Africa Speaks Reasoning Forum

 
July 18, 2005
Posted to the web July 18, 2005

Samuel Famakinwa
Lagos

Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Prof. Charles Soludo, has said the current economic reform programme of the Obasanjo administration if allowed to run its full course, will make Nigeria become the China of Africa in the next two decades.

Speaking to THISDAY Board of Editors in his office last week in Abuja, Soludo said that South Africa, which currently enjoys Western patronage, may be the Japan of Africa, but Nigeria would lead the continent in all areas including technological development.

That is why this political reform thing has to be completed. Because once we succeed with it and the economy continues to be on track, give Nigeria 15 to 20 years, my view is that Nigeria will be the China of Africa and South Africa may be the Japan, he said.

He warned that it will require consistency, focus, unwavering commitment and doing it for the next decades non-stop and a critical mass of people who will continue to support this. That is why I say to people that everybody must join the vanguard, it's a vanguard for our future.

He said that the successes recorded in some sectors of the economy are encouraging Nigerians abroad to develop interest in the economy.

Many of them (Nigerians abroad) who are now dealing in this market really like it. One I met recently said he wants to invest in the stock market because, what deterred them in the past was that they didn't know whether it will depreciate and by what percentage. Now, he is sure and the brokers tell them they can make up to 20-30 per cent, so he chases it. He knows that at most, he can only lose 3 per cent. Even if he makes 20 per cent less three per cent that is still 17 per cent in dollar term, which no stock market in the world can give him. So he brings it here. This is systematically the kind of things you need to do and sustain over a period of time, he added.

He promised that the CBN will be made to become a central bank that pursues the role of Nigeria in Africa. He added that the overriding vision is that it is Nigeria's place to lead the black race.

It is Nigeria's place to lead Africa, and the Central Bank must play a pivotal role in not only chauffeuring and managing the macro-economy, but also in helping to move forward and orchestrate a financial system that will make Nigeria Africa's financial centre, Soludo said.

As a result of the goal, he disclosed that the CBN is geared towards becoming a policy institution, especially with the establishment of a new Economic Policy Department, with a crack team of professionals with the best concentration of economists in Africa.

That is why you require the best and nothing but the best in the place. We signal that we've integrated combined banking supervision and banking exams and structuring them towards the new supervision that is suited to the emerging new banking system.

Strengthening also the research department which is now research and statistics, because we realised that statistics component was quite large. We are going to do that in collaboration with the Federal Office of Statistics (FOS). Now we are moving to collecting quarterly GDP. We will be going to the fields in the next 2 weeks to collect quarterly GDP and quarterly survey of the economy and this will be completely new, he added.

Soludo said the future is bright for the country especially within the context of the recent debt relief granted Nigeria in principle by members of the Paris Club.

According to him, the Policy Support Instrument (PSI) requested by the Paris Club as a condition for the final approval for the debt relief should not be difficult for Nigeria to meet since it will be a focused policy set of macro-economic and structural reforms which is currently happening informally under our NEEDS agenda.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200507181550.html

I don't know about this. Not because I have any doubts about Nigeria's potential, or that of any other Sub-Saharan African Country for that matter. However, this success heavily depends on input from Western Donor Nations. I do not subscribe to the notion that they consider it to be in their  best interest to have developed black nations with an internal capacity to educate its citizens and control its destiny. And that is why Africa, blessed with so much in terms of natural resources, is in the situation where she is at today.

For Nigeria and South Africa to become like the Asian Tigers of today a number of home grown occurences have to take place. First Africa MUST develope and produce leaders who will put their people first above all else. Men and women of integrity, with the courage and selflessness of the Steve Bikos, Patrice Lumumbus and Kwame Nkrumas. They must embrace an ideology and philosophy that mandates that the proceeds from the natural resources of African Countries MUST be enjoyed by the indigenous populations of the continent to the same proportion this occurs in Western Societies. It would be unthinkable for a Western Country to produce a product like Coltran and not have computer hardware and software industries in their country. Similarly, it would be unthinkable for expatriate diamond and gold magnates to reach billionaire status off the proceeds of those resources while the population of those western countries wallow in poverty and want. African Leaders MUST put their people first, and let the manifestation of that prerogative be demonstrated in the social and economic well being of the people.

Second, African men must cease this insane and self-destructive sexual behaviour which is the engine that propells the AIDS locomotive throughout Africa and the Disapora. If this disease was of human construction as many opine in these pages, then the architects could not have wished for a better vehicle than our sexuality. We should not place ourselves in the paths of the bullets they fire at us, but do our outmost to duck and evade them as they come. AIDS is a bullet aimed and fired at Africa and Africans, and rather than acting in a manner that evades such targeting, we seemingly are painting bulls eyes on our chest thereby increasing the number of kills for the marksmen.

Third but not last, African Countries and their peoples must come to grips with the irrevocable reality that no individual Nation will ever be able to rise without the cooperation of everyone else on the continent. Such individual aspirations are, to quote the late Bro. Marley, "fleeting illusions, to be perceived but never attained". Africans, Blacks, whatever we call ourselves will swim together, or be inundated beneath the waves generated by the expansion of external cultural Tsunamis.

No, this is not all Africans need to do to mimic the growth and developement we see else where. These are just random some thoughts in the forefront of a diasporan African mind. There are many, countless among us, capable of putting into language what we need to do in a more coherent, lucid, and well thoughtout manner. I just wish with all of my heart and soul that they could come together and do so.