If a man has 10 kids and earns $200 monthly, he will struggle compared to one that has 2 kids and earns $10,000 irrespective of his prudence or fund efficiency. Harvard University’s budget is 3x the WHOLE of Nigeria’s education budget, yet people are arguing that Nigeria’s problem is wholly mismanagement of funds. While we need to get better at managing the little we have, I want you to understand that there is a limit on efficiency. Unless Nigeria has more tax revenues, via growing private sector, the education ministry even at highest efficiency will continue to struggle. Yes, the private sector will rise before that education ministry would have a chance!
Nigeria needs business pioneers to rise before political ones can emerge because markets will fund better ecosystems of improved public sector and public governance.
The Mirage of “Enabling Environment” for Business in Nigeria
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This conversation is really way beyond what a lot of people are used to, so it’s hard to connect with reality and raw data.
If you need $5B for Calabar-Abuja railway line, and you only have $500M available, is there any level of efficiency that can deliver the project? Absolutely none!
Without Nigerians understanding the revenue profile of federal government, all these misconceptions and cliches will continue. Of course when you have been brainwashed for decades that ‘Nigeria is a very rich country, only that their leaders steal everything’, it becomes difficult to believe otherwise.
The politicians you are accusing also want to succeed, else nobody would be talking about borrowing $30B, it is because they want to score wins, and the money has to come from somewhere.
If you focus on accusing the government of mismanagement, in another ten years, the situation will remain the same or worse. But if you focus on engineering growth, creating more revenues sources, even with all the mismanagement, you will still be better off in another decade.
The fact that people are debating this is a confirmation that Nigerians aren’t ready to move forward yet, so the blames and counter accusations can go on forever!
Great to know and well appreciated.
However the little one has can be better managed with probity and accountability.
Not the large sums we keep hearing being stolen now and then, and the inappropriate allocations in the budget with the lean resources available.
You prioritise spending with a low budget, not allocating almost the same amount to NASS renovation as you would health and education.
Not allocating large funds into black holes like constituency projects.
It is really hard to match data with reality. A lot of people still believe that Nigeria is rich and politicians have all the money in the world to sponsor the entire economy unfortunately, they are all wrong.