A GUARANTEE OF OVER 25% ECONOMIC GROWTH PER YEAR FOR 25 YEA
Posted: Thu Oct 03, 2013 9:15 amA GUARANTEE OF OVER 25% ECONOMIC GROWTH PER YEAR
IN NIGERIA FOR THE NEXT 25 YEARS
I guarantee that Nigeria economy can grow at 25% annually for the next 25 years if all Nigerians are ready. To be ready majority of us have to participate, be motivated, engaged, and disciplined. We are hardworking people, very dedicated to schooling, selfless in caring for our nuclear family, and most sincerely sympathetic of others in despair. For all our hard work, our dedication to succeed, and the love for our family it is time for us to pull ourselves out of our misery. I am certain that we will be most sympathetic if we find a nation that has everything to be the greatest country on earth but have nothing.
This text reflects on inexplicable responses and actions of some of our government officials such as the minister about two decades ago who responded on national television, when asked about our dysfunction telephone system, ‘not every Nigerian need a phone. I hope he is still alive to witness what the provision of this devise has contributed to our economy, our social life, and our safety. A minister of commerce who visited Detroit to induce producers to our country was asked the type of minerals resources we have in our country. He replied ‘We have Fanta orange, Coca Cola, sprite ….. He was redirected and prompted to natural resources with examples. He responded ‘yes we have cola nuts, peanuts Oranges….. .Do you remember ‘Oga at the top’? Are we placing the wrong people in the right positions or are we ‘lost’? Is it micromanagement that got us here or do we have a system that is purposely keeping us down? Who are the people directing our country and where are they taking us? We need serious dialogue because it is our collective knowledge that will overcome this ‘thing’ that’s got a stronghold on our political, economic, and social life. On our road to 25% growth for 25 years this is my contribution where is yours?
The premise: Individually we are all producers. We produce primarily to attain human basic need; food and water, shelter, and security every other need is secondary. A teacher provides service of teaching to prepare us to produce, a doctor provides the service of making us feel healthy to produce, a carpenter build houses and furniture for our shelter, a farmer grows our food, etc.
For a teacher to build a house he has to teach the farmer’s, the doctor’s, and the carpenter’s children. In other words we are all independent as individuals yet interdependent in our society. We each produce goods and services to attain the goods and services we need from others.
To produce and exchange our goods amongst each other we need roads to move our goods and to provide our services. We need electricity to produce our goods and services. We need rules to oversee our contractual obligations to each other. We need security of our lives, our family, and our community etc. We call all these things we cannot provide individually but we all need to produce ‘collective need’. We elected managers to direct, organize, and support us to enable our production and its exchange and provide collective needs. We call them government.
Therefore in a society each capable adult produces and all the society consumes as we exchange our production of goods and/or services while the government manages and facilitates production and its exchange. If in each society each capable adult is a producer and each member of the society is a consumer no one society should be poorer than the other unless the poorer society is not directed, supported, and/or organized to facilitate production and its exchange.
On the road to 25% economic growth
Production
(a) Prepare our children to produce
To prepare us readily to produce when we become adults, every country provides educational infrastructure. We attended school to learn more than a b c, read and write but to use all of what we have learnt to produce. This process can never be over emphasised it is as important as life itself. This is what determines our livelihood.
Revamp the education system: Be aware of the adage ‘as you make your bed so you lay on it’. If our children attended schools that are unclean, un-kept, unorganized with teachers that are undisciplined, they themselves will become the product of this learning school environment. This education infrastructure for learning is the most vital process to becoming a producer. We are not only a product of what we learn in class alone, the culture and the environment of the school become a part of us forever. The only other environment aside of the home that our children spent one third of their weekdays, is at school. These are some suggestions to revamp our schools.
(i) Remember the word Assurance: Suppose each student in each State were to remit e.g. 500 Naira every year as school maintenance expenditure. Assume that all elementary, secondary, college and university institutions remittances are placed in a pool. Consider a drawing like a lottery where five schools are drawn from a pool of schools each year in each State to revamp these schools to average world standard. The objective is to use collective funds to target- specific the building of drawn schools at a time until all schools are revamped.
(ii) Start preparing the students to produce. The anticipation of each school winning the draw creates excitement and may motivate students and the parents to participate with hired professionals in volunteering in the revamping of the chosen schools which ideally will be built during the summer holidays. Provide the students with awards or credit hours towards schooling for amount of hours contributed to volunteering. Reward parents, especially those who cannot afford to contribute financially, by discounting their remittance after certain hours of volunteering. The students will start learning how to produce. In building a school there is a lot involved for example, drafting, carpentry, flooring, electrical, roofing, painting, surveying, landscaping, glass cutting and placement, welding, siding, designing, management, accounting, purchasing, etc. Our school institution will be respectable, our children will be responsible and respect the school they built, all schools will be motivated in this draws anticipating their turn.
(iii) Organize the school to function. Structure the management and ensure accountability, and responsibility. Most importantly motivate the parents to participate, contribute and give them a role in this process. Create checks such as teacher evaluation. Empower the student and teachers by creating leak centers and call centers to report irregularities. Create layers of management for checks and balances.
(iv) Structure training programs. In many professions such as Teaching and Medicine, students par-take in practicum whether when at school or after graduation. This system is created so that they are readily prepared to start producing after graduation. This is a system that has overreached every profession in other countries. If we want to produce efficiently, economically, and effectively to be able to compete with other nations we must organize our children to be fully prepared to produce. Tradesperson like a plumber, electrician, landscaper, mechanic, engineer, architect, fashion designer, farmers, draftsmen, welders machinist, etc. do not have to search for employment after school they should be starting a business because they should have acquired practical training while at school or thereafter just like teachers, nurses, and doctors. This is how we can start a business of our own, or prepared to contribute to employers immediately. For example in other countries an electrician, by the way all must be licenced, is ready to work, or start a business right after graduation because the education and the work experience had been attained. Students attend schools and work in the field of study for designated period of time while schooling.
