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The Secret Of Rapid Development Of Established Countries And What Nigeria Can Do To Catch Up — Prof. Femi Olufunmilade

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Director of Contemporary Security Affairs, Igbinedion University, Okada, Edo State, Professor Femi Olufunmilade has in revealing message explained what Nigeria can do to catch up with other developed countries of the world.

In a Video sermon, exclusive to Njenje Media News, the public speaker of repute talked about myriad of issues militating against social-economic advancement of Nigeria and ways to come out and be counted among the committee of established nations.

According to him, for a nation to move forward, it must have development plans. He said ‘development planning is the secret of rapid, accelerated advancement of backward societies or countries into advanced societies’.

He gave a classic example of China’s rise to prominence and how they were able to reach the height.

In his words;

“I did my PhD on China and apart from the thesis I wrote, I also produced this book titled ‘China’s Economic Miracle’, this was published in 2015 and it’s essentially an articulation of the things that China did that brought about such a fantastic accelerated development, that some Western Scholars described it as a Miracle. That was how I titled it ‘China’s Economic Miracle’ . Do you know the secret of that miracle? There is no miracle, it’s planning, strategic development planning, you are able to decide where you want to be in the next 5 years, 10 years, 15 years and that is what China has been doing. China started adopting the development planning mode of development strategies since it became a Socialist country in 1949, but when it decided to review it’s ideological framework, it still stuck to development planning, scientific development planning.”

According to the former SDP Presidential aspirant, China as at 1978 had 1.6 billion US dollars in Foreign reserves but recently and as at the last count, it now has over 4 trillion US dollars, now the second largest economy in the world, the largest trading nation in the world and the first in many things.

“China has lifted hundreds of millions of it’s citizens out of poverty within a short time and it’s said to become the first economy in the world. It is not about if but just about when and that day is just around the corner because if look at the current economic plans they have, it has set up a template for a well-off society , that is a society where virtually everybody is rich by every modern indices” he said.

He said Nigeria started well with the first, second and third development plan but after the third development plan, it derailed.

He said;

Most of the infrastructure you find in this country , some of the universities you call first generation, second generation universities, they were all items within those development plans that we had at the beginning. That was when we looked enviable and the world was looking in our direction because we were serious about where we are going in the economic plan, even though we were having setbacks in terms of civil war , in terms of Military coup d’etat, but we were fortunate that every succeeding administration kept faith with the development plan as at then. But since the 190’s that has not been the case .

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Going further, he said;

“Having a development is a commonsensical thing , you don’t need to over stress it, societies that are developed, that have evolved and today they are developed, like the Western countries did not need anything called scientific development planning , they are already developed, only to ensure that the momentum of advancement is not truncated by ensuring they put in place the right policies.”
“But in a society that it appears that they have not started at all, that they have not taken off, they have not started the journey but then to be able to catch up, we can not afford to follow the evolutionary part of countries like Britain , USA, they need to take advantage of scientific development planning and be able to signpost where they would be in 5 years time, where they would be in 10 years time.”

He advised State Governments to develop at their own pace instead of looking up to the Federal Government for reprieve, charging the State Chief Executives to have a ‘State Development plan’. he said;

” Nothing stops a state , in a situation where you have an unserious Federal Government from having a State Development plan, some of our States, they are bigger than Rwanda in terms of population and in terms of resources endowment. If God has blessed you with serious governors, you can have State development plan and this is how to go about it; You will assemble experts in the field of development planning, we have some of them locally , we have some of them who are in foreign universities , I can be of help but I’m not here to advertise myself but I know exactly how to put a team together. You can go as far as China to seek help , it is allowed, because there is a Chinese saying that ‘It is better for you to be taught how to fish than to be begging for fish’ . If a state has it’s development plan , it can be up to 10 years, it can be up to 15 years, it can even be 30 years, the House of Assembly of that State would be required to give it a legislative backing. The plan will be enforced as a law but there would be clauses there, that there would be room for adjustment in line with changing situations, maybe projections are not aligning with a dynamic economic environment , you can realign the projections but the basics of your plan will remain .What you have to do is a situation where you have a governor coming into office , he just threw aside whatever his predecessor was doing and he starts other things, that’s why you have abandoned projects here and there, that’s why you discover that some policies that were started by previous administration were abandoned by succeeding administration. There is no country, no society, no state that is governed in that manner that will ever develop , that will ever move, they would always be talking about when will you pay civil servants salaries , oh, he has not paid for the past 6 months , He’s not doing anything because the resources , the human resources, the natural resources of that particular state are not been optimally harnessed.”

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“There is no state in Nigeria that should wait on the Federal Government to survive but because people have stopped thinking, every end of the month, they go to Abuja to collect money from Niger Delta oil, nobody is thinking at all , you know, nobody, and since they can not think , now that the naira value has gone down and the real value of the money they get from Federal allocation has also gone done, what will they do? They go borrowing, they are now borrowing, they don’t even care how they will be able to repay those loans , why must we continue on this trajectory when the lessons and benefits of scientific planning , scientific development planning are there for us to pick. When you have a development plan , you can rest assured that you are saying farewell to poverty, you are saying farewell to backwardness, because if it is properly done you’ll achieve sustainable development , sustainable prosperity, your people will become well off , and that is the way of China”.

On strategies to get the best of the grassroots, he opined;

“If I’m to conduct a development planning exercise in let’s say, Ogun State or Oyo State , or Kogi State, what I will need to do is to first conduct a kind of result survey of that state , what did they have? what are their primary farming products, is it cassava, is it millet, what about Yam, what about Cassava, what can we grow there that is not being grown there that can bring money , what about livestock, oh are they rearing goats or are they pastoralists of cattle? Those are the things that you will look for”.

“In terms of the human resources, how educated are there? In what field? Their artisans, the people that have vocational skills, in what area, is it in welding, is it in agro processing, what are the vocational skills the people have? Those are the things that would form the ingredients of the development plans you are going to craft for that state. state. You must align it with potentials that they have, especially the first stages of the development plan.”

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Continuing, he said;

“Maybe the 5 year stage, it’s only at latter stages that you can begin to talk of a development plan that may require inputs from the external environment by way of maybe they are going to develop industries , help produce different types of steel materials, you know they will need to import that because they don’t have steel, maybe those ones will come much later.”

“But at the rudimentary stage, you should just focus on things that are locally available, and the ways and means that you know you would use to execute the plan in Agriculture, in education, in industry, in aqua culture etc would also be part of the plan not just to paint a rosy picture of what you want to do and then the ways and means are not there, that is not going to be a good plan.”

“When you are going to draft a good plan , it must be bottom up, the local people, you need to interview them, you need to look at what are their challenges, and you’ll discover that there are purely riverine communities and transportation is part of their challenges, then you arrange transportation, developing means, maybe boat construction and others would be part of what you put into your industrial components of your plan, so that they would be able to move their goods etc in that environment.”

“I’m just trying to give you a picture of how it is done and then all the necessary stakeholders should be carried along. The politicians from all divides, civil servants, traditional rulers, religious leaders, youths, women groups, they would be able to explain the plan to them in languages they understand so that they can also flow with it because they would have opportunities to harness in it , they would have sacrifices to make for it to become a reality, they would have to own it, otherwise if you just commission some experts, and they craft some beautiful essays, these are the targets, these are the timelines, these are the deliverables, etc and then the people are detached from all those castles you are building in the air, they would remain castles in the air.”

Professor Olunfumilade in his closing remarks called on those who may need his consultancy services be it State governments, NGO’s that wants to help, to contact him on his email address, which is femiology@gmail.com.


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