The State of the Nation by Ray Ekpu

1. The State of our Nation, being a speech delivered by
Ray Ekpu, CEO of MayFive Media Limited at a
conference on Africa’s Future held in Lagos on April
9, 2018.
Protocols:
Dr Tosin Ajayi, the convener of this conference, is a medical doctor
who is passionate not only about the state of medicine in Africa but
the state of other things in the continent. Even though I was assigned
to speak on the State of our Nation I ask for your permission to say a
few things, kind and unkind, about our dear continent. The reason
for this is that Nigeria is a very important nation in Africa with a
significant influence on its affairs. It has, in the past, intervened in a
benign fashion as a trouble shooter in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory
Coast and Gambia to mention but a few. These patriotic
interventions had brought the gift of stability and some healing balm
to those afflicted and conflicted countries. So what affects Africa,
affects Nigeria to a large or small extent. Nigeria is linked by some
umbilical cord to the rest of Africa and many countries in Africa,
rightly or wrongly, look up to Nigeria for support and succor.
What Dr Tosin Ajayi has embarked upon is a gigantic task because
Africa looks like a huge basket case. Africans and westerners have
been pouring water into this basket for decades but the rewards
seem meagre. Dr. Ajayi seems unfazed and undaunted by the
enormity of the problem. I want to think that in embarking on this
gigantic task he is thinking like Edmund Burke who said: “No one
could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he
could do only a little.” When my Newswatch colleagues and I met
Dr. Ajayi a few weeks ago in his office he turned the pleased – to –

2. see – you again meeting into a lecture on Africa and its disabilities.
On the wall of his expansive office are graphs and charts. I had to
ask him: “Are you running for something?” He said No. that shows
you that this meeting he has convened is a labour of love, a show of
tender loving care for Nigeria and Africa. Tosin, thank you very
much.
In the sixties and seventies many countries were lowering the
fluttering flags of their colonisers and raising their own brand new
flags denoting their independence, a former British Prime Minister, Mr
Harold Macmillan dubbed it the “wind of change.” That joyful
liberation of these countries, mostly without a shooting war brought
with the spectre of rising expectations. Sadly after several decades
many Africans feel that most of these wide ranging expectations
have remained largely unfulfilled. But it has not been all a story of
woes, or of wallowing in the wilderness. There have been a few
positives.
In the democratic front, countries such as Botswana, Mozambique,
Mauritius and Ghana have been outstanding in managing the affairs
of their countries. In particular Botswana is a showpiece of
democratic engineering in Africa. Not much else can be said for the
efficient practice of democracy in most countries in Africa.
Also to be applauded is the fact that wars and coups have
significantly declined and in most parts of the continent there has
been an outbreak of peace.
There has also been a large measure of regenerative agriculture on
account of intensive food crop production. In some parts of East
Africa serious attention is paid to afforestation to check the
rapacious advance of desertification.
There has been an admirable sprinkling of young inventors,
entrepreneurs, music, drama, dance and comedy wizards in the

3. continent. In this wise Nigeria is outstanding with its Nollywood
occupying third place in the pantheon of world movie makers after
America’s Hollywood and India’s Bollywood. It churns out more than
2000 films per year.
We have also taken the podium at the Nobel Laurette awards of
Peace and Literature. Our own Professor Wole Soyinka brought this
honour to Nigeria when he became the first Nobel Laurette in
Literature in Africa in 1986.
Africa is endowed with a lot of natural resources. About 30% of
global mineral resources are in Africa. Ghana and South Africa have
40% of the world’s reserves of gold. Democratic Republic of Congo
and Togo have 60% of the world’s cobalt reserves. Africa possesses
important mineral deposits that include bitumen, limestone,
phosphate, clay, marble and uranium. One of the important mineral
deposits that are very popular right now is coltan which is used in
mobile phones. Nigeria, Angola, Libya, Gabon and Congo are major
oil producers while Chad and Equatorial Guinea have barely begun
to tap their own oil. Besides these, Africa’s Congo Basin is the second
largest forest basin in the world, second only to the Amazon in Latin
America.
And what have we done with all these assets for these decades.
Look at these facts: seventy per cent of the people in the world with
HIV/Aids live Africa. If you get HIV/Aids in the west you take
antiretroversals and you survive for years. In Africa you hardly have
access to these drugs. You die with it and they tell you it is witchcraft
that killed you or your brother who wants to be the next Aliko
Dangote. In Africa, about 1 million people die of malaria a year.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) about 275 million
people in sub Saharan Africa carry the mosquito parasite. Also
700,000 people reportedly die from diarrheal diseases while typhoid
kills some 130,000 yearly in the continent.

4. Look at these facts too. African countries have lost at least 50% of
their doctors to foreign countries as at the year 2000. Angola lost 70%
of its doctors to Portugal, Guineaa Bissau lost 71% to Portugal, Liberia
63% to the United States, Mozambique lost 75% to Portugal, Sao
Tome & Principe lost 61% to Portugal, Equatorial Guinea lost 63% to
Spain and Malawi 59% to Great Britain. Also between 1992 and 1995,
Nigerian universities lost 883 teachers to foreign universities (Source of
Information: Clemens and Patterson 2006). Why were these well-
educated Africans going abroad in droves? It is because the
operating environments at home were not conducive for beneficial
professional practice in Africa. If you want to engage in finger
pointing do so in the direction of Africa’s rulers. A gang of brutal
dictators and unconscionably corrupt and rapacious political,
military and business elite have in mafia-like maneuvers in most
countries in Africa impoverished the people, killed the operating
environment and brought the philosophy of sit-tightism into
governance. These are some of the people who have been the
deciders of Africa’s destiny. Each of these despots ruled their
countries for not less than 20 years. Mr. Paul Biya of Cameroons (36
years), Mr. Ngeso of Congo (39 years), Mr. Dos Santos of Angola (39
years), Mr.Museveni of Uganda (32 years), Mr. Idris Deby of Chad (28
years) and Mr Jammeh of Gambia (21 years). There were also other
jesters in places – Mobutu Sese Seko, Jean Bedel Bokasa, General Idi
Amin, Mr. Eyadema. The most recent tyrant who had to be shown
the hot nozzle of a gun before he threw in the towel was Mr.
Mugabe of Zimbabwe. He had held that beleaguered country by
the throat for 38 years falling and rising at public events at the age of
93. Yet he was not ready or willing to go. His concubine – Secretary
whom he converted into a wife, the luxury loving Gucci Grace
wanted the old man to stay on for ever. She even said that Mugabe
could win an election even as a corpse. Those are most of the
people who were running and ruining countries in Africa. So what

