The Only Way Nigeria Can Stop Failing By Julian Ezenwa

It would seem that a country
abundant with natural
resources such as crude oil,
natural gas and numerous
minerals should pave the way
among the world’s top
economies. In 2010, Nigeria’s
income from oil exports
alone was $59 billion,
according to Bloomberg.
Yet, what we find in Nigeria
is a nation ridden with
poverty. Nigeria has a
population of approximately
170 million people (about
half of the United States)
according to the CIA, and has
a 25% unemployment rate.
70% of Nigerians live below
the poverty line (119 million
of our citizens are poor).
With this extremely low
standard of living, one might
be surprised to find that the
richest black man in the
world is Nigerian. Nigerian
businessman Aliko Dangote
boasts a net worth of over
$11 billion.
Obviously, Nigeria is a
country wealthy in natural
resources, but the income
coming from these resources
is not benefitting most of its
citizens.
It is now common knowledge
that Nigeria’s economy is one
that thrives on bribery and
corruption.The examples are
many: The state governor
who offers a road
construction contract to a
firm that agrees in return to
provide part of its revenues
to the personal pocket of the
governor; The examination
official that gets a free meal
from a secondary school in
order to look away while the
students cheat freely; The
Minister who secures several
top positions in his ministry
only for his friends and
family. These are
observations I’ve found
throughout my 17 years living
in Nigeria. Corruption is the
backbone of the country’s
economy. It is as rampant as
the petroleum that flows
beneath our soil.
It might be easy to pinpoint
why Nigerians are so poor
whereas the nation itself is
terribly wealthy. The wealth
has a top down flow from the
top politicians to the masses,
and the flow is so slow that
as you go down the pyramid,
the steeper the income drop
you find. At the bottom of
the pyramid, where the
largest portion of the
population rests, there is only
a miniscule accrual of the
income from the natural
resources. Reach the top in
Nigeria, and you are
guaranteed a rich and
comfortable life, but if you
are anywhere else on the
pyramid, it is likely that you
will live in stark poverty.
Economists have found a
correlation between
abundant natural resources
and lack of economic growth.
Researchers have termed this
the “resource curse”; the
more resources a country
has, the less economic
growth occurs. While this
phenomenon may not be a
causal relationship,it certainly
is a strong correlation.
Imagine the average son of a
wealthy man. At 16, he’s
driving his dad’s old Porsche
that he received for his
Sweet Sixteen celebration. At
18, his father has secured
him admission at an Ivy
League institution through
heavy donations. At 25, he is
flying his father’s private jet
to Malibu for the weekend.
This kid is living the life, and
is surely gaining the envy of
all his peers. The problem
with this kid, he’s become
dependent and has little need
to find his own success, little
incentive to create it.
That is Nigeria’s problem.
Since colonialism, Nigeria has
lost its spark. Nigeria sadly,
with its 170 million citizens,
has lost its ability to innovate,
and the only way to triumph
this top-down system, is to
build free thinkers and
entrepreneurs at the bottom
because the politicians and
money launderers at the top
will never willingly give up
their power over the system.
How do we build free
thinkers, you ask? We have a
country that is engulfed in
patriarchy and a hierarchy so
rigid, that only the most
rebellious can face those
above them in this hierarchy.
Until we rid ourselves of
misogyny and gender
discrimination we can never
reach our potential. Until the
elementary school female
student has as much freedom
of speech as does her 57-
year-old drunkard father, we
cannot be an excelling
nation. These problems won’t
be solved in a day, and I
don’t believe they can be
solved in my generation. But
I believe strongly that they
can be solved.
We need to reform our
education. Political efforts to
fight corruption can be
likened to spraying mosquito
repellent all over an open
forest. It is not efficient. It is
not efficient because the
mosquitoes reproduce much
to quickly to be affected by a
few token measures.
Corruption in Nigeria is so
prolific that cutting down on
corruption in one industry
for corruption to spring up
in another four sectors.
We need to cut the tree at
the root, and make it hardly
conducive for this corruption
to exist. The only way this
can be done is to raise
powerful intellectual minds in
the next generation of
scholars.
Our current education
system is woefully bad.
According to UNICEF,
secondary school
participation rates for the
years 2005-2010 was 45% for
men, and 43% for women.
These Secondary School
students spend 6 years
(grades 7 through 12)
preparing for two final
national exams — WASSCE
and NECO — those exams
largely determines what
university students will
attend. This heavy pressure
on students does something
that most examination
officials will vehemently
deny; it creates a deep
powerful incentive to cheat.
From personal experience
there are at least two types
of strong incentives to cheat:
The economic incentive to
cheat stems from the fact
that passing these exams can
often mean the difference
between having to repeat
your final year and going on
to university. The social
incentive to cheat is strong—
if you don’t “help” your peers
during the exam, you will
essentially be ostracized from
your set of friends and
bullied, sometimes even by
teachers.
With the proliferation of
mobile technology in Nigeria,
one can’t help but
understand how much easier
it is for students to cheat. It’s
encouraged. From school
officials to the test examiners
who turn a blind eye in the
face of a bribe, students are
rewarded for cheating and
they carry this reward for the
rest of their lives. Cheating
students prosper and
succeed, and honorable
students, unless they are
extremely outstanding, fail
and don’t move on to the
next level.
If people with
more education earn more
than dropouts, there should
be a similar correlation in the
context of countries.
Countries with higher
enrollment rates should have
higher GDP per capita all
other factors being equal.
If I were President of Nigeria
today, improving the
country’s defunct education
would be my top priority.
Unfortunately, President
Goodluck Jonathan’s children
go to an elite private school
with an American curriculum,
so he is clueless.
There is a lot of research and
scientific knowledge to be
found on the Internet, but
we need the human
resources to understand it.
I advocate more rigorous
testing for cheating. By using
JSS 3 exam results as
controls for SS 3 results, one
can test for the event in
which when an
underachieving student in JSS
suddenly become a genius in
SS. Different tests for
different regions of the
country will slow down the
rate at which questions are
distributed between students.
Our curriculum must be
revamped to encourage
creativity rather than
cramming. We need cultural
and historical understanding,
so subjects such as Art,
World History, and Foreign
languages should be
encouraged. We must realize
that we are not alone in this:
we can use and learn from
the mistakes of foreign
education systems.
Our world is increasingly
global, and we must create a
suitable environment for our
citizens to compete. The
official language in Nigeria is
English, and in order for the
future generations to thrive,
more students should be able
to speak effortlessly. Reading
should be encouraged at
every level.
Since rich private schools
contribute heavily to the
proliferation of cheating by
bribery, these schools must
be heavily taxed. This penalty
serves to balance the huge
real cost of cheating.
Increase punishment for
schools where cheating is
found, shutting them down,
or suspending their licenses.
This may not reduce the
students’ inclination to cheat
but it reduces their incentive
to cheat.
Finally, encourage innovation
with subsidies. Provide
scholarships to researchers
and offer incentives (such as
subsidized housing) for
citizens who have foreign
degrees so they are
encouraged to come back to
the country to find work.
Recognizing that all people
respond to incentives will
save the country. We need to
learn to innovate again, as
that is the only way to attain
truly sustainable growth.
God Bless Nigeria.

#CONSENSUS 2015