Misuse of oil earnings
SIR: We wish to comment on the report in your edition of August 2, 2004 on a speech by the Senior Special Assistant to the President and Head of the Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligent Unit, Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili, complaining about how our leaders have misused $280 billion oil proceeds generated in the last 30 years.
In order to make an objective assessment of our leaders with respect to how the revenue has been used, it is necessary to examine some of the ways in which the funds were spent. Anyone familiar with various aspect of life at our independence from British colonial rule in 1960 and then alive to compare with the situation 30 years later in 1990, would no doubt see dramatic positive changes in most of them over this period. Starting with education, for instance, one would see startling increase in the number of educational institutions at the three levels of primary, secondary and tertiary.
Also the rate of school enrolment increased faster than the rate of increase in the population. In the case of health facilities, both their number and spread increased tremendously and in addition, several Teaching Hospitals were established with our indigenous doctors being well renowned for their expertise all over the world.
Going to housing, seeing is believing about the increase in the number and quality of the housing stock not only in the major urban centres such as the state capitals, but also in all towns and villages throughout the country. The building of Abuja, a brand new capital city from scratch, may be regarded as the climax in this aspect. Moving to water supply, the few water works such as those at Iju (Lagos), Eleyele (Ibadan) were replaced by giant ones such as Asejire (Ibadan), Adiyan (Lagos) and several multi-purpose dams constructed all over the country.
With respect to electric power supply, isolated thermal generating plants in a few urban centres, with capacities rated in hundreds of kilowatts, were replaced with several major power stations, having capacities rated in thousands of megawatts, using hydro and gas powered turbines and all linked together in a national grid. Even in telecommunications, where no spectacular achievement was recorded in the country until three years ago, noticeable improvement in terms of coverage and technology occurred.
In the case of transportation modes, the few kilometres of single lane unpaved roads were replaced with more than 200 thousand kilometres of paved roads out of which more than 2,000 kilometres have dual carriageways. The quality and extent of the national road network received world acclaim and recognition as a result of which the International Road Federation produced a publication in 1982 entitled "Building Roads in Nigeria: An IRF Case History".
Consequently, the Director of Federal Highways in 1982, Engr. Ifeanyi Osili, (now deceased) was honoured as the "Man of the Year" by the Federal Government. The Apapa Port Complex was greatly expanded including the addition of Roll-on Roll-off Berths, in addition to several other ports along the national coastline. Air transport was expanded to cover the country far beyond the Lagos and Kano Airports and the few landing strips located in some provincial capitals at independence. Also about 5,000 kilometres of pipelines for transporting crude oil and petroleum products were built and linked to refineries capable of refining more than 400,000 barrels of crude oil daily.
Our leaders who approved the pattern of expenditure described above were of course not perfect and it is easy, especially with the knowledge of hindsight to criticise some of their decisions. One area in which criticism may be justified was their not pursuing more vigorously the main objectives expected to be realised from our independence in 1960 as spelt out in the five objectives of our Second National Development Plan of 1962-68 as follows as to make Nigeria:
"A united, strong and self-reliant nation,
a great and dynamic economy,
a just and egalitarian society,
a land of bright and full opportunities for all citizens,
and a free and democratic society."
In as far as foreign contractors executed all the major engineering construction and installation works connected with the expenditure of the funds, our indigenous manpower, particularly engineering and technical manpower were greatly under-utilised. We forgot and still forget that foreign contractors who came here were first and foremost, indigenous contractors in their own countries, where they were given opportunity to acquire the expertise and experience, which then enabled them to come here to operate successfully.
However, today we are even worse than the leaders we are criticising, because apart from the economy, we have virtually abandoned the pursuit of the objectives stated above and are now pursuing rather prematurely deregulation, globalisation, liberalisation, privatisation, etc., which are only relevant to the economy of the technologically advanced countries, that are looking overseas for profitable markets for their products and services. We should at this time when the Minister of Information is embarking on a programme to polish Nigeria's image abroad, not portray our leaders who should be our national heroes as merely spendthrifts to the whole world.
F.A Oseni,
Secretary General,
For: Guild for Engineering and Development,
Lagos.
