Daily Independent Online.
*
Friday, July 02, 2004.
Recruiting Nigerian
experts abroad?
In an attempt to attract more Nigerian experts
abroad into governance and the private sector, the Obasanjo government has set
up an agency, the Nigerian National Volunteer Service (NNVS) to recruit these
Nigerians in the Diaspora. Already
some bilateral institutions have joined Nigeria to mobilise resources running
into millions of United States (U.S.) dollars under United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) Fund for the purpose of remunerating such experts. Ordinarily, this would have been a
laudable idea especially given the large number of highly skilled and talented
Nigerians and polyvalent genuises abroad who are trail blazers in diverse
disciplines.
Unfortunately, with barely three years to leave the
stage and with no concrete achievement on ground, the Obasanjo Presidency is
tossing yet another policy without foundation. It would be recalled that shortly after his election in
1999, General Olusegun Obasanjo, as President-elect, set up a Presidential
Policy Advisory Council headed by Lt.-General Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma
(rtd). The Danjuma committee
further set up 15 sub-committees to serve as think-tanks in the formulation of
policies for the then soon-to-be inaugurated government. However, Nigerians were profoundly
disturbed by the calibre and antecedents of most members of the group who
cannot be absolved from blame for Nigeria’s sundry political and economic
woes.
Worse still is the fact that some of these
individuals were put in sub-committees where they neither had the expertise nor
the experience to contribute meaningfully to policy articulation. Even though concerned Nigerians were
not amused by this rather discouraging signal of the predisposition to continue
the noisome tradition of putting square pegs in round holes, Obasanjo and his
cohorts did not budge. The result is the blatant failure of the government on
all fronts: the economy remains comatose with all social infrastracture gone
grey begging to be salvaged. What
this means in essence is that Nigeria’s capacity to develop is being
undermined by the moral and intellectual limitations of her leaders who direct
the nation’s huge material resources to grandiose plans aimed at deifying
their egotistic selves.
Unarguably, Obasanjo’s first term was enough period
to record landmark achievements in all sectors of the economy including a total
overhauling of the decadent civil service. An enabling environment thus
established would naturally attract Nigerian experts abroad to return home and
contribute their quota. But the very faulty beginning diminished every prospect that
the quest for a new beginning, a new social order was attainable under the
present circumstances. Nigeria is
so blessed with abundance of brilliant minds that no government ought to recycle
individuals who have outlived their usefulness. In civilised societies, those who constitute think-tanks of
Presidents-elect are not necessarily party loyalists. In most cases, the calibre of men involved gives an inkling
into the cabinet that would emerge.
For example, President J. F. Kennedy of the United
States, availed himself of the expertise and experience of technocrats such as
Robert Macnamara and other eggheads at Harvard University. Also, Prime Minister Tony Blair of
Great Britain did not fail to share from the rich experience of Lord Simon whom
he had to withdraw from his chairmanship of British Petroleum (B.P) in order to
make him serve as Trade Minister in the Labour Government in 1997. We are not convinced that the crop of
individuals that the President has assembled in his kitchen cabinet as Diaspora
experts, and who are paid in foreign currency, truly reflects the enormous
human resources available to our country.
There is, of course, the reality that Chief Obasanjo’s
characteristic disdain for expert advice could very well have limited the
capacity of serving Ministers and other functionaries to acquit themselves
creditably.
A
government in which public infrastructure and improvement in the people’s
standard of living have been flimsy passages in its programmes; a government
that recruited people into the civil service in 2001 only to have them
retrenched in 2003, cannot attract its nationals who are flourishing elsewhere
to come and rot at home. This
government is simply abusing space while encouraging cronyism and idolatrous
cult followership. Which is why at
a time we should be talking about exporting manpower, of which we are not in
short supply, our government is busy chasing shadows. India now exports manpower in return for foreign
exchange. There is something
fundamentally wrong with this policy of baiting Nigerian experts abroad
dollar-denominated salaries, while others domiciled here at home receive
starvation wages.