(b) Prepare (graduates) to produce.
Our unemployment rate of 23.9 % not accounting for our underemployment rate is too high for a country like Nigeria that has abundant, skilled human, natural, and mineral resources. The world wonders and in waiting when and how we will be awakened. These are my contributions on the road to attaining a guaranteed 25% growth per year for 25 years. Where is yours?
(1) Pay attention to human basic need. It is important to realize that these basic needs food, shelter, and security are the foundation that every economy builds upon. The society’s need when fulfilled is the wealth of that nation just as the richest productive individual in a society derived that wealth from fulfilling the needs of that society.
(I). Fulfil the shelter need. Create a mortgage system: There is wealth for a nation that supports all her citizens to attain affordable housing after all it is a primary need. This could be multiple (apartments) or single dwelling housing. Fulfilling this need creates many employment opportunities for; Surveyors, architects, designers, carpenters, welders, electricians, plumbers, painters, machinist, fabricators, masonry, landscapers, truckers, realtors, lawyer’s, architects, realtors, etc. Employment opportunities in businesses that supply’s materials such as lumber, gravel, soil, paint, windows, shingles, cement, electrical equipment, plumbing supplies, sinks, bathtub, flooring, etc. And as we all exchange all these goods and services banks flourish, we purchase things that create employment when we occupy the home such as furniture, appliances, utensils, computers, television, light fixtures, beds and beddings, cupboards etc. There is no other finished product that utilizes more labour, materials, and increases the wealth of a nation than housing. Some of the most advanced nations use the housing market as economic indicator when measuring their economic performance. A house built of bricks and cement cannot be moved and the land that it is sitting on is going nowhere soon. Why then do we have to pay cash to build a house or build a house for 15 years while diminishing the disposable income that could contribute to the wealth of our nation? Available mortgage to all our people will significantly reduce corruption, increase employment, increase standard of living, beautify our country and increase the wealth of our nation. We should be able to have easy access to mortgage, build single and multiple affordable housing at relatively low down payment, low monthly payments and at low interest. It is the least loan risk when insured against damage, and/or death because a house and the land it sits on is a guarantee for its loan. We could then use our collective saving to invest at the least risk in people that need to utilize it to build a home while our economy thrives. A mortgage system with the banking industry, government regulations and oversight is needed today on our road to 25% economic growth.
(II) We all need food. Mechanized farming is required to feed us all. If every Nigeria needs food there must be wealth in the production of food. It cannot be over emphasized that fulfilling needs creates wealth and the greater the amount of needs fulfilled the wealthier. We are over 146milion people and each consumes an average of over 1,000 grams of food per day, every day, (UNO estimation) there is surely a great need to fulfil. The more food production within a country the wealthier the country will be. The country imports less food and therefore a better standing in its balance of payment and increased production in the country. It is a fact that every nation that is economically advantaged has a farming structure. Food is a major need of humans and there is wealth in fulfilling it.
(2) Direct, organize and support production: If food and housing are primary need for every Nigerian, how do we organize, direct, support and motivate our children to participate in producing them. On the road to 25% growth every year for the next 25 years here is my contribution. Are you going to participate?
(I) Develop a program that will create educated tradesmen: Unemployment is about 39% and graduates unemployment is about 18%. They need jobs, the citizen needs food and affordable housing, and the country needs wealth. Our ability to co-ordinate the production in these two industries will increase our collective wealth. Organize a special 1- 2 years education programs that will train these unemployed college and university students for free in technical trade such as farming, carpentry, surveyor, drafting, roofing, flooring, designing, mechanic, painting, masonry, welding, landscaping, design, real estate, electrician, plumbing, retailing, distribution, civil engineering, computer technology, machinist, etc.
(II) Motivate and support them to participate: Provide them and other unemployed graduates in technical trades a promissory note for a loan to start their business in the area of study to those willing to be in business. It is important for these young men to know that the country is readily committed, and determined to restructure its economy. The country on the other hand needs the middle class who carries the country on its shoulder. We need trained, informed, educated, professional tradesmen. This is where better ways of doing things (technologies) originates.
Exchanging the goods and services we all produce.
If each capable adult in a society produce goods and services which are exchanged amongst each other, the venues for exchanging these goods must be equally as important as the goods they produce because our total production is limited by the means and venues it is exchanged. If the total market is smaller than total production, production will shrink to the size of the market. On the road to 25% growth every year for 25 years we need to restructure our distribution system and venues of exchanging our goods produced.
(a) Information market: In every city there should be structured information system made available to the populace such as available raw materials, mineral resources, producers, sources of goods and services and demography. The age, gender, occupation, education, marital status, population, average income, students, workers, housing, and all pertinent information required by a producer in determining where, what, and when to produce. Likewise the consumer requires information of products needed. Is there a particular product available? Who is the producer? Where is it located? What is the price? As simple as this may seem, it is quite involved. It is worth noting however that it is imperative that to buy we must be able to know what is available and where it is located. To produce we must have the information of the target market’s needs we are fulfilling. Example; for an individual to determine whether to engage in producing student’s uniforms the total amount of students in the area should be available and the number of existing manufacturers in the same field should be accessible. We need readily available manufacturer’s handbook, and information on the demography of each town. Every Nigerian now has a phone we must develop telephone books that will classify and categorize businesses and their phone numbers and addresses which should be available and easily accessible to every household without cost. Advertisement could be the source of funding the cost of supplying, printing, and co-ordinating this most important means of exchanging our production. Government support may be required initially until producers appreciate this venue as a good source of advertising goods and services available for exchange.
(b) Accessibility: To purchase or to sell we must know where to make the exchanges. Yes some indigenous in the city may be aware of a particular producer’s location or an individual’s address within the city this is not enough everyone in the city and visitors to the city should be able to access the location. For example almost all Nigerians have a telephone this device should create a lot of new employment and support the exchange of our goods and services. Organized delivery services should be a booming market now. We should be able to call, anywhere in a city for food delivery, taxi pick up, flower delivery, mail pickups etc. Our houses and place of business requires better sequential numbering and organization. Please change the numbering of our housing. How difficult could this be this is 2013.
