Leading Without Reading

 EDDIE IROH's   INTERVENTION            eddie.iroh@thisdaylive.com

Before someone accuses me of plagiarism, let me quickly acknowledge that the above title is an adaptation from a segment of Richard Quest’s CNN programme QUEST MEANS BUSINESS dedicated to Reading for Leading where he interviews business, political and other leaders on what books they are reading at the time. And let me quickly observe that there was not one of those questioned by Quest over the years who was not reading a book or more at any given time. But the issue I am raising here is totally germane to our society and the nature of its many troubles. It deals with how we update and nourish our minds in a world of constant change and increasingly challenging new knowledge.

It is my belief that education is what is left after you have collected your certificate, diploma or degree or even PhD. The question then is what is left after what is left? I dare say that without further efforts at personal growth through reading, what is left is what I call progressive illiteracy. That is what obtains when there is a tendency, as is the case in our land, to see our Certificate as an end in itself; and having done and dusted it, we feel no further need to acquire new knowledge unless of course one elects to pursue further education. The danger of this is that in a country with already abysmally low standard of education, one remains less than fully equipped to face today’s world. Without comparative knowledge and competitive skills. we are faced with  former Central Bank  Governor Professor Chukwuma Soludo’s frightening warning that 75 percent of Nigerian graduates cannot compete in the 21st century workplace. And he was talking about graduates who had just come straight out of university. Imagine the fate of those afflicted with progressive illiteracy!

First let me state that reading is not only for leaders, but clearly very important for leading. And leadership is not limited to the Three Arms Complex in Abuja, the State Houses and Assemblies, the Local Governments, or Business and Professions. We all are to some degree or the other leaders, and it is our tendency to abdicate our own leadership roles and blame it all on Abuja and our governments that partly explains what I call our general BSE syndrome – Blame Someone Else. Nigerians as a people hardly take responsibility. We are congenital buck-passers. Finger pointing is a favourite Nigerian pastime. It is him, her and them; never me however palpable the evidence to the country. And luckily for BSE our overall incompetence in service provision provides enough fall guys to heap the blames on: It is NEPA, no light to charge my phone; no diesel for the generator; no network to make that call; no petrol and too much traffic on our corrugated roads, etc.etc.

But back to the basics. That Nigerians by and large do not read is all so evident in a nation that has a National Library, but no libraries; virtually no bookshops; and where no newspapers sells up to half a million copies per print run. The South Africans tried to force-feed Nigerians into the habit of reading by bringing a bookshop chain into the country a few years after they brought MTN. Their mobile telephony survived and is thriving but the bookshops folded in under two years for lack of patronage. And this is in a country climbing towards a population of 200 million. Indeed not one of Nigeria’s more than 120 universities has a library of acceptable international standard. As a substitute for libraries teachers recycle their own books and sell them to students as handouts, a recycling of ignorance if you ask me.

And for those Nigerians who bother to read, they can only find Tokunbo books read and discarded by foreign countries and sold in Nigerian cities in traffic jams alongside mosquito coils, rat poison and pure water. I have often marveled at the wealth of knowledge of the average British taxi driver who is often the first point of contact between a visitor and the country. I stopped marveling when I realized that most of those cabbies never stop reading when they are waiting for a job, never skip any chance to listen to their radio and top up their wealth of knowledge as they frequently topped up their petrol tank. Many of them can best some of our so called public affairs analysts who brought shame to their “profession” over the period of the last elections. Not many of them told you anything that the woman selling akara by the roadside could not.

Indeed my period spent watching the elections on television and listening on radio brought to the fore the level of intellectual decay and deficiency in our nation, which we seem to overlook through sheer gra-gra and empty bravado, or just because of the mere presence of a few bright stars around. You hear supposedly well educated people, including lawyers, economists and professors of political science say things like “the elections was much more better organized this time.” Or “the elections was not very smooth.” Indeed anyone who watched the announcement of the presidential election results on March 31 at the International Conference Centre Abuja will recall that of the 37 Professors/Vice Chancellors chosen by INEC Chairman Attahiru Jega to do the honours, all but three of them introduced themselves thus: “My name is Professor XYZ… My name ?  Professor? When their students come out one day to say “My name is Doctor….” you can well understand what I mean by recycling of ignorance. Indeed you do not have to wait for that day to see the level of intellectual lethargy in the land.

I have spent a bit of time lately paying attention to this subject. I find that from our print and electronic media to the much hyped Nigerian movie industry, the poor mastery of issues and language is simply appalling. Serious subjects are discussed on television by “experts” with as much expertise as the predictable cockcrow at dawn; presenters and interviewers simply lack research-based interrogation and commentary skills. The experts make up with shouting and exaggerated gesticulations what they lack in knowledge and expertise. You hear things like “I AKSED him” [more liked AXED him!]; and “I have heard it SEVERALLY.”. Even the experts appear to know no difference between GOVERNMENT and GOVERNANCE. They can quote the Constitution chapter and verse but cannot break it down to the interpretative nuance that makes sense to the listener.

Nollywood tops it off with appalling mispronunciations and by always using nine words where five are more than adequate. I once heard a line like “The salt content of this food is too much.” [Simply: this food is too salty.]. If you think these things are not important on the excuse that English is not our mother tongue, consider the collateral effect of this on the young and those who are ab initio ill equipped. Not many of us recognize the damage that pidgin English has done to the language skill of young even older Nigerians. While it is a good medium for communicating with the unlettered I have not understood why two University graduates, tutored in the English language would routinely prefer to speak to each other in pidgin. Is it by accident that it is also called Broken English?  And how can the lack of practice make perfect?

