As you close the week, in Nigeria, my desire is that the size of the opportunities, NOT the readiness of government policies, should drive you to take action. Nations are built by pioneers who typically go ahead of governments. The Carnegie wrote the ordinance in steel before the U.S. government, the Rockefeller created the oil sector before his government, the Mellon engineered banking in new ways. As they expanded, the government now came to regulate them, to avoid them destroying their companies and the nation!
While we hope for agility and efficiency from our government, always remember that only the private sector can improve the public sector because unless the government has resources, via taxes and fees paid by the private sector, nothing will change! The promises of governments are future fees and taxes from the private sector. Without those private sectors, governments cannot do anything.
Nigeria is not in a position to think in months because we do not have resources (yes, we hope we can do better with the little we have). But when our private sector expands, resources will come to governments, and great things will happen. It is ironic – the private sector must advance before the public sector could become efficient. Why? The wealth of nations passes through entrepreneurial capitalism which seeds better public institutions as it pursues the mission of fixing market frictions.
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Think about it: your village local government area (LGA) may not be relevant because there is no major company in that LGA. But the day a big company begins to operate in that area, you will notice that the LGA will start bubbling with resources to do better for the citizens. Simply, the big company is now “funding” the LGA administration through fees and taxes the government is collecting from it. Interestingly, it is nearly impossible for the LGA to advance before a reasonable company begins operating therein. Until Nigeria has pioneers in markets, our local governments will not advance to serve our public needs!
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People build nations, not the other way round. It is only when a nation has risen, it will then have the ability and capacity to build structures and systems, which can now replicate, spread and maintain wealth creation mechanisms.
We usually throw around the overused and misused phrase of ‘creating an enabling environment’, without going further to explain who would fund that creation, obviously the government is equally searching for solutions, if you go to the government with truckloads of money, you will certainly get a front seat, with all the attention giving to you…
The major challenge we have borders on mindset: people keep expecting the government to make the first move, while the government on the other hand keeps giving the conflicting impression that it has all the answers, at the end of the day paralysis remains.
Government cannot create wealth or prosperity out of nothing, the best it can do is to spread and protect it, once created by the people.
The best article I have read today.