(c) Support our medium of exchange: Starting any kind of business is not simple. The need of the community, area and /or region has to be identified, the right location need to be determined, the sourcing of the materials has to be researched, the knowledge of book keeping, management, pricing, inventory control, mark-ups and mark-downs, hiring, and most importantly the capital to start a business.
Supporting production and its exchange is the function of the government. After all one of its main function is to direct, organise, and support us to produce. In doing so it must support and organize us to produce and facilitate the exchange. The more people that produce, the better our standard of living and the wealthier our nation. The more efficient, effective, and economical we produce the more our individual and collective wealth because we are competitively producing with the rest of the world. The Support provided by the government should not be a gift in most cases it generates revenue to the State. Countries all over the world had designed many different means of supporting production and its exchange for economic growth.
In developed nations the provincial/state and the federal developed support for creating new products or new ideas. They created office in each town to support new ideas and new products. These ideas are presented before government representative committee in the town. Upon approval there is a program that will provide, at no cost, a prototype of the product. Upon approval there is a program that supports a % of the loan for the product’s manufacturing. There is a program that supports a % of the loan for advertisement and start-up cost upon approval of financial plan. The goal is to support the idea till it is produced.
(11) Support organizations: There is always strength in numbers and whenever there is more than one individual involved the risk lessens because the collective collateral increases against the loan requested. Professions such as medical doctors, architects, construction companies, transportation companies, etc. whose start-up cost is expensive should be encouraged to form organization with many members and shared responsibilities of liabilities, greater assets, and less risk to financiers.
For example a group of medical doctors with different specialization may operate from the same shared space (building) sharing equipment, personnel, and financing cost. The collective assets, knowledge, and total collateral will be much more than an individual doctor. The government should support them to borrow through second mortgaging. The second mortgage is an amount necessary to qualify them for a loan. The loan by the government may be mortgaged for more years at lower interest. The idea is to support us to produce. Our doctors will stay in the country and better opportunities for employment or start their own business.
In transportation every town should have no more than three transportation groups. All individual operators will operate under one of them. Each group should have its logo, have a dispatch location, and have a management. They are now collectively responsible. Customers can call for their services, government can give them collective directives such as registration, insurance, and standards of vehicles on the road, and their responsibility may extend to giving registered members guarantee, or pro-forma (potential earning from operation) for borrowing which makes financing to each member easier. The system is better organized for providing transportation, better vehicles on the road, affordable insurance, and access to borrowing money. Individually we think of me. It is the function of the government to direct, organize, and support us collectively to produce and exchange our production.
(III) Franchising: There is a job creation phenomena in developed countries that is so successful it has infiltrated all industries, sports, retailing, production, banks, education, distribution, hairdressing, carpentry, plumbing, dentistry, grocery store, convenience store, gas stations, accounting, restaurants, medicine, and almost all industries.
Franchising is not a business it is a way of doing business. It is a marketing concept of producing and/or distributing goods or services where a producer, a distributor, or a financier develop a concept; design it, package it, test its viability of success by managing one unit for some time, if successful, create other units sell them and continue to receive residual income from franchise and royalty fees. Yes we do have a few in Nigeria but not at the scale that has impacted the Western world economy. It has become a culture.
It is the best opportunity for those who want to start a business without the knowhow, who have no capital, experience, or unemployed looking for a job. The franchisor searches for the best location for the business, design the structure, provide the technical knowhow, provide the training, etc. The buyer receives comprehensive training on how to run the business. Because the franchise has gained success the pro-forma presented to the bank for financing is always approved by the bank for a loan.
In developed nations the private sectors create these franchises. It is easier to raise money from investors, the banking institution, and there are structures that enable those with money to invest in those with ideas. Our society does not have these structures. (Our country should pay attention to how to make us responsible. We must become a digitize nation with identification and a system (credit bureau) that will measure our responsibilities to our obligations, and a law enforcement and judicial system that is functional).
It will be sensational if we can implement this system and customize it to suit our existing infrastructure. This is my contribution on the road to 25% growth a year for 25 Years. Do you have one?
(I) Government program: There should be a structure developed by the government to do the following:
(a) Create a special program (NGO) that will develop franchises and determine the most needed franchises in a city, state or country.
(b) Hire professionals that has the technological knowhow in each type of franchise to develop the structure; such as product sourcing, knowledge in particular type of production, manufacturing, distribution, and/ or retailing franchise.
(c) Hire those who will find the most suitable locations, for the franchises, design it, place fixtures, planograms, point of sale, and operating procedure and manuals.
(d) Hire those who will operate model units of each type of franchise created where training will be provided.
(e) If successful build other units and sell them but continue to receive royalty fee and franchise fee.
(II) Sell shares with this concept to raise capital to develop this structure. (We could call this system Govchising)
(III) Jobs are created, financing is abled, our goods and services are exchanged efficiently, effectively and economically. The success of this program will awaken private sector’s interest and will start producing and exchanging their goods at this set standard. The government holding may later be sold to the private sector with the structure in place.
The government must support our production and its exchange. To produce we must be able to exchange the goods and services produced. To produce to our potential we must have the ready market to supply because our total production is curtailed by our total market. If our total market is small our total production will shrink to accommodate the market. Those kiosks at the food markets and the structure we have in place must go. It is a sham, a disgrace, and it limits our growth and our production capacity. Support them to produce. Give those already in business loans to expand and exchange more products. Alas if we do not support and provide these venues foreigners will. We do not want that because whoever has a majority control of exchanging a society’s production sets the price our production is purchased and also set the price our production is sold.
Security.
