THE GOVERNMENT DOES NOT ALLOW NIGERIANS TO BUILD A VIABLE ECONOMY.
In a prior article, I had asked why, in spite of our enormous human, natural and intellectual resources, we Nigerians cannot build a viable economy.
I also gave a response by saying it is the government that does not allow Nigerians to use our resources to build a viable economy. Period.
I will emphasize this point by expatiating further. The government stands firmly in the way of the Nigerian, making it highly impossible to use his God given talents to better his life. It does this by providing sinecures for highly talented individuals; creating laws and legislation that are obviously inimical to wealth creation; restraining those who may still want to try by throwing the bureaucracy at them; confusing still others with enormous legalisms to discourage them; denying still others with the ability to raise capital; ensuring that those with capital have no access to investment opportunities; making sure that there are no conducive environments to practice that talent that can benefit the nation; confusing the populace that they, and not the people, will be responsible to provide the good life; and doing anything and everything to kill human incentive. These are what our government does.
The results:
1. Those Nigerians who live outside our country and who have tremendous human and financial resources to invest in our economy stay away from Nigeria.
2. Those Nigerians who live in Nigeria, who have some intellectual resources try to flee the country at the earliest opportunity.
3. Those Nigerians who have come into money legally or trough crooked means take the monies out of the economy to invest in other forward looking economies
4. Our university graduates and others, not knowing better, hold on even tighter to the apron-string of the government, hoping that the government will do something about their plight. They will not.
5. The government keeps on making fantastic promises which it knows it will never keep.
Consequently, the people become poorer in spite of their enormous capabilities to create wealth for themselves and others to live a better life.
It must be assumed that I will continue with this article later. But before I do this, I wish to take this opportunity to address some issue raised by Mr. Adeshina Afolayan to the previous article. I must say categorically that I do not intend for our government to be lean or minimal. I must also say that I do not know the gentlemen Osborne and Gaebler that he referred to, neither have I read their publication. I also did not intend that article to be an apology for capitalist understanding.
I am coming to my commonsense conclusions based on my real life experiences in that place which we call the bastion of capitalism, America, and what operates in my own country Nigeria. It is definitely not my wish to prescribe what goes on in America for Nigeria.
It is my hope that in a later article, I will be able to address the issue of how our intellectuals juxtapose ideas garnered from the West or East in solving our problems without actually studying us or experiencing what goes on in Nigeria.
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