NIGERIA IS POOR BECAUSE WE LACK TECHNOLOGY
By
Fakinlede Kayode
The reason Nigeria is poor is because we lack technology to manage the affairs of nearly 200 million people.
As long as we are not prepared to embrace technology to manage our affairs, we will remain poor - never mind the president's strident call to go back to agriculture. Agriculture is definitely never going to make us a rich nation or a modern nation.
We lack technology in the management of our people, management of our natural resources, and management of our finances, and management of our agricultural resources. Now, one would think that when the president calls for us to go back to agriculture, he means that we should embrace technology in agriculture. But no, what he really means is that we go back to the farms to produce more food. The Yoruba adage that says once food is out of a man's problems, all other things are manageable seems to play some tricks in the mind of our Fulani president. Really, a man's problems do not end with a bowl of rice or fufu.
I define technology as the scientific interaction of a community with its natural resources to produce goods and services for the well being of its populace. Once the community is not properly constituted to interact scientifically with its resources, goods and services will not be produced in enough quantity to satisfy the wants of the community.
The crux of the matter therefore is to effectively constitute the society to make this said interaction possible. In societies and communities that we describe as technological, we see that every member is doing what he is supposed to do. He may not be doing it efficiently but he is doing it nevertheless. Let me say that this goes well beyond the fact that someone trained in the university as a lawyer is doing the job of a doctor. It addresses the fact that the president himself is doing things that he is not supposed to be doing and not doing what he is supposed to be doing. The same goes for our legislators, governors, etc.
This makes our 'modern' Nigerian community less scientifically run than before our independence and tremendously worse that the pre-agricultural society from which we are trying to emerge. Now most pre-agricultural communities are definitely run technologically, and that is why there were no extensive poverty or lack of employment as we see today. The king definitely knows his bounds and would definitely not pretend that he would find employment for everyone. Now we can argue that the communities were not efficiently run however, people were not working at cross purposes as we are doing presently.
In order to run Nigeria technologically, the president, governors, legislators etc., first and foremost must define their bounds, stay within those bound, and make every one understand that they cannot function outside of those bounds.
A president that is supposed to run an oil company, electricity company, airline, rail system, shipping companies, etc,; fight corruption, jail erring judges; get employment for university graduates; create work for non-graduates, educate the masses for employment, create agricultural systems etc, build roads, universities, low cost housing etc. is a president whose bounds are neither created nor known.
He will fail.
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