Security includes; security of life, property, food, housing, production and its exchange, safe keep of gains from production, recourse, equal opportunity, rights and freedom to education, happiness, justice etc. Our confidence determines how secured we are. The confidence that I can be what I want to be. I am confident in an abiding legal contract, I can live without fear, I can produce and exchange my production with the least interruption, if I fell ill there is a hospital and my medical insurance, if my car or my property is damaged it is secured with my insurance, if I am in duress help is only a phone call away, when I am older my old age security will take care of me, my country knows who I am and where I live, I am not alone we are over 164 million strong etc. That is what security is. How do we provide security for us all? What is your answer? On our way to 25% growth for 25 years this is my contribution.
(a) Economic security: Our individual main objective is to put food on the table to feed ourselves and our family and shelter a place to keep them warm and safe. To be able to provide food and shelter we all need to work (produce) and exchange our goods and services produced. What kind of security would we need to attain our needs?
(1) Electricity, water, roads: How can a society produce with continual interrupted electricity? Even if we have to stop every other program to attain this important need for production. We ask you all to write letters to the president, the governor, and your local government. The urgency for our collective cry for help can only be understood if we make the case and the noise. If we don’t there will be no response. Ask yourselves why would a country refuse any State that has the Capital to provide its own electricity? Is the purpose to hold everyone from progressing because some can’t? In all advanced nations such as Canada and the United States each State/Province provides its own electricity. States that have excess sells to States that don’t have enough. In Canada we have Manitoba hydro, Saskatchewan hydro, Ontario hydro, British Colombia hydro etc. Almost all the provinces in Canada sell excess hydro to the U.S. It is most surprising that our society refuses States willing to produce electricity. We have to all cry louder. Let each State that can produce electricity use the present infrastructure and pay them for the amount of electricity produced by the amount of kilowatts sent through the grid or forgive them the infrastructure. They could sell excess hydro to neighbouring States that cannot produce it. Send our leaders letters today 146 million letters to show them we are really upset that our production is being interrupted and it is affecting our security to provide food and shelter for our children. Electricity is not a gift, it is user- financed. We pay for its use why then are we deprived of it. If we cannot co-ordinate and use the intelligent Nigerians available we can contract it out.
Without constant water supply many kinds of production is not possible, our health is impaired, and it affects our social life. This is a user- financed provision. We pay for the service. Please do not underestimate the amount of production and employment this will create. Has anyone paid attention to the impact telephone services that we were denied for years have on our economic and social life? We all have to yell louder it seems our leaders have other interests at heart this is inexplicable. You sell stocks to Nigerians to raise the funds to develop these infrastructures and charge the users for the services provided to pay for the interest and eventually to retire the stocks. Tell me am I stupid or uninformed about what’s going on in our country?
There is stress and therefore insecurity when we have difficulty exchanging our goods. Fix our roads. It is not that you have to do it for free. It is user-financed for blob sake!!! Attain the resources from road tax, license fees, tire tax, gasoline tax, etc. I cannot believe what we are doing to ourselves it is mind boggling. No one in the world can pay us anymore than this to destroy ourselves.
(2) Assurance of continuity: Ease of mind, gives us the confidence to take risk, to venture, to have the least worry about tomorrow, and to have continuity in our daily lives. We must inform, direct, educate, organize, and support our citizens of the means to prepare us for eventualities. When the bread winner in a family is sick, when we lose our jobs, when our house is burnt or damaged, when we retire, when we passed away, when we plan for our children school fees, etc. prepare us to be ready. It will not cost you a penny except the cost and time to direct, organize, and educate us. Teach, not just a few, but all of us the need to have insurance. Unemployment insurance, health insurance, house insurance, business insurance, life insurance, car insurance etc. We are most confident and least stressed when we are assured of unemployment insurance, that we have paid its premium, will support us for a period of time while we search for new employment. We are assured with the least worry that our house will be rebuilt if damaged or burnt. We are least worried about those left behind of their continuity of livelihood if we all have life insurance. A family will not go into bankruptcy when the bread winner of the family is ill. We all can start saving for our children the day they are born for their education so that it will not be a burden tomorrow. We will all have enough put away for retirement. The structuring of assurance alone could increase our economy by 3% a year every year. It will increase our national savings, lessen our stress, reduce corruption, support continuity, and promote confidence and creativity.
Security of protection and preservation of the rule of law.
The rule of law is what enables us to function in our society. It sets rule that protects and governs our lives, property, contractual obligations, and our social interrelationship. Like every other nation we have the rules in the books. The police agency and the judiciary in our country who are designated to enforce the laws are not supported, disciplined and organized to uphold it. We need them. They are very important in our daily lives.
We need to support them by giving them the tools necessary to perform their duty. For example, what would a police officer do when an individual commits a non- criminal offence such as a traffic violation or nonconforming in the neighbourhood by playing the music too loud after previous warning? If you think of all the police officer’s options none is practical. The absence of identification system and the fact that we are not a digitized nation creates the present corruption. A ticket of a hefty fine would have been enough to condition the offender. Instead the corrupt option prevails.
In Canada a corporal earns $75,000.00 a yr. If we are to convert this to Naira we will all understand the support required for those who are required to enforce our laws, protect our lives and property, and maintain order. We have humiliated them and in return they have disgraced a prestigious institution. If we expect them to uphold the law and apply that law equitably, whether to rich or poor, they must be paid at middle class income. It is after we have paid them commensurably to the service performed that we start to discipline them. Imagine how much we lose to corruption daily, look at our dysfunctional society, see how difficult it is to have binding contract, think of how alone we are individually, and how those at the top are ripping the country apart.
The police agency and the judiciary need to be discipline and organised. (Please visit the Police agency forum).
Production is the basic function of humans. A leader of a society should provide infrastructures that will not only provide the best education and an environment conducive to learning, it should provide practical training for every student while still schooling and support those who are ready to start a business with loans. Individuals produce to provide primarily for basic needs, food and shelter. There is wealth in fulfilling needs, develop the infrastructures that will enable this need to be fulfilled. As we all produce our goods and services we all need the infrastructure that will enable its exchange, the collective need for roads, electricity, water, security and individual digitized address for accountability, discipline and conformity to the rule of law. To produce to our potential we need an information system to find each other and we need a market big enough to accommodate our total production. And finally inform, direct, and organize us to have continuity in our lives. As you do these worthy things so will our society move closer to utopian.
