A friend of mine who lives in Quebec in Canada told me with frustration that he has dumped his previously held idea of going to Nigeria with some investors to start a manufacturing outfit in Lagos. He is from Southern East of Nigeria. He told me that it took him over six years of negotiations and visits to Nigeria and Owerri, to conclude this plan of building a company in Lagos which he planned to expand to Egbu in Owerri of Imo State. I asked him why dumping a good idea that would help prop the Nigerian economy and also an effort that could help the desert state of Imo State in terms of industrialization to generate job opportunities for our people? He told me straight out that he would not want to be kidnapped by idiots roaring their ugly heads in Nigeria. He listed many entrepreneurs in our wretched country that have fallen into the twisted hands of the kidnappers. He retorted, what a country that has zero security for her citizens and criminals walk in the streets and brazenly take whoever they desire and demand millions of naira before being released?
After our conversation, I thought for some minutes and fell into the couch in my study and unconsciously went to sleep. Saved for my wife who came looking for me and she woke me up with a scolding voice, “dim what are you doing sleeping in your office instead of the bedroom?” I woke up and I hissed and said Nigeria, what a country? What about Nigeria, she inquired. I only replied that kidnappers are killing entrepreneurship in Nigeria. I don’t want to hear about Nigeria, she said. A country that is supposed to be great but corruption has been lifted to state craft, so nothing works in that famished country, I fear for Buhari, she quipped. I did not know when my wife dragged me to the bedroom, but the ghost of what my friend said to me didn’t allow me to sleep.
While, I was taking my breakfast in the morning, all I was thinking was other people like my friend that have botched such good ideas of going to Nigeria for starting up companies but the fear of Kidnappers shut them off from their dreams and the hope of providing jobs to the youths terminated painfully. Nigerians in diaspora talk of lack of power supply, bad roads and lack of water as hindrances for not going home, but the most challenging problem is the rampaging kidnappers, who want to reap where they did sow; and the most painful aspect is that the Nigerian Police seem helpless and they have no answer to the incessant cases of kidnapping.
America is nothing without entrepreneurship, thanks to people like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Henry Ford, J P. Morgan, Edison and the modern day Bill Gate and Warren Buffet. In Germany, the trailblazer was George Siemen, the owner of Siemen Group and Deutsch Bank. In our clime now, Ali Dangote, Tony Elumeli, Mike Adenuga and Paschal Dozie and others are giving our economy steam. Government does not employ lots of people, its job is the provision of ambient environment for the entrepreneurs to do what they know best, innovation, invention, creativity and productivity.
People manufacture all kinds of objectives, plans and goals and they call them strategy, no. Richard Rumelt of Anderson School of Management of University of California, Los Angeles does not agree to these fluffs. Strategy is meant only to solve problems or challenges. If there is any challenge, then you need Rumelt’s advice of tackling the problems with three prongs of diagnosis, guiding policy and actions, these he calls the kernel of strategy.
A problem cannot just go away, unless a proper diagnosis is carried out, concerted guiding policies mapped out and actions invoked to tackle the problem. In my last visit to Nigeria, I left Abuja by flight and on my getting to Owerri, I was exhausted. I lost my only brother, Augustine Chukwukadibia Iwuanyanwu, formerly of NNPC Abuja in 2012, so family problems easily worn me out. I had four days left to go back to USA and I was having terrible headache, so I asked my driver to take me to a pharmacy shop to see a pharmacist. On getting there, he put his statoscope on my hand and told me that I needed medicine for high blood pressure, I bluntly rejected his diagnosis. I knew I had infection because of the terrible fever that gripped me, so I asked for some antibiotics and after two day of the doses, I was all right.
When I came back to USA, I went to my doctor and after some activities, he told me that I was all right and he did not give me any type of medication, but asked me to have some rest. Our problem in Nigeria and many other organizations and countries is the inability to do the hard and proper diagnosis, not the type done by the pharmacist at Owerri.
Nigeria and other failing organizations cannot be well unless proper diagnosis is carried out. What is holding our country back since 1960? Why nothing works in that particular part of the world? The money that should have been used in recruiting police and army personnel is pocketed by one man in Nigeria and nothing will work in that kind of situation. Why electricity cannot flow day and night in Nigeria? Why is our refinery not working? Why should kidnappers take whoever they desire and ask for millions of naira and victim’s family will take the money to kidnappers without those criminals being caught? Why are our Police very much corrupt? Why are Nigerians deep in corruption? Why are the political rogues left walking the streets?
Richard Remult said that why people do not bother about hard work of diagnosis is for the simple fact that nobody should be offended. A hard work of diagnosis will unravel a lot of things and heads will roll in order for a proper solution to be meted out to a challenging situation. Forget about different tons of definitions of strategy, strategy according to Rumelt is an action oriented, it is all about problem solving. You have a problem, you need a strategy to win in the marketplace, to maintain and sustained competitive advantage. Nigeria needs policy strategy to solve her plethora of problems, but those that have the ideas will never be given the chance to bring the needed change.
It baffles me to no end how idiots who hate to work hard, hide under the umbrella of unemployment and engage in kidnapping to make millions and scare potential investors and investment away from Nigeria. Buhari can make everything work in Nigeria but without solutions to the insecurity in Nigeria, he has not solved any problem. When dirty hoodlums desire a good woman to have sex with, they will go and rob a family and kidnap the matriarch of the home, this nonsense must be stopped by all means. Enough of these dirty pigs parading our streets, they need to be shot at sight. Patrick Henry of America said, give me freedom or kill me.
What is happening in Nigeria is building a house on a quick sand which cannot withstand any type of wave. The problem in Nigeria is very big and all has to do with leadership. Nigeria needs a multidisciplinary professionals to look into our problems, but what of the problem of continuity? There is no way Buhari can solve all the problems of Nigeria even in eight years. If he can stop at A and the next leader starts from B, we can go far but that has never been the culture of leadership in Nigeria.
Take for instance in Imo State: when Udenwa took office in 1999, he came with his big word, “Redemption” and his wasteful eight years ended in 2007, Ohakim took over in 2008 with his own craft, “Clean and Green”, but his foolishness saw him out in 2010 and the big thief, the so called Rochas mesmerized Ndi Imo with “Rescue Mission”. In all these wasteful sixteen years, there was no solid tarred road between Orji and Ama Nwozuzu. This micro example shows what goes on in macro Nigeria. Between this sixteen years what if Udenwa has concentrated on giving Ndi Imo a solid tarred road, Ohakim concentrated on giving Ndi Imo pipe born water and Rochas concentrates on industrialization of Imo Sate, but no. What these three phantom leaders did was destroying what each other did and what Ndi Imo was blessed with was circumlocution.
Of course kidnappers will have excuses of no employment to unleash mayhem on people, and since the police are not paid very well, they became co-planners in kidnapping ventures. To me, Nigeria is not hard to fix, but our problem has been hard diagnosis and hard choice, and if these continue to elude us, Nigeria will never be a country of pride and progress, mark my words.
Chukwuma Iwuanyanwu is a Candidate of Doctor of Business Administration.
Los Angeles, California.