaps in football where a similitude appears to exist. I don’t think it requires further commentary because it is evidently self explanatory. It is impossible to attain development when the constituting parts of the country don’t trust each other, don’t accept that they are one, don’t feel they share equal chance of being treated fairly and evidently don’t want to live together as one. Development is simply impossible in such circumstance.

Let me leave it here; for now