IN NIGERIA FOR THE NEXT 25 YEARS
I guarantee that Nigeria economy can grow at 25% annually for the next 25 years if all Nigerians are ready. To be ready majority of us have to participate, be motivated, engaged, and disciplined. We are hardworking people, very dedicated to schooling, selfless in caring for our nuclear family, and most sincerely sympathetic of others in despair. For all our hard work, our dedication to succeed, and the love for our family it is time for us to pull ourselves out of our misery. I am certain that we will be most sympathetic if we find a nation that has everything to be the greatest country on earth but have nothing.
This text reflects on inexplicable responses and actions of some of our government officials such as the minister about two decades ago who responded on national television, when asked about our dysfunction telephone system, ‘not every Nigerian need a phone. I hope he is still alive to witness what the provision of this devise has contributed to our economy, our social life, and our safety. A minister of commerce who visited Detroit to induce producers to our country was asked the type of minerals resources we have in our country. He replied ‘We have Fanta orange, Coca Cola, sprite ….. He was redirected and prompted to natural resources with examples. He responded ‘yes we have cola nuts, peanuts Oranges….. .Do you remember ‘Oga at the top’? Are we placing the wrong people in the right positions or are we ‘lost’? Is it micromanagement that got us here or do we have a system that is purposely keeping us down? Who are the people directing our country and where are they taking us? We need serious dialogue because it is our collective knowledge that will overcome this ‘thing’ that’s got a stronghold on our political, economic, and social life. On our road to 25% growth for 25 years this is my contribution where is yours?
The premise: Individually we are all producers. We produce primarily to attain human basic need; food and water, shelter, and security every other need is secondary. A teacher provides service of teaching to prepare us to produce, a doctor provides the service of making us feel healthy to produce, a carpenter build houses and furniture for our shelter, a farmer grows our food, etc.
For a teacher to build a house he has to teach the farmer’s, the doctor’s, and the carpenter’s children. In other words we are all independent as individuals yet interdependent in our society. We each produce goods and services to attain the goods and services we need from others.
To produce and exchange our goods amongst each other we need roads to move our goods and to provide our services. We need electricity to produce our goods and services. We need rules to oversee our contractual obligations to each other. We need security of our lives, our family, and our community etc. We call all these things we cannot provide individually but we all need to produce ‘collective need’. We elected managers to direct, organize, and support us to enable our production and its exchange and provide collective needs. We call them government.
Therefore in a society each capable adult produces and all the society consumes as we exchange our production of goods and/or services while the government manages and facilitates production and its exchange. If in each society each capable adult is a producer and each member of the society is a consumer no one society should be poorer than the other unless the poorer society is not directed, supported, and/or organized to facilitate production and its exchange.
On the road to 25% economic growth
Production
(a) Prepare our children to produce
To prepare us readily to produce when we become adults, every country provides educational infrastructure. We attended school to learn more than a b c, read and write but to use all of what we have learnt to produce. This process can never be over emphasised it is as important as life itself. This is what determines our livelihood.
Revamp the education system: Be aware of the adage ‘as you make your bed so you lay on it’. If our children attended schools that are unclean, un-kept, unorganized with teachers that are undisciplined, they themselves will become the product of this learning school environment. This education infrastructure for learning is the most vital process to becoming a producer. We are not only a product of what we learn in class alone, the culture and the environment of the school become a part of us forever. The only other environment aside of the home that our children spent one third of their weekdays, is at school. These are some suggestions to revamp our schools.
(i) Remember the word Assurance: Suppose each student in each State were to remit e.g. 500 Naira every year as school maintenance expenditure. Assume that all elementary, secondary, college and university institutions remittances are placed in a pool. Consider a drawing like a lottery where five schools are drawn from a pool of schools each year in each State to revamp these schools to average world standard. The objective is to use collective funds to target- specific the building of drawn schools at a time until all schools are revamped.
(ii) Start preparing the students to produce. The anticipation of each school winning the draw creates excitement and may motivate students and the parents to participate with hired professionals in volunteering in the revamping of the chosen schools which ideally will be built during the summer holidays. Provide the students with awards or credit hours towards schooling for amount of hours contributed to volunteering. Reward parents, especially those who cannot afford to contribute financially, by discounting their remittance after certain hours of volunteering. The students will start learning how to produce. In building a school there is a lot involved for example, drafting, carpentry, flooring, electrical, roofing, painting, surveying, landscaping, glass cutting and placement, welding, siding, designing, management, accounting, purchasing, etc. Our school institution will be respectable, our children will be responsible and respect the school they built, all schools will be motivated in this draws anticipating their turn.
(iii) Organize the school to function. Structure the management and ensure accountability, and responsibility. Most importantly motivate the parents to participate, contribute and give them a role in this process. Create checks such as teacher evaluation. Empower the student and teachers by creating leak centers and call centers to report irregularities. Create layers of management for checks and balances.
(iv) Structure training programs. In many professions such as Teaching and Medicine, students par-take in practicum whether when at school or after graduation. This system is created so that they are readily prepared to start producing after graduation. This is a system that has overreached every profession in other countries. If we want to produce efficiently, economically, and effectively to be able to compete with other nations we must organize our children to be fully prepared to produce. Tradesperson like a plumber, electrician, landscaper, mechanic, engineer, architect, fashion designer, farmers, draftsmen, welders machinist, etc. do not have to search for employment after school they should be starting a business because they should have acquired practical training while at school or thereafter just like teachers, nurses, and doctors. This is how we can start a business of our own, or prepared to contribute to employers immediately. For example in other countries an electrician, by the way all must be licenced, is ready to work, or start a business right after graduation because the education and the work experience had been attained. Students attend schools and work in the field of study for designated period of time while schooling.
(b) Prepare (graduates) to produce.