5. did you expect to get from Africa? If you put in garbage in
leadership you take out garbage in accomplishment. That is what
Chester Crocker, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs
called Afro-Pessimism. Some African scholars led by Professor Ebere
Onwudiwe and Professor Minabere Ibelema have published a book
titled Afro-Optimism, Perspectives on Africa’s Advances. This is
supposed to be a counterpoint to the much reported stories of war,
conflict, famine, disease, poverty and brutal sit-tight leadership in
Africa.
I leave you to think what you want to think about Africa and to
determine for yourself whether it is on the top floor, middle floor or
the ground floor.
Let me now deal with how Nigeria stands in the African equation, in
other words, the State of our Nation. When the Union Jack was
lowered and the green white green flag of Nigeria was hoisted on
October 1, 1960, we who were around then all broke into song and
dance. We were independent. The colonialists have gone. We will
run our affairs by ourselves. Unlike many countries in Africa we
acquired that independence without firing a shot. At the hoisting of
the Nigerian flag on October 1, 1960 the Prime Minister Sir Abubakar
Tafawa Balewa had said: “Today’s ceremony marks the culmination
of a process which began 15 years ago and has now reached a
happy and successful conclusion. It is with justifiable pride that we
claim the achievement of our independence to be unparalleled in
the annals of our history. Each step of our constitutional advance has
been purposely and peacefully planned with full and open
consultation not only between representatives of all the various
interests in Nigeria but in harmonious cooperation with the
administering power which has today relinquished its authority.”
The euphoria was short-lived. Five short years later the dam broke.
The soldiers marched into our lives with their big boots and booted

6. the civilian government out of power in a bloody coup on January
15, 1966. Six months later, precisely on July 29, 1966 another coup,
also bloody took place bringing unexpected complication into the
life of the newly minted nation. The series of crises that followed the
two coups led to the loss of trust and faith in the country’s unity.
Inspite of the best efforts of our leaders – including some African
leaders – the country drifted into a civil war, the Biafran war that
lasted 30 months following the declaration of the then Eastern region
as the Republic of Biafra by Lt.Col Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, while
some countries fought a war to acquire their independence we
fought a war to consolidate our independence.
By the gift of hindsight Nigeria was a happy country before the
January 15, 1966 coup. Eventhough the coup leader talked about
corruption and the desire of his partners to deal with ten percenters
the situation has been, by comparison, far worse in subsequent
years. In the First Republic, the roads were well maintained all the
year round, by what was called PWD (Public Works Department).
Today in many parts of the country children use shovels to fill the
potholes on public highways in exchange for a few coins by
motorists. Today cars slow down and crawl at extremely
unmotorable portions of the road where traders have wisely
established mammy markets. There they sell bananas, groundnuts,
plantain and pure water. But the bad news is that armed bandits
sometimes waylay motorists at such points when they have to slow
down either to buy what is on offer or simply to drive carefully
through those rock-and-roll roads. Another dimension of the roads
palaver in recent times is that federal roads are badly maintained or
not maintained at all. Some state governments take up the
responsibility. Some of them mischievously plant signboards that
read: “This is a federal road but we are fixing it. Please bear with us.”

7. In the 60s agriculture was the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy.
Eventhough crude oil was discovered in 1956 at Oloibiri in present
day Bayelsa State the first oil export took place in February 1958.
Agriculture was our beautiful bride. We wooed her assiduously and
she responded favourably. The soil showed us its generosity. We
would drop a few seeds in the ground and within a few months it
would smile at us with a bumper harvest. That is how we had the
groundnut pyramids in the North, the cocoa mountains in the West,
the rubber plantations in the Midwest and the oil palm forests in the
East. In some parts of the country we had comfortable farm houses
with electricity and water. The farms put clothes on our backs, roofs
over our heads and food in our stomachs. If you didn’t have a white
collar job, and most people didn’t, the farm provided you with a
blue collar job. From the farms the people were able to take care of
their families and to send their children to schools here and abroad.
Then something happened. Crude oil arrived. We started exporting it
in 1958. The dollars rolled in and we cultivated the culture of
conspicuous consumption, consumption without production. But we
still managed to prosecute the civil war without borrowing a kobo.
Did we invest the money in regenerative projects that could have
sustained us in lean times? We did not. We were simply import
merchants. We had what came to be called the rice armada, the
cement armada and other armadas that choked our ports – a
reflection of our unbridled profligacy. We even paid the salaries of
civil servants in the West Indies. That was the period that General
Yakubu Gowon, our Head of State at the time, was quoted as saying
that money was not our problem but how to spend it. Today at least
30 of our State Governments are unable to pay the salaries of their
workers. Today the problem is not a problem of how to spend the
money. It is that of finding the money.

