Nigerian government is not alone in economic miscalculations because economy is a shared responsibility. Nigerian citizens have deliberate habits that delay economic journey. We have citizens with high tastes for consumption and no skills for production. We know the prices of goods and services but not their value. All our needs are in the market but none of our own products, if any, is marketable. This is a dirge in economic logic. It promotes scissors economy where those who provide our tastes get richer and we the consumers get poorer.
Besides, there is a culture of ‘deliberate excess’ among Nigerians. In our consumerism, we provide more than we need and more than necessary for a ceremony, not because we have them, but to announce our membership of wasting clubs. This superiority complex has enthroned the culture of waste, culture of lavish ceremonies that is currently holding us to ransom. The introduction of buffet and sharing of melamine products as souvenirs in every ceremony is as economically harmful as it is disgusting. It is no longer the pain of losing a dear one that worries the bereaved but the cost of footing a burial. It is no longer lack of faith that holds a woman back at home after childbirth, but the cost of organizing child dedication in the church. It is no longer the pressing needs of school fees, fare, textbooks that worry an undergraduate student but the money to buy androids, bundle plans for pinging, foot club and asebi levies, night clubs, etc.
Cooperate Affairs Commission is reaping in kickbacks of proliferations and registration of social clubs formed by low income earners to raise their prestige. Members of most clubs have no target except to regularly gather at restaurants, burials, weddings, naming ceremonies, churches, title-taking events, etc to squander their contributions and listen to the recorded customized jingles of the club intermittently played by the Disk Jockey (DJ) to hail them.
At such occasions, the members drink to stupor and render themselves unproductive for the rest of the week and use their little savings to run lab test. They impose heavy levy on themselves just to generate money for deliberate excess. A ceremony is rated high if people are unable to finish what we provide or if people eat and drink to stupidity.
It is ridiculous to imagine Nigerian economy developing resilience under such squandering attitudes of its citizens. We import wines, textiles, etc to celebrate our folly, render ourselves useless and leave our potentials untapped. Our forefathers were deceived with dry gin brought by colonialists and today we succumb to the same manipulation in another form. In developed economies, people who have all they need rather than form social clubs to squander their earnings come together to form economic clubs and lay solid foundation for future economic growth.
What Nigeria needs to drive the economy is a rethink of habit and reform of intentions. Understanding the need of an environment is the first step towards industrialization. No sane person sells a coffin in a society where people burn the dead. We must manufacture what people need.
Our clime possesses attractive ingredients for production. Our agricultural and educational sector sectors have largely been under-invested. Despite government’s noise; our minerals resources are untapped; poverty is at the extreme; and social amenities taken for granted in developing societies are visibly nowhere. People are no longer interested in who provides goods or services but want to know if their demands are met.
Happily, wealth in the contemporary world is not simply to be found in resources but rather in ideas, entrepreneurial instincts and skills. The wealth of a nation is no longer stuffed in the group; the wealth of the nations resides in the human mind, in human creativity. Poverty in today’s circumstance is not to be understood simply or simplistically as a matter of having an unequal and inadequate portion of what is imagined to be a fixed number of economic goods. The poor are not problems to be solved but people with potentials to unleash. What Nigerians need is not necessarily government but the will to develop habits and skills that allow us participate in network of global productivity and exchange.
It is therefore normal that we are poor; what is abnormal is that we are not determined and committed to unleashing our potentials. We exhaust economic wisdom in two ways- what we cannot achieve as an individual we achieve as a group. Our problem is usually unwillingness to take risks as a person or a group. Obtaining bank loan for investment is a risk that is becoming less common because of mixed experiences of others. I too entertain such fears especially when investment is not entrusted in the hands of capable administrators.
Nigerian youths are potentials to be unleashed. And coming together as economic club willing to pool resources and mind, they can overthrow government in providing what people need at their own gain. Unity is power. It is power to build with singleness of purpose. Far beyond the founding objectives of our social clubs, Nigeria can use club structure to overtake government and champion the course of private sectors.
In Ebonyi State, for instance, there are cottage industry opportunities waiting to be harnessed; affordable good education and clean water to be provided; spaces in food processing industries, agricultural farms through private or public sector partnership in ways corporative societies do, acquiring machines in such industries as rice mill, quarry. We can import and export with our club names, household brands that meet everyday needs of our people and raise the quality of life.
No doubts, economic clubbing involves risks. Setting up industry demands activities, operation and maintenance of equipment and facilities and indeed the management of industrial production, especially in high technology sector that are becoming more skill-demanding. But these do not detract abundant gains there in. Today there is a dearth of skilled manpower. Club investment can bring appreciation and adoption of some machines just as marketing of our products can provide employment opportunities for the members and empower them to become effective contributors to our economy. We can send our members to acquire skills needed in the operations of our industry.
Realizing these dreams calls for sacrifice. We should be ready to give up certain chronic club habits. The era of squander mania- wearing costly uniforms to show off at celebration; printing almanacs; merry-making and spending scandalously in foods, drinks and at public function must give way. In organizing ceremonies, we should cut our cloaks according to our sizes. We cannot continue to subsidize consumption and leave a pile of debts for our children. If we must borrow to fulfill club commitments, that money must be channeled to production which our children will benefit from.
By my profession, I am not meant to propose technical solution to the question of economic activity of clubs but to preach vibrant public moral accountability and direct club energies so that they can serve the ends of genuine human flourishing. My business is forming the conscience of those who develop these solutions against transcendent moral horizon. It is to tether and order club leadership to moral truth and human goodness, to steer it away from self-centred cannibalizing leadership like government we are plotting to over run. It is in this direction that I see the function of a spiritual director, forming the conscience of club members to use power prudently and respect public naira. Since there are no business concerns, I too have been idle.
