My column discusses ideas, not individuals. So it rarely mentions the names of individuals.

This week, however, the column draws the attention of the Executive Governor of Lagos state, Babatunde Fashola, to the most important error in Western development thinking, which virtually all African intelligentsia, including lawyers, accept as axiomatic truth. While switching on a turn-key, Lagos state electricity plant, weeks ago, Fashola was quoted to have said that Nigerians should not take excuse from President Jonathan about the epileptic and insufficient power supply situation in Nigeria. With the proper legal framework, Lagos government would provide Lagosians adequate and reliable power supply readily.

With all respect, the Fashola’s position about providing adequate and reliable electricity readily, has no precedence and it is not scientific. Reliable infrastructural network (reliable electric power system, good road and telecommunication networks, clean and safe water supply, good drainage system, complex buildings and other structures) cannot be erected and sustained in an agricultural/artisan production system like Nigeria’s. This is because all structures are depreciating assets (DAs); they immediately begin to depreciate in intrinsic value and performance once they are acquired or erected.

Erecting complex infrastructure in a knowledge, skills and competences (KSCs)-starved nation may therefore be likened to fetching water into a profusely leaking water-tank. This means that Nigeria – a KSCs-starved society, including Lagos state cannot establish a reliable infrastructural network by awarding contracts to foreign and local contractors to erect complex structures that Nigerians lack the competences to build and maintain. This article explains why Nigeria or any other non-industrialized nations cannot erect reliable infrastructure system.

History and logic support our research findings that wise nations do not award contracts for erecting structures before developing the KSCs for building and maintaining the structures.

The region occupied by the modern Western Europe was the ancient Gaul, it was harnessed into the Roman Empire in 55 B. C. The western portion of the empire broke-up in 406 A. D. England and other modern nations of Western Europe were clearly defined in the period between the tenth and thirteenth century. England, the most progressive nation in early Western Europe achieved the first modern Industrial Revolution (IR) in the period 1770-1850(Gregg, 1971). When England achieved the first modern IR, the roads in the nation were still those left by the Roman Empire, showing that England did not build roads and telecommunications networks and other structures as a prerequisite to promoting sustainable growth and IR. But immediately England achieved the modern IR, good roads, railways and tubes, canals and other infrastructure were developed rapidly as aftermath of industrialization (Gregg, 1971).

The original thirteen colonies in the New World declared independence in 1776 and fought the War of Independence 1775-1783 with Britain. At the end of the war, the Americans wrote and adopted the popular American constitution in 1789 and declared the new nation the United State of America. The Americans did not award contracts to its colonial master, Britain, to erect complex infrastructure as a prerequisite to achieving rapid growth and industrialization. Americans reasoned that it would require a lot of resources to build roads; also roads would continuously demand resources for their maintenance. They then resorted to building canals to connect the rivers in the United States of America and used water courses as transportation infrastructure for a long time as alternative to roads (Morrison, 1974).

Similarly, when Mao Zedung became the leader of Communist China in 1949, the nation did not begin to award contracts to the more technologically advanced nation, Russia, to erect complex infrastructure in China as a prerequisite to promoting sustainable growth. Mao Zedung focused on developing the people that would enable China to address its problems, including building the relevant infrastructure. Objective sources suggest that the existence of the Chinese people dates back to 1000 B. C. (Eberhard, 1950). So, China was already about 3000 years by 1949 when Mao Zedung became the leader. China had depended on Russia for a long time as an ally to build its railways, bridges and other structures. But China and Russia quarreled and Russia stripped Machuria, the most built-up city of all the structures it had helped China to erect ( Stoke and Stoke, 1975).

Britain, America, China and other technologically advanced nations of today had to develop the people and the KSC-framework for solving the problems of their nations before building the relevant infrastructure, because that is what nature and wisdom suggest. The hibiscus flowering plant like other flowering plants, has the root and shoot systems. Whereas the root system is buried in the soil, the shoot which bears the beautiful flowers is usually above the ground. The root system is always established before the shoot system. The beautiful bright-red 5-petal flowers are borne by the shoot system.