8. The oil boom brought a massive rural-urban drift in search of the
bright lights and pleasures of the city. We sent our hoes and
matchets on retirement. We picked up our shiny brief cases in search
of crude oil contracts. With a piece of paper issued to you by
someone in the pinnacle of decision-making you could become a
dollar millionaire without raising a finger in honest labour. Professor
Wole Soyinka has suggested that in some cases if any woman was
ready to lift her skirt she could easily lift oil. I can’t vouch for the
veracity or otherwise of this claim so don’t quote me.
Oil put springs in our feet. We started to swagger. We bought all
kinds of exotic cars, state of the art electronics etc. We imported
everything importable, useful and not so useful. This was the period
that we were proud to say, borrowing from the title of Nkem
Nwankwo’s book, “My Mercedes is bigger than yours.” Now we
have graduated into a higher grade. We now say not my SUV is
bigger than yours but “my private jet is bigger than yours.”
At this time we had started engaging in the reckless defamation of
Agriculture: it dirties our fingers; it breaks our backs; it takes us to the
bush where mosquitoes abound; it damages our nail polish; it causes
waist pain. We found a thousand reasons to despise and maltreat a
friend that had been a faithful ally simply because we thought we
had found a more beautiful bride: oil. We ran our River Basin
Authorities aground or simply killed them with corruption. Corruption
corroded our dam projects, our silo projects and our fertilizer
acquisition and distribution. In 1973, we launched the National
Accelerated Food Production Scheme. Noble idea targeted at high
yielding species of crops. The scheme has been a roaring success in
Malaysia, South Korea, India and Mexico but not in Nigeria.
We woke up in the late 70s to find out that there was not much food
on our table and we did not have much money amidst competing
alternatives to pay for food importation because we had

9. squandered our riches. Like a woman neglected by a husband she
had served very well in the past Agriculture kicked hard. The Federal
Government woke up in 1976 to start an agricultural programme it
called Operation Feed the Nation (OFN). Some cynics labeled it
Operation Fool the Nation on account of its underachievement.
When President Shehu Shagari took over government in 1979, he
apparently thought that the problem was with the name. he called
his own Green Revolution. But it never had the attributes of
greenness or of a revolution.
Please permit me to say that despite our enormous wealth there has
been a progressive deterioration in public amenities. Take electricity
for example. Our struggle with providing electricity to our citizens is
sadly laughable. We used to have a corporation called Electricity
Corporation of Nigeria but because of its low performance Nigerians
nicknamed it Electricity Conservation of Nigeria. And when we
changed the name to National Electric Power Authority, Nigerians
ever so cynically creative called it Never Expect Power Always. Now
we have a new name Power Holding Company of Nigeria. Nigerians
think the name that best fits it is Power Hoarding Company of
Nigeria.
Nigeria has spent stratospheric sums of money on electricity over the
years but we have very little to show for it. President Umaru Yar’Adua
said that Nigeria spent $10 billion on electricity generation during
President Olusegun Obasanjo’s time in office. However, the Speaker
of the House of Representatives, Mr Dimeji Bankole said that the
figure for those eight years was about $16 billion. Yet it is only
recently that Nigeria claimed to have attained 7000 megawatts
mark which is even thoroughly unstable. South Africa with a
population of about 50 million has about 60,000 megawatts;
Malaysia with a 32 million population in 2013 has 30,000 megawatts.
Egypt as at 2008 was generating 33,000 megawatts. Brazil with a

10. population of 188 million generates 90,000 megawatts while South
Korea with a population of 49 million generates 44,000 megawatts.
To fill the gap we had to find our way to the world’s generator
manufacturers.
The Manufacturers’ Association of Nigeria has put the number of
Nigerians who own generators of various sizes at 60 million and that
they spend about N1.56 billion to fuel them yearly. Jubail Moukarem
Group, a Lebanese medium sized company started importing
generators into Nigeria in 1998 with about 600 generators yearly. By
2008 it had risen to 4,000 yearly. I don’t know what the figure is as we
speak.
The Financial Vanguard of January 28, 2008 detailed the use of
generators by some banks in Nigeria. United Bank for Africa spends
N61.32 million a week to fuel generators in its 730 branches.
Intercontinental Bank spends N21 million per week on its 250
generators; Fidelity Bank spends N10 million weekly on its 120
generators; Ecobank N10.9 million weekly on its 130 generators;
Equitorial Trust Bank N60 million for its 72 generators and Union Bank
N33.6 million weekly for its 400 generators. It is a crying shame that
this high consumption of generators is occurring in a country that has
abundant gas which is flared away every second, hydro-electric
power potential and solar and wind energy potential.
In the 60s and 70s our universities were well regarded globally
because the standard was high. Our universities attracted many
foreign students and lecturers which gave a sort of international
flavour. Today most of them look like glorified secondary schools. But
the experts say that the problem started from 1976 when the Federal
Government introduced the Universal Primary Education. In 1975 the
enrolment figure was six million. But with the introduction of free and
compulsory primary education the figure ballooned to 8.5 million in
1976. It hit 15 million pupils in 1982 but the funding level did not

