SIMON KOLAWOLE: Made in Nigeria, Enjoyed Worldwide

Simon Kolawole Live!: Email: simon.kolawole@thisdaylive.com

One of my secret fantasies, let me divulge it this morning, is to fly to Europe someday and see Oando gas stations along the road, Dangote spaghetti at the supermarkets, Glo SIM cards at the corner shops and Ezekiel Izuogu’s Z-600 car on the motorway. Laugh at me if you like, but so did the world laugh at the Japanese when they started copying American technology.

Made-in-Japan used to be a butt of jokes – just as we laugh at Made-in-Taiwan today – but you can imagine how Japanese cars and electronics later went on to dominate the world. Who says Nigerians cannot do it? Who says Nigerians should only be associated with 419, terrorism, graft and substandard jobs?

Today’s discussion is motivated by a report I read recently on a contract awarded to a local company, Viche Resources Nig Limited, by the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). It is a seven-kilometre road and a 600-metre bridge across a mangrove swamp and a stormy sea that empties directly into the Atlantic Ocean. The road and the bridge, according to the report, will connect at least 30 communities in Akwa Ibom State. The difficult terrain means the communities had been cut off from civilisation for ages. Amazingly, Ibeno LGA, where the project is located, is the operational base of ExxonMobil, the second largest producer of crude oil in Nigeria.

Now, this is the aspect of the story that really fascinates me: most of the contracts awarded to foreign construction companies in the area were abandoned because of community restiveness and, interestingly, adverse terrain. Viche, a subsidiary of Roudo Group owned by Chief Tony Chukwu, has described, in agonising detail, how the project was undertaken and delivered: beams were cast about five kilometres away from the site and transported by barges; sharp sand was procured from some 40 kilometres away to fill the earthwork for the road; and the violent seas often disrupted work. The biggest part of the news, for me, is that all the engineers were Nigerian-trained.

To be sure, I have nothing against Julius Berger and other foreign companies as they continue to corner the biggest construction jobs in Nigeria. It is their luck, helped by the fact that we do not, as a country, have a long-term vision on how to empower Nigerian companies in the trillion-naira construction industry. For some reason, we have decided that it is only foreign companies that can deliver the goods. However, a longer-term view of things would be to develop policies to help Nigerian companies do well in this business. We can design a master plan to help our companies perform to global standards and go on to be big players around the world.

The obsession with foreign companies is not limited to the construction industry. In the oil sector, we have, for decades, surrendered exploration to foreign companies. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Statoil of Norway and Petronas of Malaysia were all set up as state-owned oil companies in the 1970s. Statoil, renamed StatoilHydro, is today the biggest offshore oil and gas company in the world. Petronas is rated the 12th most profitable company in the world. Our own NNPC is nowhere to be found! It is to the credit of the current Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke that the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), a subsidiary of NNPC, is now drilling about 160,000 barrels per day, but you get the feeling that we woke up very late.

Truthfully, I believe the NDDC management, under Dr. Christian Oboh, took a big risk entrusting such a complex project in a difficult Akwa Ibom terrain to a Nigerian company. That is against the grain. It is said that over 95 per cent of the major jobs awarded by the Federal Government and its agencies since 1960 have gone to foreign companies. If it is a case of lack of local capacity, I can stomach that. What I quarrel with is that 52 years after independence, we have not developed a clear-cut policy to turn Nigerian companies into world beaters. I find that unfortunate. If indeed Nigerian contractors are not competent or undisciplined, why don’t we tackle that instead of throwing up our arms in surrender?

For the foreseeable future, trillions of naira will continue to go into infrastructure development. It would be tragic if local companies do not benefit significantly from this spend. We grant unbelievable concessions to foreign companies. They bring their equipment as “lease equipment” and avoid custom duties. They bid for jobs with higher rates allegedly reserved for them by government officials. They often get multi-billion dollar jobs in a non-competitive way under the guise that they are the only ones with the expertise. They get “soft” loans from their home countries. Compare that with Nigerian companies which take loans at over 20 per cent to buy equipment and pay 10 per cent clearing charges.

I suggest that the government should tackle some of these issues in the national interest. Award of contracts and access to concessionary funds must follow a pattern that will help us grow our own companies. We need vision. We need direction. And I am not talking about the construction industry alone. We have left ourselves so very naked in many critical areas of our economy that we will remain perpetually vulnerable and exploited for ages to come. The Asian companies that are globally recognised today – Samsung, Hyundai, Kia, LG, HTC, etc – all benefited from government policies built on foresight and patriotic instincts.

The South-eastern part of Nigeria, for instance, has demonstrated enormous enthusiasm in producing electronics – but I can’t see an articulated policy by the states to come up with world beaters in this field. NNPC can one day begin to drill oil in Brazil or Burundi, but the retarded corporation is just a cesspool of decay. We can become a leading exporter of petrol but we are still mired in fuel import and subsidy scams. Northern Nigeria can produce and package tomato, juices and dairy products for global consumption and earn billions of dollars – but we are stuck with primitive politics and virulent violence.

Sometimes when I think about the potentials of this country, I am scared. It is incredible. We are even not scratching the surface yet! But, never worry, I still believe that with visionaries, Made-in-Nigeria will, someday, be enjoyed around the world. I just hope it would be during my lifetime.