Today, we bring to a close our discussion of the concept of enabling environment. In the last edition, among other things, we stated that enabling environment includes a functional educational curriculum that is not only dynamic but teaches the students much more than what they need to be relevant in the labour market and attractive to employers. It is old school preparing our kids to be faithful, loyal and honest employees. They should, in addition, be learning how to become employers and not just workers. Enabling environment includes changing the emphasis, which is currently predominantly on how to become competent and great workers and, consequently, experts in climbing the corporate ladder.
Beyond the need to promote radical thinking in our schools and among students, enabling environment also means inspiring leadership in educational institutions and other key facets of human endeavour. The conduct of leaders should inspire hard work and innovative thinking among the people, especially the youth. By leaders here, we are not focused on political leaders, but all strata of leadership, including students and youth generally. Unfortunately, the way political positions are over-rewarded, over-celebrated and magnified in Nigeria makes other levels of leadership command lower in appeal and attention.
Exemplary conduct by politicians is enabling environment. Surely, fighting for control of budgets and spending in the national assembly, as if that is the essence of membership of the house, is not it. Given the high esteem in which our political leaders are held and the way they influence the course of events in the society, their conduct is either enabling or disabling. An enabler is anything that facilitates or promotes the attainment of whatever is the goal. All those who are in positions of power, influence and authority are to recognize that their actions, utterances and even inactions are being watched by those to whom they relate and who take them as role models. These people are either encouraged or discouraged by the conduct of the people in authority, and that determines the nature of the environment in question.
An enabling environment is accountable. It is equitable. It is also transparent and includes a just justice system. The courts are supposed to be the last bastion of hope of justice for all. There is yet no bigger antidote to enterprise, and even patriotism, than for people to realise that justice for all is a mere slogan or that it is not their work but their connection that does it for them. Put differently, once people realize that merit and justice have no place in the society, that society has had it. It begins the long and painful journey to decay.
To achieve success in the areas of science and technology, for instance, requires very hard work, concentration and capacity to accept failure. No one concentrates on any intelligent enterprise when others, especially those less endowed, do nothing beyond going in and out of government establishment and making millions. This is why we have spoken about the diversification of the economy for decades without any iota of progress. People are prevented from venturing into uncharted courses because of the reward system, which punishes inventive and research-oriented thinking. We must reform the reward and justice systems to be just and equitable. That is enabling environment.
Downsizing government is part of an enabling environment. Our national leadership structure is a huge joke. Apart from a core of people who carry the burden of government departments, the rest of the workers do very little every day. For as long as government remains a goldmine, which it still is today, the flag of enterprise and hard work will continue to fly at half-mast. Research and innovation are by nature hard and time-consuming. Add the distraction that the society is busy rewarding economic renteers and influence-mongers, then you discover why our innovators, thinkers and researchers cannot produce much.
Enabling environment is the proper management of the subsidy regime in the country. When the word subsidy is mentioned, many people think of petroleum products. Subsidy is more than that. Every country has a regime of subsidies and it is not true that subsidy is patently bad. There is always a need for subsidy even in the most advanced countries. Agriculture is subsidised in most advanced countries. The only thing to watch is how subsidy is administered.
Subsidy is used to transfer resources across economic boundaries. The concept of cross subsidy speaks to a just system where one group pays for a benefit enjoyed by another. The poor can be given subsidy while the rich are made to pay for it. That is one of the responsibilities that being rich imposes on the rich. Unfortunately, to be rich in Nigeria is not just to escape poverty and enjoy the so-called “good things of life”, it is an entry into the League of Elders to whom society owes everything and they owe society nothing. Indeed, society owes them everything – free security by the law enforcement agencies paid by the poor, free access to public places where the poor must pay if they dare enter, and the option of first refusal to buy up the national patrimony when we decide to sell. So it actually brings one to the league of free-riders who are subsidized by the poor.
So enabling environment is one in which the rich pays for the consumption of the very poor. Granted that some people are poor because of indolence and laziness, not all became rich because they are hardworking and smart. In an environment where discretion and lack of accountability (by the way, that is the most elegant definition of corruption) hold sway, people renteer their way to wealth without necessarily contributing much to the commonweal.
Enabling environment is the availability of trail blazers, mentors and pathfinders, people who point the way for others to follow – icons, thinkers and writers. These agents of real change, usually at their own cost, chart new directions and help budding entrepreneurs to follow the fruitful part. At a recent sports event, which showcased the potentials of sports as a money-maker, and organized by the Pan Atlantic University and some partners, it was shown that sports may be the next goldmine in Nigeria, after oil. Pointing the way in this manner, and putting project ideas in the heads of entrepreneurs, is my idea of enabling environment.
Emeka Osuji