11. match the explosion. So the standard plummeted from that level up.
Other factors may have combined to do the damage shortage of
teachers and facilities, incessant strikes, the birth of cultism, exam
malpractices etc. In 2001 the World Bank issued a damning report on
education in Nigeria. It said: “University graduates are poorly trained
and unproductive on the job. Graduate skills have steadily
deteriorated over the past decade.” Employers, fully aware of the
dip in quality, now look for, mostly, graduates who were trained
abroad, or who have two or three degrees or those who have a first
class or second class upper division degrees that they can train to
improve their skill sets. These strategies leave many of our graduates
pounding the streets daily with a very slim chance of being
employed. Professor Wole Soyinka had suggested sometime ago
that all the universities should be shut for a year or two so that
stakeholders can find a solution to the problem. That is a drastic
measure that education activists, students and parents are unwilling
to hear. But truth must be told, the situation is terribly bad. I was on
an interview panel some years ago. What happened there shocked
me. A law graduate was asked at the interview: where does an
appeal from the Court of Appeal go to? She said: High Court.
Another graduate, an Accountant was asked to explain what a
Balance Sheet is. She squeezed her face, pouted, opened her
mouth but nothing came out. The panelists were underwhelmed by
such a palpable display of ignorance. This is not a representative
sample but it still indicates in some tangential way the dip in the
standard of our education and the depth of the decay. Indira
Gandhi, former Prime Minister of India once said: “Nothing is
absolutely perfect. Sunshine is accompanied by a shadow.” No one
expected our educational system to be perfect but no one also
expected it to be this imperfect. I believe we do need to hold a
colloquium on education. This should be a gathering of the clan:
students, lecturers, parents, employers, civil society groups, alumni

12. associations and donors. Nothing short of a holistic review of where
we are, how we got here and where we need to be will be good
enough. At the convocation of the University of Uyo in June 2001
where he was given an honorary doctorate degree Chief Ufot
Ekaette, then Secretary to the Government of the Federation had
said: “Our educational system is a near perfect mirror-image of our
national lives, a paradox of affluence and extreme poverty, a pious
people living in abject bankruptcy and the emergence of
conflicting value systems which detracted from the effort to focus
attention and energy on the task of social regeneration, genuine
economic development and a sustainable democratic system.” I
agree entirely.
A large part of our problem in the last 57 years as a nation has been
the pervasiveness of corruption and its easy acceptability as a way
of life by many Nigerians. It comes in many and varied forms. The
Policeman says to a motorist “your boys are here--ooo.” What is
that? Corruption. The security man at a bank does not know who
you are but he calls you “Chairman.” What is that? Corruption. One
day I was arriving at the Lagos Airport from Abuja. On arrival I picked
up some newspapers. One young man came and grabbed the
newspapers. I thought he wanted me to dash him the newspapers
so I told him I had not read them yet so I could not give them to him.
He said he only wanted to hold them for me so I could give him
something.
The menace of the police who torment motorists especially
commercial drivers is well known so the least said about them the
better. I learn that cashiers who collect revenue for government also
ask for their egunje. You must pay them some money before they
collect money from you. Otherwise they tell you if you don’t pay
armed robbers will take the money from you when you are going
back home. By far the biggest corruption episodes occur mainly in

13. contract awards and execution as well as in the oil industry. A few
years ago, the Federal Government set up a team to investigate
contract pricing in comparison with projects of similar size in other
African countries. It was discovered that in general projects in
Nigeria cost as much as twice or thrice the cost in other African
countries.
If you want to trace the growth path of corruption, its devilish
trajectory in Nigeria you will discover that the monster has been
growing exponentially since Nzeogwu first talked about ten
percenters. When Murtala Muhammed overthrew Gowon he set up
a committee to investigate the 12 Governors that served under
Gowon. Ten of them were found guilty of corruption. Only two were
certified to be above board. Since then corruption has been walking
on four legs despite the best efforts of subsequent governments.
You may remember that there was a man who ran the affairs of this
beleaguered country. His name is General Sani Abacha. He set a
new record in kleptomania. By government estimates this autocratic
ruler had stolen, by the time he died, about $6 billion dollars and
stashed it away in various coded accounts in various countries. So his
government was one that was defined by two demons, autocracy
and kleptocracy. We can never say how Nigeria managed to
survive from drinking that poisonous cocktail, autocracy and
kleptocracy.
Let us turn attention to the oil industry for that is the headquarters,
the epicenter of corruption. It is logical that corruption should take
up residence there because that is where the bulk of the country’s
money – in naira and dollars – is located. Let me give you a few
verified examples:
(a) In December 2011 the Federal Government permitted a
forensic report conducted by KPMG, a well-known consulting

14. and auditing firm to be published. The audit commissioned by
the Federal Ministry of Finance discovered lots of sharp business
practices, violation of regulations, illegal deductions of funds
belonging to the states and failure to account for several
billions of naira that should go to the Federation Account.
Auditors found that between 2007 and 2009 the NNPC
overdeducted funds in subsidy claims to the tune of N28.5
billion. It has not been able to account for it. When I read
recently of their story about subsidy claims I simply said to
myself: aha, here we go again. I said so because transactions
at the NNPC are always opaque and impenetrable so
whatever they tell you about money please take it with a pinch
of salt.
(b) In May 2009 Willbros Group Inc, a US company, admitted
to making corrupt payments totaling over $6.3 million to officials
of the NNPC. It also included its subsidiary NAPIMS. This money
was paid in return for assistance in obtaining and retaining
contract for work on the Eastern Gas Gathering System (EGGS).
(c) In July 2004, ABB Vetco Gray, a US company and its UK
subsidiary ABB Vetco Gray UK Limited admitted to paying over
$1 million in bribes to officials at NNPC subsidiary NAPIMS in
exchange for obtaining confidential bid information and
favourable recommendations from Nigerian government
agencies.
(d) In November 2013 after a report was published by Swiss
Non-Governmental advocacy organization – Erklaring Von Bern
– allegations of heavy fraud surfaced placing the NNPC under
the weather for siphoning $6.8 billion in crude oil revenues.
There are several other cases. An official audit reported in March
2016 that the NNPC had failed to pay $1.6 billion to the Federation
Account. What of the recent $25 billion controversy raised by the
Minister of State for Petroleum Resources? What of the recent

