Security issues often go a lot deeper than what we can ordinarily associate with it. There are real security challenges that lie ahead. The signs are apparent, looking at global trends and other indicators that reveal issues that portend future risk and insecurity that should be treated from a strategic viewpoint.
What are the current burning issues in Nigeria today that we are not paying attention to? We heard of the recent buzz about the ‘modern day’ slavery in our continent. Some of these young people are educated migrants and are mostly Nigerians. They move out at all cost to seek greener pastures and ‘better life’ outside Nigeria. We should all be concerned that the next generation that forms Nigeria’s productive future are frustrated. Perhaps, the country is no longer meeting their aspirations. Perhaps, they don’t see a future in their own country and continent. And yet, they need to survive regardless of whether they have made the right choices or not under their present circumstances. They are mostly unemployed and employable with majority suffering under the burden of poverty. There are several issues and we can go on listing them. But that is not the big story!
The major issue we will like to highlight is that there is an unveiling trend awaiting explosion. The UN and IMF have informed that countries planning for the next ten to twenty years ahead should take into consideration the projected increase in global population. Nigeria’s population will move to about 300 million in the next decade with a projected population total of 1.4 billion in Africa. This dramatic expansion in the population should be factored into our strategic national development plan as well as national security plan.
Meanwhile, with such population potentials in Africa, it is about time we began to change the way our young people and government view production. We need to enable the total value-added production in Africa for the next generation ahead of us. Africa still plans around commodities like cocoa, coffee, rubber, sesame seed, shea butter, tin, etc. We have done that for centuries and has still not made the difference. Our people and economy are still left behind with the permanent description of “developing countries”. When will the definition change to the league of the developed economies? In the same vein, it had been projected that Asia’s population will equally explode in the region of 3 billion within the same period with most of those population moving to the medium to high-income levels. How is Nigeria or Africans projecting to capitalize on the expected high consumption level and needs of this new consumers with high purchasing power? How will the next generation of Nigerians leverage this development? How is Nigeria or African planning to turn the table by moving from commodities to value-added production rather than lose these group? When will we begin to reimagine our production to value-added production? How are we preparing to begin to make our cocoa into chocolates that will be consumed by Asians? When will our rubber and other commodities end up as finished products on the other side? What this means is that the productive/manufacturing sector must change to comply with sustainability indicators that will enable us to change our production formats and reconfigure our strategic thought process while transforming our young productive generation into a strength to leverage pending explosion.
Companies and individuals should be empowered to engage in value-added production. This is especially imperative in a time when we have already begun to contribute to the world, not only with our natural resources but also with our young Africans who have been infused with the entrepreneurial spirit which empowers them to embrace real value-adding productive and strategic thinking. We need to evolve to that point in the production value chain where chocolate is exported instead of cocoa. Coffee will then be sold as finished products, not as raw coffee; and cotton will be exported as fabrics or fashion materials. The real value is derived more from selling “value-adding” finished products. Looking ahead to the future, say in ten years from now, this narrative should have changed for Nigeria.
Global climate change is another major challenge to watch out for. Flooding is predicted to destroy over 50% of Africa’s local food production yields during this same period. How have we positioned and prepared ourselves for the effect of this natural disaster, supposing the prediction becomes reality? Do we even have the capacity and platforms in place to understand these indicators today? If we do not take proactive steps towards understanding the effects of climate change to our economy and country, what we see today – in terms of outward migration – will be child’s play in comparison to future “flood refugees” across our continent. These will have a tremendous effect on our national security in future if not roundly addressed today.
The Nigerian migrants, for instance, that are being rescued from the aforementioned slavery are being brought back to the country. Who will employ them? How are we going to make them more productive? What process is in place to rehabilitate them into the society? If we do not have an answer to their issues, how can we help their circumstances? The reality is that the growing population trend has a major adverse impact on the nation’s security. What becomes of the youths as we continue to grow and do not have ways to feed and contain them? How will the impact of drought, reducing yields, population growth, unemployment, unrealistic and high-interest rates, global competitiveness, and so on, come back to hunt our national security ten to twenty years from today? We need to ensure it does not become our biggest problem in the country.
An empowered private sector, a true commitment to local content in every sphere, empowered leadership, good governance and clear national vision are what we must refuse to pay lip service to. We need of all these articulated into a national vision and purpose to give effect to all the aforementioned.
UN and IMF have provided indicators about empowering the Nigerian youth. What is the government doing to partake of the global pie of development in ten to twenty years from now? The government must have a deliberate policy to identify the leading enterprises or companies across key sectors across the business landscape to be deliberately empowered to become giants in their fields, as Nigeria truly becomes the pivot to drive and lead the West African economy and ultimately Africa into the next frontiers – where the eagle and the horses in our national emblem can truly be strong, and where we can unleash at least over two thousand enterprises operating in the capacity of at least a quarter of the Dangotes of today.
Today, there is an opportunity for the government to privatise and commercialise certain key government facilities and infrastructure across various sectors. What is the real plan, over and beyond lip service, to empower true enterprises that have been blazing the trail in their sectors to partake and be part of the process by policy design and commitment to ensure solid and serious enterprises engage with the global participation on the altar of excellence? Policies must encourage leading Nigerian service companies to be fully engaged in that process in a way where all the work is not left to foreign companies at the expense of capacity building. For this to happen, we need a deliberate plan and an active engagement of the first five biggest players of every sector of the Nigerian economy to scale up and engage at the scale of global excellence in taking the commanding heights of our economy and our destiny in our hands for the sake of tomorrow and future security of our country. We have no other country, but this one. And it can be made to be a great one that it had always had the potential to be. A developed Nigeria is a developed Africa. That is the tragedy of this modern slavery saga!