Our unemployment rate of 23.9 % not accounting for our underemployment rate is too high for a country like Nigeria that has abundant, skilled human, natural, and mineral resources. The world wonders and in waiting when and how we will be awakened. These are my contributions on the road to attaining a guaranteed 25% growth per year for 25 years. Where is yours?
(1) Pay attention to human basic need. It is important to realize that these basic needs food, shelter, and security are the foundation that every economy builds upon. The society’s need when fulfilled is the wealth of that nation just as the richest productive individual in a society derived that wealth from fulfilling the needs of that society.
(I). Fulfil the shelter need. Create a mortgage system: There is wealth for a nation that supports all her citizens to attain affordable housing after all it is a primary need. This could be multiple (apartments) or single dwelling housing. Fulfilling this need creates many employment opportunities for; Surveyors, architects, designers, carpenters, welders, electricians, plumbers, painters, machinist, fabricators, masonry, landscapers, truckers, realtors, lawyer’s, architects, realtors, etc. Employment opportunities in businesses that supply’s materials such as lumber, gravel, soil, paint, windows, shingles, cement, electrical equipment, plumbing supplies, sinks, bathtub, flooring, etc. And as we all exchange all these goods and services banks flourish, we purchase things that create employment when we occupy the home such as furniture, appliances, utensils, computers, television, light fixtures, beds and beddings, cupboards etc. There is no other finished product that utilizes more labour, materials, and increases the wealth of a nation than housing. Some of the most advanced nations use the housing market as economic indicator when measuring their economic performance. A house built of bricks and cement cannot be moved and the land that it is sitting on is going nowhere soon. Why then do we have to pay cash to build a house or build a house for 15 years while diminishing the disposable income that could contribute to the wealth of our nation? Available mortgage to all our people will significantly reduce corruption, increase employment, increase standard of living, beautify our country and increase the wealth of our nation. We should be able to have easy access to mortgage, build single and multiple affordable housing at relatively low down payment, low monthly payments and at low interest. It is the least loan risk when insured against damage, and/or death because a house and the land it sits on is a guarantee for its loan. We could then use our collective saving to invest at the least risk in people that need to utilize it to build a home while our economy thrives. A mortgage system with the banking industry, government regulations and oversight is needed today on our road to 25% economic growth.
(II) We all need food. Mechanized farming is required to feed us all. If every Nigeria needs food there must be wealth in the production of food. It cannot be over emphasized that fulfilling needs creates wealth and the greater the amount of needs fulfilled the wealthier. We are over 146milion people and each consumes an average of over 1,000 grams of food per day, every day, (UNO estimation) there is surely a great need to fulfil. The more food production within a country the wealthier the country will be. The country imports less food and therefore a better standing in its balance of payment and increased production in the country. It is a fact that every nation that is economically advantaged has a farming structure. Food is a major need of humans and there is wealth in fulfilling it.
(2) Direct, organize and support production: If food and housing are primary need for every Nigerian, how do we organize, direct, support and motivate our children to participate in producing them. On the road to 25% growth every year for the next 25 years here is my contribution. Are you going to participate?
(I) Develop a program that will create educated tradesmen: Unemployment is about 39% and graduates unemployment is about 18%. They need jobs, the citizen needs food and affordable housing, and the country needs wealth. Our ability to co-ordinate the production in these two industries will increase our collective wealth. Organize a special 1- 2 years education programs that will train these unemployed college and university students for free in technical trade such as farming, carpentry, surveyor, drafting, roofing, flooring, designing, mechanic, painting, masonry, welding, landscaping, design, real estate, electrician, plumbing, retailing, distribution, civil engineering, computer technology, machinist, etc.
(II) Motivate and support them to participate: Provide them and other unemployed graduates in technical trades a promissory note for a loan to start their business in the area of study to those willing to be in business. It is important for these young men to know that the country is readily committed, and determined to restructure its economy. The country on the other hand needs the middle class who carries the country on its shoulder. We need trained, informed, educated, professional tradesmen. This is where better ways of doing things (technologies) originates.
Exchanging the goods and services we all produce.
If each capable adult in a society produce goods and services which are exchanged amongst each other, the venues for exchanging these goods must be equally as important as the goods they produce because our total production is limited by the means and venues it is exchanged. If the total market is smaller than total production, production will shrink to the size of the market. On the road to 25% growth every year for 25 years we need to restructure our distribution system and venues of exchanging our goods produced.
(a) Information market: In every city there should be structured information system made available to the populace such as available raw materials, mineral resources, producers, sources of goods and services and demography. The age, gender, occupation, education, marital status, population, average income, students, workers, housing, and all pertinent information required by a producer in determining where, what, and when to produce. Likewise the consumer requires information of products needed. Is there a particular product available? Who is the producer? Where is it located? What is the price? As simple as this may seem, it is quite involved. It is worth noting however that it is imperative that to buy we must be able to know what is available and where it is located. To produce we must have the information of the target market’s needs we are fulfilling. Example; for an individual to determine whether to engage in producing student’s uniforms the total amount of students in the area should be available and the number of existing manufacturers in the same field should be accessible. We need readily available manufacturer’s handbook, and information on the demography of each town. Every Nigerian now has a phone we must develop telephone books that will classify and categorize businesses and their phone numbers and addresses which should be available and easily accessible to every household without cost. Advertisement could be the source of funding the cost of supplying, printing, and co-ordinating this most important means of exchanging our production. Government support may be required initially until producers appreciate this venue as a good source of advertising goods and services available for exchange.
(b) Accessibility: To purchase or to sell we must know where to make the exchanges. Yes some indigenous in the city may be aware of a particular producer’s location or an individual’s address within the city this is not enough everyone in the city and visitors to the city should be able to access the location. For example almost all Nigerians have a telephone this device should create a lot of new employment and support the exchange of our goods and services. Organized delivery services should be a booming market now. We should be able to call, anywhere in a city for food delivery, taxi pick up, flower delivery, mail pickups etc. Our houses and place of business requires better sequential numbering and organization. Please change the numbering of our housing. How difficult could this be this is 2013.
