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World Renowned History, Prof. TOYIN FALOLA
Few weeks back, Publisher of Citypeople Magazine, SEYE KEHINDE and his crew visited world renowned historian, Professor Toyin Falola at his residence in GRA, Ikeja, Lagos state. During the visit, we engaged the academic Don in an interview where he opened up to speak about the state of the nation. Looking at the various prevailing indices, he proffers that if nothing is done to salvage the present situation, the country might become a failed state sooner than later. Below are excerpts from the extensive interview:
How do you see the country, Nigeria, that you love so much in terms of the path that is being followed?
People are bothered today, and they should be bothered. But they don’t know that their problems are yet to begin. We may even look back and say, 2023 is one of the best moments in history. So what am I saying?
In 25 years’ time, Nigeria’s population will be over 400 million. It’s going to be doubled. That is the current projection. So in 25 years’ time, what they rely on now, as revenue is no longer there, Fossil fuel. You know, in history, we talk about the Stone Age. The Stone Age ended, not because there are no more stones, the stones are still there. But society moves forward to another age. So, there must be a post oil plan for this economy, which they are not doing. And if they don’t do it well, I do not know where the resources will come to feed over 400 million. So, they will continue to discover resources. But you know, resources do not necessarily make you wealthy. The best way to understand resources is like that of a talented young boy, who is bright at school, but he’s very lazy. That laziness would kill the brightness. So, resources on their own do not make rich countries. Bear in mind, you have to convert those resources.
Second, we have not been able to talk about the conversion of human capacity to productivity. Everybody you see on those streets; their lives have been wasted. Because the greatest asset is that they are human beings. Remember, in building Western capitalism, they came to this part of the world and West Africa, to take 13 million people as slaves to go and develop plantations that became the basis of Western industrial society and revolution. They used our own labor to transform their economy. This labor we have, we are not using them. And if we don’t develop great educational institutions, we cannot build human capacity that will transform the economy. So that problem is there.
Third, the best way to destroy a nation is through low quality education. And the best way to actually also destroy the youth is for them to develop the mentality to check out of the country. I don’t know the figure. But two in three young Nigerians have checked out of Nigeria. They don’t want to live here anymore. In fact, they want to live in Morocco, Tunisia or South Africa or Spain. A situation where somebody who works from banks that paid them well will now say let them go to London and go and be cleaning hospitals.
Then we’ve not resolved identity issues. You know we still talk about discrimination; being Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa. So as bad as these things are now, the foundation for them getting worse is what we are laying. And my projection is that Nigeria may end up as an Islamic country because the average in the South is now 2 children and the average in the North is 11 children. So, that demographics alone, whether you like it or not, is in favour of the North which has a linkage to power. Either reform the North without us saying those Almajiris and others, we need to be part of the solution to it. Those who leave them behind will become the victims. So the projection is not looking good. But that does not mean if you interview at the same time next year, I can not change my mind. Because if suddenly we can have 24 hours electricity, good roads, that will generate a multiplier effect and the economy will take a different direction. If you are a religious person, you may say that we have a large number of wicked people and we have a large number of greedy people. So we can say Nigeria is in the age of greed. When that greed will be over, I don’t know. And the politicians are very wicked. Maybe their wickedness will come to an end or they will be consumed in their wickedness, I don’t know. You just saw your senate president turning 61 spending so much money, extremely insensitive behaviour. And you have foolish people too who occupied that entire stadium clapping for him. so, that crisis tells us about the nature of the society we live in which is not good.
For each time you read about all this funny news about Nigeria, how does it make you feel?
I’m able to process the news? You know, it’s also a repetitive troupe, corruption, bad money, validation. And the scale, the British news, the British prime minister, once called us fantastically corrupt. And then the stories became bizarre. Somebody woke up and stole the money of the pension system. When ASUU was looking for money, the money they were looking for, the Account General of the federation has stolen far more than that. The money that all the entire university staff are saying, give us this amount. They didn’t know that one person had stolen a lot of it. And we now hear stories like; the Cobra has swallowed the money. A snake now eats currency. All sorts of things. One day they removed the lights at the airport just to go and resell them back to another set of contractors. Railings on the roads. Many other things. Everybody was praising the rail line between Lagos and Ibadan. Now, we do not know the number of tickets they sell. Because they collect money from some for the percentage of people. They sell fake tickets. And if you don’t collect the money, in two to three years’ time, there will be no money to run those services. So you can see how everything is interconnected. If you go to the market and you are looking for Honey Beans, they will put Honey Beans on top, and put brown beans below. You can see how the entire society has decayed considerably. So, these are value systems. And this year all my lectures that I give are about values. I give one like LASU; values and leadership. I gave Benue State University; transformation and leadership, ChrisLand; values and science. They are all connected. So, because even when we have kids, the first thing you struggle to do before the age of 12 is to implant values. And if you miss that stage of planting those values, It’s difficult for that child to be successful. It’s very difficult because it’s those values that are so foundational. You can get them from religion, you can get them from culture, you can get them from shared socialization. But you can’t just say, you are not going to implant values. And societies are also like that. So in our own case, we’ve stumbled through self -destruction on very negative values. And we are going to pay a price for it. serious price!
What would you proffer as a way out?
Value restoration, we have to recapitulate. Go and talk to anybody of my generation. Their parents have no money. You see that tray you see with their putting biscuits and Trebor. You see that Alakara woman selling Alakara in the evening, that is what they use to train their kids who became successful. One person can break poverty. Somebody started as a farmer in the rural area. By training his kids, he sends his son to school. The son went to school and did well. You know that, that poverty chain has been broken. The successful guy who went to school is not going to produce poor people. So, there are deliberate programs to reduce the number of poor people. It’s a general literacy model. What you can say, this year, 130 million Nigerians are poor. We don’t have the money to eliminate poverty from all these 130 Million people. We have the money to say every year, we want to eliminate a certain number. Call it 40 million people. That you will take them out of poverty. We have the resources to eliminate every year, every year, remove certain numbers from poverty. But we are not doing that well. Rather, the infrastructures the institutions are introducing are too small. 130 million people, that number is too high. And I’m not saying the rest 70 million are doing well. Because there are middle-class people that are actually not doing well.
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