The shoot system expresses and announces the healthy status of the root system. Once the root system is cut off from the shoot system, the beautiful flowers wither. So, no root system, no shoot system and the beautiful flowers the shoot bears. This explains why a nation should not and cannot erect complex infrastructure before developing the necessary knowledge ,skills and competences (KSCs) for building and maintaining the structures.

What is Nigeria’s experience? Nigeria has always had epileptic electric power supply, no reliable potable water supply, perpetually bad road and telecommunication networks, dilapidated buildings, failing dams, etc. This is in view of the fact that Nigeria has been investing a lot of money on erecting all types of complex infrastructure. The Kainji 760-megawatt hydro-power plant was commissioned by Gen. Yakubu Gowon in 1969, then Head of State of Nigeria.

The out-put dropped to just a few hundred megawatts some years later. Nigeria has been requesting Sweden who built it in the late 1960s to come to give the plant a full overhaul. The contract for erecting the Egbin 1300-megawatt power plant was awarded in 1981. The construction was completed by Japanese companies in 1987. The plant output dropped to about 300 MW before it broke down a short time after. Nigeria also had to request the Japanese companies that built it to come to repair it.

Our experience demonstrates clearly that Nigerians lack the Knowledge, Skills and Competences (KSCs) to build and sustain electric power generating and distributing systems. I have read about the problem of maintenance being experienced by the Lagos state rapid route system buses. Many of the buses are now being pushed like molue buses. The Lagos state electric power turn-key plant would suffer the same fate like the Kainji and Egbin plants because Nigerians lack the KSCs to build and sustain advanced infrastructural systems.

Nigeria achieved flag-independence in 1960. Since then, Nigerians have only been able to demonstrate to the rest of the world that they cannot think and reason. Nigerians just memorized concepts they do not understand and claim they have adopted global best practices. Following the adoption in 1986, of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) introduced to African nations by the World Bank and the IMF, Nigerians have been singing the praises or the vogue of privatization, private sector-led industrialization, Public sector and Private sector Partnership (PPP), deregulation, foreign exchange market, ridiculous campaign for foreign investments, ect.

Nigeria then sold the electric generating plants to those who have money (privatized the plants) and hoped to enjoy regular electricity. That unscientific effort will certainly fail because it is tantamount to planting unviable seeds. Today, we talk of subsidy for the privatized electricity generating and distributing systems just like the government of Nigeria is paying money-bags subsidy for importing petrol. Those who claim that the privatized electricity system will be better tomorrow do not understand what economic growth and industrialisation entail. The government is wasting money on sustaining systems that would never get better.

Our research in Obafemi Awolowo University (Ogbimi, 2007) showed that there is precedence in the human development process. Just as the individual human being must achieve puberty before becoming a party to procreation, so a society achieves technological puberty or industrialization before establishing a reliable infrastructural network. Thus, we can say that the establishment of a reliable infrastructural network in a nation is a fruit or aftermath of industrialization. To disregard this natural sequence is to attempt to build the roof of a house before laying the foundation.

Nigerian leaders (intelligentsia/intellectuals, politicians and business people) have been trying to erect complex infrastructure in order to stimulate industrialization. In other words, Nigeria has been trying to build the roof of a house before laying the foundation – a futile effort. Literary reasoning may suggest that once electric power is guaranteed, many illiterate Nigerians would be able to operate the machines they do not make and improve productivity. However, this is not true because Nigeria’s fundamental production is artisan/craft; it is characterized by cutlass, hoe and axe.

Nigeria does not even produce good cutlasses and hoes. Mere electricity supply cannot change this. More importantly, cutlass, hoe and axe do not require electricity to use them. Thus when we are complaining about epileptic power supply, we are not talking of the actual production system we ought to be concerned with – the indigenous agricultural/artisan one.

The right thing to do is to pursue rapid industrialization and transform the low-productivity agricultural/artisan system in Nigeria into an industrialized one. Industrialization is about education and training and not about the quantity of capital and technological inputs that flow passively in or into a nation. European and Asian nations suffered for thousands of years before achieving industrialization because they neglected education and training for that long. Let us be wise.

By Francis Ogbimi

[Via allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Fashola – Scientifically, No Industrialization, No Reliable Infrastructure]