(c) Support our medium of exchange: Starting any kind of business is not simple. The need of the community, area and /or region has to be identified, the right location need to be determined, the sourcing of the materials has to be researched, the knowledge of book keeping, management, pricing, inventory control, mark-ups and mark-downs, hiring, and most importantly the capital to start a business.
Supporting production and its exchange is the function of the government. After all one of its main function is to direct, organise, and support us to produce. In doing so it must support and organize us to produce and facilitate the exchange. The more people that produce, the better our standard of living and the wealthier our nation. The more efficient, effective, and economical we produce the more our individual and collective wealth because we are competitively producing with the rest of the world. The Support provided by the government should not be a gift in most cases it generates revenue to the State. Countries all over the world had designed many different means of supporting production and its exchange for economic growth.
In developed nations the provincial/state and the federal developed support for creating new products or new ideas. They created office in each town to support new ideas and new products. These ideas are presented before government representative committee in the town. Upon approval there is a program that will provide, at no cost, a prototype of the product. Upon approval there is a program that supports a % of the loan for the product’s manufacturing. There is a program that supports a % of the loan for advertisement and start-up cost upon approval of financial plan. The goal is to support the idea till it is produced.
(11) Support organizations: There is always strength in numbers and whenever there is more than one individual involved the risk lessens because the collective collateral increases against the loan requested. Professions such as medical doctors, architects, construction companies, transportation companies, etc. whose start-up cost is expensive should be encouraged to form organization with many members and shared responsibilities of liabilities, greater assets, and less risk to financiers.
For example a group of medical doctors with different specialization may operate from the same shared space (building) sharing equipment, personnel, and financing cost. The collective assets, knowledge, and total collateral will be much more than an individual doctor. The government should support them to borrow through second mortgaging. The second mortgage is an amount necessary to qualify them for a loan. The loan by the government may be mortgaged for more years at lower interest. The idea is to support us to produce. Our doctors will stay in the country and better opportunities for employment or start their own business.
In transportation every town should have no more than three transportation groups. All individual operators will operate under one of them. Each group should have its logo, have a dispatch location, and have a management. They are now collectively responsible. Customers can call for their services, government can give them collective directives such as registration, insurance, and standards of vehicles on the road, and their responsibility may extend to giving registered members guarantee, or pro-forma (potential earning from operation) for borrowing which makes financing to each member easier. The system is better organized for providing transportation, better vehicles on the road, affordable insurance, and access to borrowing money. Individually we think of me. It is the function of the government to direct, organize, and support us collectively to produce and exchange our production.
(III) Franchising: There is a job creation phenomena in developed countries that is so successful it has infiltrated all industries, sports, retailing, production, banks, education, distribution, hairdressing, carpentry, plumbing, dentistry, grocery store, convenience store, gas stations, accounting, restaurants, medicine, and almost all industries.
Franchising is not a business it is a way of doing business. It is a marketing concept of producing and/or distributing goods or services where a producer, a distributor, or a financier develop a concept; design it, package it, test its viability of success by managing one unit for some time, if successful, create other units sell them and continue to receive residual income from franchise and royalty fees. Yes we do have a few in Nigeria but not at the scale that has impacted the Western world economy. It has become a culture.
It is the best opportunity for those who want to start a business without the knowhow, who have no capital, experience, or unemployed looking for a job. The franchisor searches for the best location for the business, design the structure, provide the technical knowhow, provide the training, etc. The buyer receives comprehensive training on how to run the business. Because the franchise has gained success the pro-forma presented to the bank for financing is always approved by the bank for a loan.
In developed nations the private sectors create these franchises. It is easier to raise money from investors, the banking institution, and there are structures that enable those with money to invest in those with ideas. Our society does not have these structures. (Our country should pay attention to how to make us responsible. We must become a digitize nation with identification and a system (credit bureau) that will measure our responsibilities to our obligations, and a law enforcement and judicial system that is functional).
It will be sensational if we can implement this system and customize it to suit our existing infrastructure. This is my contribution on the road to 25% growth a year for 25 Years. Do you have one?
(I) Government program: There should be a structure developed by the government to do the following:
(a) Create a special program (NGO) that will develop franchises and determine the most needed franchises in a city, state or country.
(b) Hire professionals that has the technological knowhow in each type of franchise to develop the structure; such as product sourcing, knowledge in particular type of production, manufacturing, distribution, and/ or retailing franchise.
(c) Hire those who will find the most suitable locations, for the franchises, design it, place fixtures, planograms, point of sale, and operating procedure and manuals.
(d) Hire those who will operate model units of each type of franchise created where training will be provided.
(e) If successful build other units and sell them but continue to receive royalty fee and franchise fee.
(II) Sell shares with this concept to raise capital to develop this structure. (We could call this system Govchising)
(III) Jobs are created, financing is abled, our goods and services are exchanged efficiently, effectively and economically. The success of this program will awaken private sector’s interest and will start producing and exchanging their goods at this set standard. The government holding may later be sold to the private sector with the structure in place.
The government must support our production and its exchange. To produce we must be able to exchange the goods and services produced. To produce to our potential we must have the ready market to supply because our total production is curtailed by our total market. If our total market is small our total production will shrink to accommodate the market. Those kiosks at the food markets and the structure we have in place must go. It is a sham, a disgrace, and it limits our growth and our production capacity. Support them to produce. Give those already in business loans to expand and exchange more products. Alas if we do not support and provide these venues foreigners will. We do not want that because whoever has a majority control of exchanging a society’s production sets the price our production is purchased and also set the price our production is sold.
Security.
Security includes; security of life, property, food, housing, production and its exchange, safe keep of gains from production, recourse, equal opportunity, rights and freedom to education, happiness, justice etc. Our confidence determines how secured we are. The confidence that I can be what I want to be. I am confident in an abiding legal contract, I can live without fear, I can produce and exchange my production with the least interruption, if I fell ill there is a hospital and my medical insurance, if my car or my property is damaged it is secured with my insurance, if I am in duress help is only a phone call away, when I am older my old age security will take care of me, my country knows who I am and where I live, I am not alone we are over 164 million strong etc. That is what security is. How do we provide security for us all? What is your answer? On our way to 25% growth for 25 years this is my contribution.