15. withholding of about N30 billion by the NNPC which made the states
to boycott the November 2017 Federation Account meeting. The
NNPC then forked out about N30 billion from somewhere for sharing.
What of the Haliburton allegations in which two or three former
Presidents are allegedly involved. Some culprits have been jailed in
the US but in Nigeria nothing has yet happened.
You do not need more examples from me. You probably are aware
of some of them yourself. This country is thoroughly, thoroughly
corrupt, fantastically corrupt. I have spoken at a couple of places
about what I call the Bermuda Triangle of Corruption. It consists of
three deadly components (a) The civil and public servants. They
work on contract papers, source for contractors, pad the budgets
and plant ghosts on the payroll. (b) The Military and Civilian political
elite. They award the contracts; they assign oil blocks; oil lifting
contracts; fuel importation with appropriate cushion built in for
“chopping.” (c) The professional elite. These are the businessmen,
auditors, accountants, lawyers, quantity surveyors, architects,
contractors, security agents. They work together, seamlessly, fluently
as an organized conspiratorial mafia to ensure that corruption is alive
and well and their pockets are also alive and well. They are
entrenched in the system. They oil the system with the profit from
their dirty deals. They fight for the system to survive and grow in their
own image. They arrange who wins elections. They buy the voters,
buy election officials, buy election tribunal officials, they buy the
lawyers on both sides of a case, they buy the judges when they can.
The federal government is correct in making some noises about
curbing corruption. President Muhammadu Buhari says that about
$150 billion have been squirreled out of the country. I think that is
what he has been able to locate. It is probably much larger than
that. Other estimates suggest that about $182 billion was stolen from
Nigeria and stashed offshore between 2000 and 2009. In all it is

16. believed that about $500 billion has been lost to graft in Nigeria since
independence. The World Bank estimates that about $250 billion was
embezzled by former Governors and politically exposed persons
between 2005 and 2007. According to the bank’s assessment every
$100 million of those stolen potential development finance could
have funded 3.3 to 10 million treated bed nets, first time treatment
for over 600,000 people for one year, HIV/Aids management, water
connections for 250,000 households or 240 kilometres of two lane
paved roads. Let me declare here that to fight corruption is a
worthy, a very worthy cause to which all of us should in our own
ways, big and small, subscribe. We must assist the government to
succeed. I know that the success is likely to be obviously limited
because corruption in Nigeria is rooted in the system, in the way we
conduct ourselves as a country.
No elected government in Nigeria no matter how well intentioned
can make a significant impact in terms of curbing corruption. The
money that puts any President in Aso Rock is from sources known
and unknown (apologies to K. O. Mbadiwe). It is largely dirty money
but dirty money and clean money have the same colours. But if you
take a close look at those who have always been the midwives of
our presidency you will get my message. And now you can see that
some of the allegedly corrupt persons have made their grand entry
into the ruling party assuring the President that they will deliver their
constituencies to him in 2019. How will the President pursue those
allegedly corrupt fellows when they have promised to smoothen his
way to power in 2019. Besides, the President seems to pursue only
the punitive and not preventive aspect of corruption. I have seen no
measures being initiated to stop corruption before it occurs. How
competitive, how transparent, are contract awards? Is there security
of tenure for civil and public servants? Are public accounts ever
published publicly? Is there a mechanism for ensuring that NNPC
transactions are above board? What do we know about the so-

17. called security votes cornered by State Governors and the
President? Do they ever render any accounts even to their oversight
agencies? So what, really, are the efforts made by this or the
previous governments to prevent corruption? Perhaps the most
significant achievement of this government in this area is the whistle
blower policy. It is a master stroke. Since we all love awoof money
we are likely to squeal on our relations and friends who have or are
about to put their fingers in the public till. But if they are staunch
members of the ruling party then we are just tilting at windmills.
From what I have said so far I am sure you can guess that Nigeria has
not yet achieved its manifest destiny. We have 68 political parties
and most of us can only remember the names of maybe three or
four. The rest are just paper tigers who can do nothing for our
democracy except to have their names on INEC’s history book. Even
the parties that appear strong, are they run democratically? Do they
respect their election promises and manifestoes. Our politics is a
lottery service. You keep playing it until you hit the jackpot. If you
don’t hit the jackpot you move, you cross carpet and seek your
fortune elsewhere. It is bereft of principles because it is largely
populated by birds of different plumage who are largely political
prostitutes not bound by any ideology except the ideology of graft.
My apologies to those who do not fit into this description.
In our political arrangement the idea of impeachment has been
vulgarized. People get impeached at five o’clock in the morning or
at places other than parliament or for reasons that make no sense
whatsoever. In Enugu State some years ago, the Deputy Governor
was impeached for running a chicken farm where he lives. His boss,
the Governor, who organised the impeachment was running a
piggery. In this contest between pigs and chickens, the pig had to
win because pigs are bigger than chickens. So the chicken farm was
impeached.

