Dev. Economist intellectually holds CRS House of Assembly hostage. Read witty remarks

Efio-Ita Nyok|26 November 2016

International production relations are no more determined by traditional factors of production including land, labor, capital and the entrepreneur, but by new entrants into the production chain including “technology and availability of logistics”.

On Wednesday 23 November 2016, Ikom, Cross River-born, Atlanta-based Development Economist, Mr Princewill Odidi, addressed the 8th Cross River State House of Assembly (CRSHA) on the topic: Legislating Beyond Recession: The Cross River State Model. The address was part of the House Public Sector Engagement and Citizen Conversation series designed to educate members of the House and the public on the current economic climate in the country.

In an address that was adjudged to be quintessential owing to its engrossingly impacting nature, Odidi emphasised that beyond the four traditional factors of production, to wit, land, labour, capital and entrepreneur there was a new entrant, namely, ‘technology and availability of logistics’. For him, this later introduction is the game changer that Nigeria and other African countries were yet to embrace to their own peril. What follows is part of the speech he presented on Wednesday to Honourable Members of CRSHA. Excerpts:

‘The First World War of 1914 was fought with small arms, between 1923 to 1933 we had the Great Depression which preceded the Second World War in 1945.

‘The tail end of the colonizing era introduced the Third World War which was fought by proxies and mercenaries. The Cold War culminated with the collapse of the Soviet Union symbolized with the breakdown of the Berlin Walls.

‘As Berlin Walls came falling, while the West rejoiced at the collapse of communism, famous writers like Francis Fukuyama described the era as the end of history, little did we know that it was rather the beginning of a new type of history.

‘I call this era the 4th world war, an era where the war ammunitions where not atomic, biological or war by proxies, the platform for the 4th world war are “ideas”. The war fought on the superiority of ideas as applied to technology. Countries with well trained Human Resources simply adapted to this new way of life, investing in schools and knowledge, China offers scholarships to her best and brightest to school in Harvard, Princeton and Yale, come back and build their countries, but Nigeria just doesn’t care. So while the rest of the world are strategizing how to create a nitch in the new world order, how to produce food and be self sufficient, that’s when we spend our time and resources bursting pipelines, fanning ethnic hatred, disintegrating and defining ourselves more on state of origin rather than state of residence. To be factual, My generation has failed.

‘Continuing, As the Berlin Walls collapsed, and young men clad with blue jeans scaled the fences onto Western Europe, little did we know their new weapons of warfare post the Cold War was their brains.

‘Products and services in the Western world often performed by mediocre for high fees, these kids with first class brains from Eastern Europe would do this same jobs and even better for Pennies on the dollar.

‘What happened next, production relations changed and it led to the creation of Business Process Outsourcing otherwise known as BPOs. This was a process when businesses, services and jobs drifted to cheaper markets in Eastern Europe and Asia. These jobs, not just done by geniuses, but at a far cheaper rate.

‘The vehicle through which these jobs migrated from the Americas to Eastern Europe was technology and the job market was defined more by specialization and division of labor.

‘Bangladesh specialized in garments and fed American consumer greed in stores like Walmart. Indonesia specialized in cheap fabrics, India in computer science, Cuba in medicines, Switzerland in Banking and Finance, Dubai initiating a new tourist commercial corridor, all this made possible by the internet, the new gateway to the new world order. This was where we missed it. When the rest of the world was busy taking stock and preparing their people on how to position themselves in the new order, an order facilitated by the internet and technological advancements, that was when Nigeria was rather contemplating to sell or not to sell Nitel, or whether to permit independent networks swoop our markets hitherto dominated by a monopolistic  and redundant Nitel. We missed it all together.

‘Jobs kept moving to Eastern Europe and Asia, at this point, that was when Nigeria and some African countries missed out, and since then we had no control of unemployment any longer traceable to the collapse of the Berlin Walls.

‘It is important to note, that the biggest merchants on earth have no production factories. Walmart, Americas largest retail line does not produce a single item, everything is outsourced. Gone are the days when you have a large orange plantation and you think of opening a soft drink factory, rather, a person who bought no machines, built no factories, hired no staff can still be the greatest soft drink producer by merely purchasing orange concentrates in cantons and producing orange juice at a cheaper and affordable rate.

‘In the 4th world production relations, factories, workers and machines are no more limited to a specific place or location. Trump ties can be designed in Mexico but sewn in Calabar and marketed in Dubai. Only countries with infrastructure that can support these logistics would be able to stand in these times.

‘Lesson No 1:
International production relations are no more determined by traditional factors of production including land, labor, capital and the entrepreneur, but by new entrants into the production chain including “technology and availability of logistics” which has changed the game plan in production relations.

‘Example, If I want to print magazines, considering that it may be cheaper to print in Taiwan and shipped to the US on record time, rather than give my job to a printing press in the US, I give it to a Chinese’s firm who will complete it on record time and mail to me.

‘So if I keep sending all my printing jobs to China, gradually American printing companies start going out of business. This is why big American factories are all going down at a time African political leaders bank on new industrialization to solve job creation problems. So if someone comes to you and say, build an orange factory in Ikom because they have orange, think twice. Factories do not create jobs if they cannot compete globally. Technology and availability of logistics is the gateway to the new world order.

‘It is not the availability of raw materials that determine successful production relations, it is your ability to compete on the international platform and be able to produce at competitive prices and still break even.

‘Production without counting the cost and accessing the strengths of your market and competitors is an effort in futility.

‘Until Nigeria catches up with the world and export her human knowledge or Human Resources to other markets, catching up with Technology, Science, discipline, and smart workable ideas, solving our unemployment crisis would remain a child’s play.

‘With the best employment generation policies we have, for every two hundred thousand unemployed graduates we absorb into the job market, that same year we release over half a million into the job market.

‘We cannot win this job generation war by doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.  For the past 4 decades, we have invested and instituted several social infrastructure projects which have all failed. We started with Green Revolution, Operation Feed the Nation, DFFRI, several others including N-Power, they are all bound to fail. They fail not because they are designed to fail, but these programs are like systems made to run without a workable structure. Systems cannot succeed without structures. Focus on putting structures together so systems can operate functionally and efficiently.

‘Tommorow I will write on the absence of export laboratories in Nigeria and how it hinders export agricultural trade with foreign markets, which would have been an outlet for job creation in Nigeria greatly overlooked. It was part of the presentation in Calabar’.

Efio-Ita Nyok
Is a Blogger, the Editor & Publisher of NegroidHaven.org