Some may regard the foregoing as superficial and inconsequential matter of speech and expression, but the underlying substantial issue cannot be so readily dismissed; namely that  when one stops updating oneself [ as even computers regularly are updated]  we have to accept that there are consequences, one of which is intellectual paucity and diminished capability. Sociologists, psychologists and even psychiatrists may have to enlighten us on the true genesis of our intellectual malaise. But what I can say is that as a people much of our minds do no work at full mast because they are largely malnourished. If we do not eat only one meal in say a month, nor refill our cars with petrol and engine oil once in just a year, how can a mind un-nourished or malnourished through lack of reading perform at full strength? The engine of the human mind can “knock” just as that of a car denied of the nourishment of petrol, water and engine oil.

If we accept that development begins from the mind, you need not look too far to see the numerous evidence of a mind working at less than full throttle. I can begin by asking if anyone can point to any one of our many troubles that has been resolved since independence. Indeed one would say that we have been marching forward with our heads turned backwards. One can indeed say without unmerited nostalgia, that the good old days were truly good. I am old enough to remember when Ijora power and Oji River hydro stations provide much of the power needs of much of the nation and Electricity Corporation of Nigeria ECN} was a far more efficient outfit than NEPA  or PHCN. You could not even ridicule or coin pejorative words out of the acronym  ECN as was the fate of NEPA [Never Expect Power Always] or PHCN [Please Hold Candle Now].

Admittedly the population then was about a third of today’s; but that is precisely the point of high quality intellect at work. It would and should have anticipated population growth and factored it into its development programmes. Thus the power supply problem of the country is simply that population and demand way outstripped available power supply because no one was smart enough to do the sums and see tomorrow even when Nigeria was rolling in petro-dollars like Fatai Rolling Dollar, and General Yakubu Gowon was rolling out his Five Year Development Plans. On the other hand, South African, even under siege from the world for its apartheid policy, was able to amass 40,000 megawatts of power for its population of a mere 44 million to Nigeria’s 4,000 megawatts for a population of over 160 million.

When foreigners like Mrs Hillary Clinton tell us that we are too rich to be poor many of our politicians tell her to mind her business, as Senator David Mark basically told her when she visited Nigeria as US Secretary of State. But what she said was a challenge to our intellect, our capability to make the most out of the bounties that God blessed us with, rather than just effortlessly milking oil out of the land and selling it. It buttresses President Obama’s immortal statement that the world of tomorrow will not depend on what comes out of the soil but what comes out of the human mind. And indeed what comes out of the soil is useless until the human mind is applied to maximize its value and use. We have demonstrated our lack in this regard by being notorious for importing what we produce and squandering more billions subsidizing it.

 When we celebrate the revival of Kaduna refinery after being moribund for several years and adding to our import bill for refined petroleum products, we must stop to ask ourselves: how can a refinery that generates revenue and makes profit neglect the core necessity of routinely servicing its facilities until the entire machineries pack up? Of course I understand that there are those who benefit from both Turn Around Maintenance [TAM] when the entire system had broken down completely, and others who gain from the increased importation and subsidizing of refined products.. But you still have to ask what kind of mind is that?

We make the mistake of believing that expansion and growth are equivalent to development or that population size and land mass mean greatness. The simple example is that when you build new classrooms and increase class sizes that is expansion. But development in education is when you equally improve the curriculum and the quality of teachers. Quantity and quality respectively. Similarly we see development only in terms of physical structures like roads and bridges. But a concomitant template for maintaining such structures, including warrantees and guarantees for standards and maintenance are often lacking, and a result less than a decade after we find the nation paying more to repair or even reconstruct than the original project cost.

I am convinced that there are not many of Nigeria’s troubles today that you cannot trace to human deficiency much as we prattle on about capacity building and human development. A mind that does not challenge itself to tackle higher tasks ends up with the easy option. Just consider that the minute Nigeria discovered crude oil in 1956 she abandoned palm oil, one of the mainstays of its pre-independence economy, while another oil producing country, Malaysia has managed to nurture and export it side by side with its crude oil. When Nigeria discovered the internet and other forms of electronic communication she promptly abandoned the postal service which still works well and generates huge revenue for many countries that boast even wider use of internet and e-communication. And of course when we were gripped by the magic of the mobile phone we abandoned landline telephony which still serves countries with far greater mobile phone usage per capita.

There is no other way to look at these but as evidence of lack of creative and diverse ability to chew gum and walk on a straight line at the same time. You can see this in the fact that Nigeria does not have a tax collection regime beyond corporation taxes and Pay As You Earn [PAYE] which are readily and easily collected at source, because she makes money from crude oil and would not bestir herself to devise a system of taxation beyond easy collection at source. A population of over 160 million people, at least 60 million of who are taxable but pay no tax because no one has devised a system for collecting taxes from them must be a case study for economists. According to development economist Bolaji Ogunseye Nigeria has a hundred fold more opportunities to increase value and create jobs through an efficient taxation regime. 

One of the most asinine policies, if you can call it policy, in recent times is the abrupt with-immediate-effect restrictions by the Central Bank of Nigeria on the operation of Domiciliary accounts. I have seen nothing more retrogressive and lacking in intellectual rigor than this policy in the global world of today. At the stroke of one inept decision grave inconvenience is brought upon ordinary customers of commercial banks. No notice and no sensitivity as if we are under martial law. More frustrating is that no one gave a sensible explanation for the draconian action. If it to stabilise the Naira, there are dozens of less disruptive options available to an intelligent central banker.

They should consult India on her very effective IRA – Indians Resident Abroad - scheme that did a power of good for the Rupee. CBN should come even closer home and find out why Three Ghanaian Cedis equal to One US Dollar while the Naira sells for over N200 to the Dollar. And if they are trying to catch money launderers CBN is best placed to design a policy specific for that purpose without punishing the innocent. One solution for all problems is the hallmark of leaders who need to update their libraries.