18. Nigeria is an exciting country of paradoxes. Let me just name a few
of them:
- We have huge crude oil deposits but we sleep at the petrol
stations waiting for petrol.
- We are a major gas producer but we do not have electricity.
- We have a huge land mass, good vegetation and good
weather but we import food.
- We have huge deposits of bitumen in several states but our
roads are bone breakers.
- We have huge deposits of gold but our women go to Saudi
Arabia and Dubai in search of gold.
- We have abundance of water but we import frozen fish.
- Grinding poverty resides with us in the midst of vulgar opulence.
These perplexing paradoxes I must say bring me to the main meat of
my message: leadership. Leadership is it. It is leadership that makes
the difference. Charles de Gaulle, France’s imperial President, was
quoted in the New York Times magazine of May 12, 1968: “Men are
of no importance. What counts is he who commands.” For me the
greatness of a nation or the lack of it depends on the quality of its
leadership. A wise, visionary and transformational leader can make
a great difference to the destiny of his country. The man who gave IT
development in India a shot in the arm was Prime Minister Atai Bihari
Vaipayee who ruled India from March 19, 1998 to May 22, 2004. He
placed the development of information technology among his top
five priorities and formed a task force on IT and software
development. Within 90 days the task force produced an extensive
report and an action plan with 108 recommendations. Today India is
a leading force in IT development. Today India produces an
average of 400,000 engineers per year. Its engineers especially its IT
engineers are all over the world manning strategic IT facilities. They

19. are here in our telecommunications sector. One man made that
difference.
Singapore got its independence on August 9, 1965, five years after
Nigeria. Today Singapore is many kilometres ahead of Nigeria in the
development marathon. One man, a 35-year old man called Lee
Kuan Yew made the difference. He transformed this small country of
six million people into an EL Dorado. It has the world’s best airline, the
world’s best airport and the second busiest port after Rotterdam. He
documented his development odyssey in a book titled “From Third
World to First World.”
Nigeria is an outstanding example of leadership failure. At age 57,
Nigeria’s growth is stunted. The country looks like a midget, a Liliput.
The suicide rate has gone up. We are number 30 on the world’s
suicide map according to the World Health Organisation’s report of
2015. Death by suicide is an individual decision based on the
person’s conceptualization of his role in the drama of life. But many
Nigerians also die from many causes, many of them preventable.
They are road accidents, tanker explosions, hired assassins,
kidnappers, armed robbers, acid wars, high blood pressure, cancer,
stroke, Boko Haram insurgents, Fulani herdsmen attacks, Ebola, lassa
fever, adulterated drugs, fumes from i-better-pass-my-neighbour
generators.
Now some people are selling their children to buy food. We paid off
our foreign debt during the Obasanjo years. Now we have found our
way again to the money lender’s door. The foreign debt is piling up
again. So is the domestic debt. Virtually everything has gone up
except our standard of living. There could be no clearer evidence of
the failure of leadership if a 57-year old country can look the way
Nigeria looks today.

20. The politicians – military or civilian – either in their coup speeches or in
their party manifestoes tell us that they will make the trains run on
time. When they get there you find that there are no trains at all, no
train drivers and no fuel for the trains. So the question of the train
departing and arriving on time does not even arise. They tell us that
when they win there will be a chicken in every pot. At the end of the
day you find that there is neither chicken nor pot.
Nigeria’s celebrated novelist Chinua Achebe wrote a leadership
classic many years ago titled “The Trouble with Nigeria”. This little
book can be compared to Chairman Mao Tse Tung’s little red book
or Muammer Gaddafi’s green book, both of which are classics in
their own countries on political engineering. Achebe asserts in this
book that the trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of
leadership. I agree with him unreservedly.
I attribute Nigeria’s leadership failure to two main factors (a) Lack of
adequate preparation for high office. To become America’s
President John F. Kennedy schooled himself in the art of oratory and
speed reading. He was reputed to be able to read 500 words per
minute. Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States (1977-
81) spent a considerable part of his life preparing for the exalted
office. He was a farmer, a naval officer, an engineer, a businessman,
a planner, a nuclear physicist and a politician. He had been a
Governor of Georgia State before he stepped out for the ultimate
political trophy: the presidency. During the campaign for the
presidency he wrote a book titled “Why not the Best.”
Bill Clinton had nursed presidential ambition right from his teenage
years when he had the good fortune of shaking hands with President
John F. Kennedy at age 16. He, Clinton, went to school in two
continents, devoured every leadership literature in sight and honed
his oratorical skills. He was reputed to be capable of doing six
different things at once.

21. In the Nigerian case, the pathetic lack of of preparation for high
office has been most evident. Except for Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and
Chief Obafemi Awolowo there has hardly been any demonstrable
evidence that our past leaders did burn the midnight oil unceasingly,
did hold seminal sessions with experts, did write books or position
papers on the Nigerian condition, did work with any think tank to sort
out policy options. In the case of Shehu Shagari who had political
experience at the grassroots but a limited breadth of vision,
education and erudition he had opted to be a senator. However, in
the mysterious ways of leadership selection in Nigeria the selection
machinery threw up Shagari instead of the better educated, more
erudite and more perceptive Adamu Ciroma who had even run the
Central Bank as its Governor. President Shagari told Dele Giwa in an
interview that he had told his ministers to stop stealing but they
would not listen. Can you imagine that? On one occasion when
some NPN chiefs were sharing public funds illegally he simply left
them, went upstairs and prayed. So there you have a theory of a
clean President who was surrounded by filthy aides. Is history
repeating itself today? I ask you. The President directed the Inspector
General of Police to relocate to Benue State to tackle the insecurity
problem there. He did not go and he was not penalised.
Of those who were ready for the job, Azikiwe and Awolowo none of
them got the job of Prime Minister or President. They were both at the
periphery of substantive power. Of all those who have held power in
our civil democracy since 1999 I know of no one who was ready for
it. Obasanjo was removed from prison and persuaded to take the
job. He even asked curiously “what did I forget in the State House?”
Umaru Yar’Adua the ailing former Governor of Katsina State simply
wanted to return to Ahmadu Bello University as a teacher but
Obasanjo decided to dash him the job of President. Dr Goodluck
Jonathan too was compelled to come to the centre. He actually
preferred his job as the Governor of his native Bayelsa State. Again

