How 1983 coup halted Nigeria’s technological growth – Senator Olowoporoku

BY CLIFFORD NDUJIHE, DEPUTY POLITICAL EDITOR(Vanguard)

Senator Bode Olowoporoku, a doctorate degree holder in Economics was in the Senate between 2003 and 2007. In this interview with journalists at a meeting of Senators’ forum in Lagos recently, the 1983 minister of Science and Technology, narrated how the 1983 military coup truncated the country’s technological growth. He also spoke on why Nigeria might not realise Vision 2020 and why his organisation, the Nigerian Development Initiatives, was taking Dr Shamsdeen Usman, to court over Vision 2020. Excerpts:

The World Prosperity Index (WPI) penultimate week ranked Nigeria as 143 out of 169 countries in governance. What is your take on this?

Recently, there was a study on the security of copyright and intellectual property. They studied 129 countries. They ranked Nigeria 128th on security of intellectual property. On that note, how do you take your model to government and say, ‘this thing can improve the country?’

Coming to your question, everything in this life is built on systems. The Nigerian government does not organise anything on a system. If you organise Agriculture on a system such that every farmer will know what to do, it will help. You give him inputs, he already knows the output and where he will market it.

Look at China, when I was the Federal Minster of Science and Technology in 1983, I studied the Chinese one– the Science Village they were building on. The Science villages were meant to decompose Western technologies whether telephones, electronics, etc. Once decomposed, they look at it, bring in their entrepreneurs and pass it on to them to start making crude telephones, electronics, etc, from it.

When I looked at it, I said, ‘Ah China was going to boom.’ the same thing with India, it was going to boom in future. I went to President Shehu Shagari and said we were going to build up science villages. ‘Look at the cover of this telephone receiver, we cannot make it in this country. We don’t know what is inside but the science village will decompose it. Once it decomposed it and found out what it is made of, we will bring in entrepreneurs, who will be able to do it and fit in. We will bring another product, decompose it and carry on.’ That is what China is doing and is still doing – decomposing products in the science villages and passing it to their small and medium scale enterprises.

Shagari accepted it immediately and I assembled the best brains at Ikoyi Hotel in Lagos under Professor Oluwole, who studied Physics. But three months into it, the coup happened and terminated that. All ministers of Science and Technology since then have not been able to make a head or tail from that.

How do you see Nigeria’s implementation of the Vision 2020 plan?

The problem of this country is that of people in governance. When we looked at Vision 2020, the blueprint of the government and how the Minister, Dr Shamsdeen Usman was going about it, we found that it would fail like past development plans had failed since 1965 because the people are not factored into it. We therefore developed a model fashioned after Malaysian Vision 20-2020 but adapted to the situation of Nigeria.

We looked at it and said the informal sector of this country is about 85 per cent of the population; you are doing Vision 2020 that will not carry the populace along. He was talking about what the government will provide in year 2020, railways, roads, etc. what about the people? Their consciousness should be awoken. We therefore developed a model, which culminated in a TV reality show whereby everybody will know what to do. The people will not just be onlookers, waiting on government alone.

What you should ask yourself is: if the government says Nigeria will be at so, so point in year 2020, where will I be? What will I be doing? We used the model to tell Nigerians what every one will be doing such that you will have your own Vision 2020, I will have mine and there will be as many plans of Vision 20-2020 as there are people to develop them. We did a book and copyrighted it as an intellectual property; we – myself and Senator Umaru Dahiru, took it in a 15-page pamphlet to Dr. Shamsdeen Usman and said, ‘what you are doing will fail unless you improve on it.”

By the time we presented it, he was dancing and said, ‘this is exactly what Nigeria is looking for. This is exactly the roadmap Nigeria is looking for.’  He collected 15 copies and signed. Two weeks after, he called us and said, ‘prepare the blueprint, government is very eager to do this thing, that they had never seen anything like it.’ He even said that during the workshop on Vision 2020, no professor, nobody ever raised anything about the informal sector – how to factor it in.

He said that Professor Wole Soyinka said that Vision 2020 was a distraction and that when they were doing the blueprint, he called on David Mark to ask for the input of the National Assembly and that Mark said, ‘what is this thing you call Vision 2020 we just hear on Radio and Television?’ If he can say that it means the ordinary people don’t know anything about Vision 2020 except our project that will serve as an outreach.

Two to three weeks later, he called us to go and prepare the blueprint of the proposal, which was in 15 pages.. We called people,  professionals and Nigerians in the Diaspora – South Africa, USA, London and we inaugurated the professionals at Sheraton Hotel on January 13, 2010.

They  worked for four months to produce a 85-page blueprint that we took the Minister again for a mini-ceremony presentation in his office. He was so happy, for the first time, Nigeria has found its bearing. He took and acknowledged 10 copies in his office. Immediately after, he set up an inter-ministerial committee. They asked whether we would be ready to sell the copyright. We said, ‘yes, if you feel there are people, who could execute it like we would do because it will be an annual show.’

His media adviser, Malam Sheriff Mujudu was always communicating with us. But suddenly, he hijacked it from us. They put up an advertisement to say that they were now carrying Vision 2020 to every home, etc and asked media consultants to apply.

We phoned the new media adviser, Dr. Abba, who succeeded the old one and he said the minister had chosen to advertise it. We said, ‘you cannot advertise it because it is our property, a copyrighted intellectual property, you just want to bastardize it, something that would have helped this country to move forward  and fast track development.

In fact, when we were presenting the document, Usman acknowledged my superior knowledge because he got his Ph.D in 1980,  I got mine in 1976 in Economics. He said he had known me that Nigeria is lucky to have somebody like me. But evil just possessed his mind to hijack it. We wrote him, we warned him. When he didn’t listen, we contacted lawyer Fashanu (SAN) to write him and warn him. Fashanu wrote him on March 10 2011, to say you are going to embarrass the government. He said, ‘what we doing is we are not going to touch your TV reality show. What we want to do is a different thing just wait until we bring the thing out.’

Then, Lawyer Fashanu wrote him again and said, ‘it is not just the TV reality show, everything in the 85-page booklet is our concept. You don’t have it in your own blueprint and you don’t have what every Nigerian would be doing. What Nigerians will be doing everyday is our concept.’

If you are in Malaysia, you ask a driver, what is your plan? He will bring out his Vision 2020. When Malaysia is surpassing Britain and France as its own Vision 2020, I myself I must be at that stage. So it is not just the TV reality show, everything in that document. If you don’t touch everything in that document then you are bastardizing what would have helped Nigerians to move forward, fast track Nigeria and turn everybody from planlessness to planning.

What is your advice to President Jonathan?
He is a good man. He is too simple and wants the best for Nigeria. He needs men who can help him. If he can create a corridor of accessibility to him such that you can reach him when a minister is trying to kill an idea that would help the country, it will help.