(a) Economic security: Our individual main objective is to put food on the table to feed ourselves and our family and shelter a place to keep them warm and safe. To be able to provide food and shelter we all need to work (produce) and exchange our goods and services produced. What kind of security would we need to attain our needs?
(1) Electricity, water, roads: How can a society produce with continual interrupted electricity? Even if we have to stop every other program to attain this important need for production. We ask you all to write letters to the president, the governor, and your local government. The urgency for our collective cry for help can only be understood if we make the case and the noise. If we don’t there will be no response. Ask yourselves why would a country refuse any State that has the Capital to provide its own electricity? Is the purpose to hold everyone from progressing because some can’t? In all advanced nations such as Canada and the United States each State/Province provides its own electricity. States that have excess sells to States that don’t have enough. In Canada we have Manitoba hydro, Saskatchewan hydro, Ontario hydro, British Colombia hydro etc. Almost all the provinces in Canada sell excess hydro to the U.S. It is most surprising that our society refuses States willing to produce electricity. We have to all cry louder. Let each State that can produce electricity use the present infrastructure and pay them for the amount of electricity produced by the amount of kilowatts sent through the grid or forgive them the infrastructure. They could sell excess hydro to neighbouring States that cannot produce it. Send our leaders letters today 146 million letters to show them we are really upset that our production is being interrupted and it is affecting our security to provide food and shelter for our children. Electricity is not a gift, it is user- financed. We pay for its use why then are we deprived of it. If we cannot co-ordinate and use the intelligent Nigerians available we can contract it out.
Without constant water supply many kinds of production is not possible, our health is impaired, and it affects our social life. This is a user- financed provision. We pay for the service. Please do not underestimate the amount of production and employment this will create. Has anyone paid attention to the impact telephone services that we were denied for years have on our economic and social life? We all have to yell louder it seems our leaders have other interests at heart this is inexplicable. You sell stocks to Nigerians to raise the funds to develop these infrastructures and charge the users for the services provided to pay for the interest and eventually to retire the stocks. Tell me am I stupid or uninformed about what’s going on in our country?
There is stress and therefore insecurity when we have difficulty exchanging our goods. Fix our roads. It is not that you have to do it for free. It is user-financed for blob sake!!! Attain the resources from road tax, license fees, tire tax, gasoline tax, etc. I cannot believe what we are doing to ourselves it is mind boggling. No one in the world can pay us anymore than this to destroy ourselves.
(2) Assurance of continuity: Ease of mind, gives us the confidence to take risk, to venture, to have the least worry about tomorrow, and to have continuity in our daily lives. We must inform, direct, educate, organize, and support our citizens of the means to prepare us for eventualities. When the bread winner in a family is sick, when we lose our jobs, when our house is burnt or damaged, when we retire, when we passed away, when we plan for our children school fees, etc. prepare us to be ready. It will not cost you a penny except the cost and time to direct, organize, and educate us. Teach, not just a few, but all of us the need to have insurance. Unemployment insurance, health insurance, house insurance, business insurance, life insurance, car insurance etc. We are most confident and least stressed when we are assured of unemployment insurance, that we have paid its premium, will support us for a period of time while we search for new employment. We are assured with the least worry that our house will be rebuilt if damaged or burnt. We are least worried about those left behind of their continuity of livelihood if we all have life insurance. A family will not go into bankruptcy when the bread winner of the family is ill. We all can start saving for our children the day they are born for their education so that it will not be a burden tomorrow. We will all have enough put away for retirement. The structuring of assurance alone could increase our economy by 3% a year every year. It will increase our national savings, lessen our stress, reduce corruption, support continuity, and promote confidence and creativity.
Security of protection and preservation of the rule of law.
The rule of law is what enables us to function in our society. It sets rule that protects and governs our lives, property, contractual obligations, and our social interrelationship. Like every other nation we have the rules in the books. The police agency and the judiciary in our country who are designated to enforce the laws are not supported, disciplined and organized to uphold it. We need them. They are very important in our daily lives.
We need to support them by giving them the tools necessary to perform their duty. For example, what would a police officer do when an individual commits a non- criminal offence such as a traffic violation or nonconforming in the neighbourhood by playing the music too loud after previous warning? If you think of all the police officer’s options none is practical. The absence of identification system and the fact that we are not a digitized nation creates the present corruption. A ticket of a hefty fine would have been enough to condition the offender. Instead the corrupt option prevails.
In Canada a corporal earns $75,000.00 a yr. If we are to convert this to Naira we will all understand the support required for those who are required to enforce our laws, protect our lives and property, and maintain order. We have humiliated them and in return they have disgraced a prestigious institution. If we expect them to uphold the law and apply that law equitably, whether to rich or poor, they must be paid at middle class income. It is after we have paid them commensurably to the service performed that we start to discipline them. Imagine how much we lose to corruption daily, look at our dysfunctional society, see how difficult it is to have binding contract, think of how alone we are individually, and how those at the top are ripping the country apart.
The police agency and the judiciary need to be discipline and organised. (Please visit the Police agency forum).
Production is the basic function of humans. A leader of a society should provide infrastructures that will not only provide the best education and an environment conducive to learning, it should provide practical training for every student while still schooling and support those who are ready to start a business with loans. Individuals produce to provide primarily for basic needs, food and shelter. There is wealth in fulfilling needs, develop the infrastructures that will enable this need to be fulfilled. As we all produce our goods and services we all need the infrastructure that will enable its exchange, the collective need for roads, electricity, water, security and individual digitized address for accountability, discipline and conformity to the rule of law. To produce to our potential we need an information system to find each other and we need a market big enough to accommodate our total production. And finally inform, direct, and organize us to have continuity in our lives. As you do these worthy things so will our society move closer to utopian.