22. Obasanjo picked the man who wasn’t ready instead of the man
who was: Dr Peter Odili, the former Governor of Rivers State. And
now we have President Muhammadu Buhari who campaigned for
the office three times and picked the trophy on the fourth attempt.
His critics have said that since he was retired from the Army he had
not participated in any public forum, seminar, lecture or colloquium
on Nigeria and so was not really ready for the job. But he has it and
how he has handled the job is a subject of public conversation
especially in the wake of current insecurity issues, corruption and the
current economic asphyxia.
Restructuring has become a major talking point for two reasons (a) It
is in the manifesto of the ruling party, APC (b) The Federal
Government seems overwhelmed by problems in several sectors.
Many federal roads remain unfixed. Federal hospitals lack basic
equipment and drugs. Some Federal Universities lose their
accreditation in some courses due to incapacity and in some cases
State Governments have had to bail them out. The Federal Police
seems overstretched because of their inadequacy in numerical
strength and unfamiliarity with the lay of the land. This is why some
activists have called for the establishment of State police. The
Federal Government has now reluctantly accepted that it is an idea
whose time has come. I support it. So the campaigners are asking for
a reduction of Federal responsibilities and revenue and a transfer to
State Governments who are closer to the people of their states. I am
a staunch and unrepentant advocate of restructuring. Please take a
look at how the Federal Government has been built over the years
through constitutional gymnastics into a non-performing elephant. In
the 1960 Constitution there were 44 items in the Exclusive Legislative
List and 28 in the Concurrent List, in the 1963 Constitution items in the
Exclusive list were increased to 45 while those in the Concurrent list
were 29; In the 1979 Constitution there were 66 items in the Exclusive
list and 28 in the Concurrent list and in the 1999 Constitution now in

23. operation the items in the Exclusive list were jacked up to 68 while
those in the Concurrent list stood at 30. With the step by step
ballooning of federal responsibilities the Federal became seriously
overwhelmed and unable to discharge efficiently these enormous
responsibilities. That is why restructuring has become a subject that
has found its way to the front burner of our national conversation. I
believe that the issue will dominate discussions and campaigns in the
2019 elections. Candidates who oppose it will be taking an uninsured
risk.
The insecurity problem is also on the front burner now especially with
the scaling up of attacks on communities by Fulani herdsmen. I am
sure that the President is going through an agonizing period because
of the severity of the problem and the low blows he has received on
the matter. I sympathise with him on this delicate matter. What we
need to do, I think, is to call a stakeholders conference so that a
multi-dimensional and holistic solution can be fashioned out to the
satisfaction of all concerned. The high level of abductions and
kidnappings is unacceptable and must be fought with vigour.
The second major problem with leadership selection is the lack of
active participation by the followers. Nigerian leaders are selected
by the godfathers in a manner that looks like voodooism. Everything
is thrown into the selection process: cash, tons of cash, guns, juju,
shrines, blood oath, wife exchange etc. This is machine politics, a
gathering of the godfathers who never sleep. It is an organized
cabalism. What role do the people, the followers play in the
process? No role whatsoever, they just collect the dollars and the
uniform with someone’s image on it and they are told who to vote
for. How can that format produce transformational leadership? This is
what I call the failure of followership.
A lot of young people in Nigeria are threatening to put someone
without grey hair and a balding palate in Aso Villa next year. They

24. are encouraged to think that there is a road to the villa because
young people are in the majority in Nigeria and also because young
people have taken the reins of office in other countries: Canada,
Austria, and France. Infact, more recently the world has witnessed
the ascension to the prime ministership chair of New Zealand by a
young lady 37, called Jacinda Ardern. Ms Ardern who is now the
world’s youngest female leader used to be a freelance DJ. Yes,
Nigeria’s young people have the numbers but do they know how to
get one of their own into Aso Villa, I doubt it. I have bad news for
them. They are unlikely to put any young man in the chair Buhari is
sitting now in 2019.
By the way I need to remind them that young men had run Nigeria
before. Here are the ages of those who held important positions in
Nigeria in the 60s and 70s. Awo 37, Ahmadu Bello 36, Tafawa Balewa
34, Yakubu Gowon 32, Nnamdi Azikiwe 42. M. T. Mbu was Nigeria’s
Foreign Minister at 23. The question is: Are today’s Nigerian youths
ready, willing and able to compete with the grandees who run the
show today? I don’t know.
Our economy is still running on one leg: crude oil. Its price is going
north and we are smiling to the bank. We do not know how long that
will last especially with the fresh threat issued by the militants in the
Niger Delta. But we have refused over the years to do the needful in
the area of solid minerals. What we need is to have an
accommodation with the state governments and all the 774 local
governments. If we get them to key in as co-owners we will be home
and dry.
If we want to become a developed country we must be ready to
pay attention to the basics. One of the requirements is steel.
America, Britain, China, Russia, Germany and all other G20 countries
devote a lot of attention to steel development. Nigeria started the
journey for steel development in 1958 but as at today our steel

