‘The economy is growing, but the people don’t feel it’ An incisive interview culled from Businessday online Nigerian dailies and worthy of gracing my Facebook wall! Key Stakeholders, particularly the Federal, State & Local Governments as well as the Private sector should take note! Ibrahim, MBF (BUK), MIBF (BUK), BSc (Unimaid) ........, Nigeria. ‘The economy is growing, but the people don’t feel it’ Pascal Odibo, group country director, Jeff & O’Brien, in this interview gives insight into the state of human capital development in Nigeria and the need to invest in the Nigerian people. Excerpt: About Jeff & O’Brien Jeff & O’Brien is an international knowledge development firm. We are into international training for banks, financial training, training for oil and gas companies; we conduct retreats for institutions across Africa. We conduct training in countries across Africa, the essence of which is to drive capacity building. As a training outfit, we are building a pan-African training institution, a knowledge development institution in such a way that we will be able to hold firm the concept of development in its totality. It is quite unfortunate that public and private institutions keep saying they want to do capacity building, when all they are interested in are the benefits of the capacity building rather than the capacity building in itself. It is quite sad that people use knowledge capital development as a subterfuge for massive sleaze. Nigeria’s rebased GDP and human capital development The challenge we have as a nation is that we keep investing in facilities and physical infrastructures instead on human beings. Until Nigeria begins to use her natural resources to develop sustainable resources (population), the nation will keep throwing away her chances for genuine development. If government should spend one quarter of the amount they spend on infrastructure on human infrastructure, it will make more sense, because it is the people that will develop the resources. If we don’t do that, the country will only be opening her system to the multinationals that will end up mining her physical resources without such activities fundamentally affecting the human capital. Our economy has been rebased and by every stretch and calculation, we want to enlarge the economy. However, the quality of life of Nigerians and that of their South African counterparts for instance is different. This is a challenge that must be addressed. The Nigeria government needs to invest in her people. Investment must be made first in the people because it is the people that drive development. If not we will have extrinsic development, which comes as a result of influx of companies from other countries who are only interested in development based on the natural resources we have without carrying the people along. Sadly now the economy is growing, but the people don’t feel part of it. Shaping Nigeria’s economy in the 21st century Fundamentally, we need to go back to the basics. Our people must learn how to read, write and embrace Mathematics because these are the foundation of learning. Once the foundation is not right, there is nothing anyone can do. So investment by government must be in English Language, Mathematics and Sciences. In addition, public schools need to be revived and teachers need to be trained. The state of the human capital in the country today is the worst emergency the government must look into even as an emerging economy. The investment drive must be a holistic thing, starting from primary level to the tertiary level; government must invest in it as a matter of priority. Secondly, there must be a mechanism put in place to train the people that would man important positions in the country. Take for instance the Minister of Education; you don’t just make anybody your Minister for Education, such position should not be based on a political appointment. It is very important every sector is manned by qualified professional, people that have a set of progressive agenda for each sector; it is only when this is done that we can collectively move the nation forward. Prospect As far as I am concerned, Nigeria is a vast virgin ground. We just signed a memorandum of understanding with United Kingdom based Health Management and Leadership Training Organisation. What we have just done is to begin to develop capacity in the health sector. We have a couple of financial technical institutions in the UK, Australia and the USA that are technical partners with Jeff & O’Brien Training International What we are saying is that the way the hospitals and clinics are been run here shows that people are running a practice and they are not building an institution. Nigerians go for medical tourism in various countries and only recently there was a contingent of investors from India that wants to build hospitals in Nigeria. They are beginning to build laboratories around and these are people that are thinking. If our local doctors and medical personnel don’t sit down and organise themselves and partner with the banks to build first rated hospitals, they will keep working for these people. SMEs and Agriculture, are some other areas that when properly harnessed, can be a major strategy for inclusive growth in Nigeria and this is a lot more sustainable than crude oil. We have developed another genre of learning for a different community of individuals, who are being groomed for leadership in different field of endeavour. This is called Jeff & O’Brien Classics. Last take Government must take up the advantage of the capacity that has been built in the private sector. A lot of people in the public sector are politicians and they are just playing politics. Some of them don’t have the idea of what to do. There are bodies of knowledge in Nigeria that they can take advantage of. There should be synergy and they must find a way to work and merge together for the overall growth of our nation.
Posted on: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 11:13:52 +0000
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