Entrepreneurs around the world have just ended their annual Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW). This is a yearly celebration marked by a week of events in which seminars, public lectures and exhibitions are put together to promote the virtues of hard work and entrepreneurship. Since its inception in 2008, the GEW has come to be a forum for a review of achievements and the setting of new agenda for innovators and indeed business people for the next level of creativity. Over 100 countries have hooked up to this forum to promote innovation and enterprise.
Nigerian entrepreneurs were not left out of this global event. The Enterprise Development Centre of the Pan Atlantic University, which has been at the forefront of entrepreneurship development in the country, last week put up a befitting end-of-year activity for Nigerian entrepreneurs. It culminated in an end-of-year party at the Muson Centre. This forum provided entrepreneurs the opportunity to network, mingle afresh, exchange views and generally unwind.
After the GEW celebrations, Nigerian entrepreneurs must be looking to see what the year 2016 will be for them. There is no doubt that the past one year has been anything but great for them. Having been through an election year in which the name of the game was wait and see, businesses in Nigeria had to wait for the new government, which came on board on May 29, 2015, to settle down to business. This has practically been on for the last six months bringing 2015 to a close.
In effect, therefore, the last one year was shared between the old Jonathan administration and the new Buhari government, making it somewhat difficult for any of them to take full responsibility for the plight of the MSMEs over the last one year. But 2015 is practically over. Most companies are winding down activities and would probably shut down fully by the end of next week. So, in the next few weeks it would be 2016. What should our entrepreneurs expect and what is expected of them?
First, 2016 will be the first full year of the Buhari government, in the sense that they will make their own budget and run it for a full year. Nigerian entrepreneurs would do well to make their views clear to the government, on all matters that are important to them. It is expected that these should have been properly concluded by now but our budgets are usually late in coming. Otherwise by now we probably should all know what the budget is going to contain. Notwithstanding, it is time for fresh thinking in Nigeria.
We are not in the best of times. Although we all had always known that oil will one day cease to be our goose that lays the golden egg, we still never prepared for that eventuality. We have spoken about it for over a quarter of a century. At least since the days of General Babangida, we have been talking of diversifying the economy. This was why he introduced the Structural Adjustment Programme, which was killed by economic renteers seeking to remain in their comfort zones. Needless to trade blames. It is very hard to give up one’s own comfort. Only God-sent “disruptively innovative” leaders like Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore can do it. We wait for ours.
Now the long-awaited end of oil wealth is right here at hand. That commodity, which has brought grievous harm to the people of this country, is fast losing significance. With price looking unrepentantly south, we may now stop talking about economic diversification and really do something about it. And it will be a lot of hard work. With most of us already steeped in conspicuous consumption and economic renteering, it becomes a very hard job to find champions who will do the hard work we need to change the structure of the Nigerian economy. So 2016 is not going to be easy and nobody should start out expecting unrealistic miracles. Things have a tendency to get worse and trough out before they get better. The economy is practically in a recession and could get depressed before it turns around.
Our hope is in these young entrepreneurs. Let us not kill the spirit of enterprise in Nigeria. I have been so worried for our small business people who are likely to face harsher taxation drives. The plan of the states to pursue Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) with all their might scares me. I have consulted for some states on this subject and I find that their focus is mostly on taxing existing enterprises rather than creating opportunities for more enterprises to germinate and grow.
Focusing primarily on the taxation of existing businesses is myopic and short-term in nature, especially in the poorer states where practically all the businesses are subsistent. They have little or nothing to contribute. And if one pushes them too hard they go extinct and provide us with new recruits to the army of the disgruntled and unemployed. Some of the people massing around and asking for all kinds of thing in Nigeria are simply people who have been structured to the periphery of economic and social life in Nigeria. They have nothing to show for their citizenship of this great country in which people that have no factories or inventions own private jets. They have been to school but have nothing doing. The economy has been privatized by a few and those who plunder their national wealth are not investing in the country. So the economy is contracting.
Most of our people are operating in the informal sector. They lack the tools that help people to produce. With increased pressure from tax authorities, who pursue them everywhere in the city, 2016 might yet be worse. In this regard, only innovation and, indeed disruptive innovation, would do. Those at the National Assembly should review all laws that inhibit innovation in all areas of the economy, including especially mining and solid minerals.
The needed innovation includes teaching in the universities, which should know that the era of producing brilliant civil servants is finally over. We should teach students more of how to create wealth than how to manage other people’s wealth. This presupposes that we should look for and promote entrepreneurial traits in our students in addition to celebrating their high academic grades. Academic brilliance is not exactly high thinking capacity. We must promote both.
Let us have innovative products that solve our local problems. Our entrepreneurs should try to insulate themselves from the confusion that seems to pervade the land and do deep thinking. Business cycles are a feature of the capitalist market-oriented economic system. So a time like this is not exactly a curse. It is probably the best time to be alive because it compels us to recoil, rethink and research. It is time for disruptive innovation.
Emeka Osuji