25. project is comatose. Ajaokuta is a case study in project
abandonment. Our construction industry imports over 600, 000 tons
of rolled steel products per year thus losing about $1 billion every
year. We have also lost the opportunity to produce spare parts for
rail lines, petroleum and communication services which our steel
factory would have taken care of.
Another factor that accounts for success in the G20 countries is
planning. China, the most populous nation on earth (1.3 billion) has a
fifth of the world’s population and it is a net exporter of food due to
its ability to plan and implement its plans efficiently. Now China’s
ambition is to become a world football super power in 2050. It has
set out a short, medium and long term strategy. This strategy includes
creating about 20,000 football training centres, 70,000 pitches by
2020. These plans are contained in a 50-point road map published in
2014. This action has spurred an unprecedented investment in the
Chinese Super League which has now attracted a number of foreign
footballers including Nigerians. In Nigeria we have no long or
medium term plans. As we speak now the 2018 budget is still
undergoing scrutiny and we are already four months behind
schedule.
Another factor inhibiting industrial development is low commitment
to research and development. Between 2009 and 2013, Japan,
Israel, South Korea, Germany and South Africa spent at least 3% of
their national budgets on R&D. Within the same period Nigeria spent
between 0.4% and 0.6% on it. Also, the volume of patents acquired
by a country is a pointer to the level of seriousness in development
matters. Between 2009 and 2011 the average application for
patents by Americans was 238,000; that of China 319,000; Egypt 500
while Nigeria recorded a miserable 45 patents during the same
period. This paucity of patents is not for lack of research institutions in
Nigeria. There are about 66 of them, but they are all starved of funds.

26. They duplicate their efforts because there is no central coordinating
authority. There is also a gross under exposure and non-utilisation of
their research findings.
But our story is not an all-negative narrative of battered hopes and
failed dreams. We have made some achievements in
telecommunications, music, dance, comedy, arts, entrepreneurship
and sports. In movie making our Nollywood is third in the world after
America’s Hollywood and India’s Bollywood. So we have a little
reason to break into song and dance but we shouldn’t dance for
too long. We haven’t risen high and fast enough inspite of the
pockets of excellence dotted here and there. But if we ever get it
right in the national leadership department then we will get it right in
other sectors.
We have a lot of current challenges that are taxing our ingenuity
and testing our will as a nation: roaring unemployment, decaying
infrastructure, extreme poverty, ethnic irredentism, growth of cultism,
destruction of cherished values, cruelty to children, subjugation of
women, rampaging corruption, growth of counter culture in the
social media, the flourishing of hate ideology, arrogance of power
and the disdain for new ideas, challenge to facticity, the future of oil,
the impact of climate change etc. If we want to grow as a nation
we must put new ideas in the pot and stir. We must survive and
thrive. We will only survive and thrive when we begin to accept that
we don’t have all the answers but that we can have the answers to
our problems by sincere engagement with people of ideas.
How will we get to the future of our dreams: a safe, secure, and
prosperous future imbued with fairness, equity and egalitarianism.
Our future will be determined by the quality of leadership we get.
Leadership is it. If we get the leadership angle right all other things
will be added unto us. If we get the right leadership our future will be
bright. If we get it wrong that future will be bleak.

27. Right now we are about missing our flight to the future. We are still
talking about our oil. We don’t seem to care that oil is being
discovered in various other parts of the world. So that is a threat.
There is also shale oil. That is a threat. There are several renewable
energy sources. That too is a threat. Technology has changed the
way the world is thinking and planning. Our future is being destroyed
instalmentally. Our youths have revived cultism with vengeance.
They are taking all kinds of dangerous drugs which has contributed
to the upsurge in gang wars and abductions and armed robbery.
These are the people that desperate politicians will use next year.
As at 2015 there were 1.56 discovered cases of diabetes in Nigeria. It
is probably much higher because many people do not know that
they have it until they are ready to die. In 2015, there were 5 million
deaths worldwide from diabetes alone. That works out at one person
every six seconds. That also means that one in every 11 adults has
diabetes. This is a very serious situation. You think these are mere
statistics. No, they are human beings. The problem we have is poor
regulation and poor enforcement of health guidelines. Soft drink
companies are still selling a lot of sugary drinks and mounting mouth-
watering promotional inducements. There are all kinds of salty
snacks, cookies, candies and other processed foods that harm our
health. Do we test our food for pesticide residues? Do we have
vitamin counselors? What is our response to organic food?
In 2014, the Nigerian Medical Association gave a chilling figure of
Nigerian doctors abroad: 2000 (US0, 1500 (UK), 600 (Canada), 500
(South Africa), 200 in other African countries, 100 in the Arabian
Peninsula and the Emirates, 100 in the Caribbeans and Australia. That
is brain drain. Meanwhile we have a a hospital in Uyo, Akwa Ibom
State with state of the art equipment struggling to get doctors with
world class skills to work there.

28. Our future will be determined not only by the health but also by the
education of our people. The Federal Government’s budget for
education in 2011 was 8.43% of the budget. In 2012 it crawled up to
8.7%, still a huge distance from UNESCO’s prescription of a minimum
of 26%. Ghana spends 30% of its budget on education, South Africa
25.8%, Kenya 23%, Uganda 27% and Ivory Coast 30% (Source: UNDP).
The top 23 universities in the world are all from the United States of
America. Leading the pack is Harvard University which has won more
than 40 Nobel prizes in various fields and produced 8 presidents. Our
own universities are ivory towers with neither ivory nor tower. So how
do we get to the future with underperforming universities.
In the first scramble for Africa the continent was carved up and
shared by Britain, France, Portugal, Germany, Italy and Belgium. Now
there is a second scramble but this time the loot hunters are Chinese
and Indians. They are everywhere in Nigeria today building our
airports, telecommunication facilities and running our banks and
blue chip companies. They are also in our rural communities setting
up farms and supermarkets. They are there at Balogun market, sitting
on small stools, defying the searing heat of Lagos their yellow bodies
bare and retailing all kinds of goods. I don’t know if they sell pure
water. These two countries have nuclear power yet their citizens are
ready to do what we consider as menial jobs here. Are we setting up
farms in China or India? No. We merely go to China to import
expired tyres into Nigeria and to import ill prepared jollof rice from
India. So I ask you, how much is Nigeria rising and how much has
Africa risen.
Thank you.
Ray Ekpu