Nigerian factories can only sputter for a period before they die off. Take this from someone who has run a factory, whilst also running its accounting function, within the extremely hostile economic environment of Nigeria.
Note the choice of the word, “factory,” instead of the more grandiose “industry” that boastful Nigerian manufacturers appropriate for their businesses. The industry is the whole slew of various processes that are needed to manufacture a product.
Take the textile industry for instance: It starts from the farm, where cotton is grown; the silkworm that produces silk; the petrochemical industry that produces polyester, and those others that produce basic input for the manufacture of textile.
After these inputs have been produced, the textile manufacturing process continues with the spinning mills that spin (what else?) yarn, followed by drawing, warping, sizing, and weaving of the fabric on the weaving loom.
The grey fabric that comes out of the weaving loom is washed, bleached and dyed, after which it is either taken through the printing machine, or an embroidery machine if it was to be the base cloth for embroidery lace fabric.
Each of the steps enumerated above can either be a standalone or form a composite with others, depending on the interest and capability of the entrepreneur. In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, these processes were standalones, until the Americans decided to consolidate several processes under one roof and management in the late 19th Century.
The combination of some of these processes is usually referred to as industry in Nigeria, whereas they are no more than factories. That default position of Nigerian manufacturers, limits their vision, so much that they see the part (or parts) as the whole.
To be sure, a factory is a place where goods are manufactured, like an embroidery lace manufacturer, whereas an industry is any branch of manufacture and trade that is all-encompassing, like the textile industry.
For this purpose, a textile industry will include all the processes, from the input for manufacturing yarn, to folding and packaging the fabric– and much more. It will include ancillary and supporting infrastructure, like manufacturers and marketers of chemicals, dyestuff, pigments, textile machines, spare parts and supplies.
There must also be a significant inventory of technical personnel in every aspect of textile manufacturing. If a nation only has some of these, and the others are lacking, and must therefore be imported, that nation cannot be said to have a textile industry.
At the risk of being repetitive, Nigeria’s economic planners and manufacturers must acknowledge that as long as most of textile raw materials, machines, spare parts, supplies and strategic production and maintenance staff must come from another country, Nigeria has no manufacturing industry.
At best, what Nigeria has is a collective of textile manufacturing factories that are not self-sufficient and do not quite make a textile industry. And this applies to any other collective of manufacturers in other industries.
This argument goes beyond technology transfer with a capability to produce (nearly) every need of the industry locally. It’s about domestication of practically every aspect of an industry within Nigeria.
Imagine having to endure a work stoppage for more than two weeks because raw materials or spare manufacturers outside the country are slow to meet your order. Your justifiably impatient customers will certainly be angry, and they may take their custom elsewhere.
That may sometimes explain why some customers prefer imported goods that are delivered swiftly, even sometimes cheaper, and usually of higher quality and grade. That also explains why the Nigerian economy is import-oriented and almost dependent on imported goods.
Just consider the feints and blackmails that accompany the quest to make Covid-19 vaccines available to Nigeria and the rest of Africa. As you already know, the “beast” called vaccine nationalism is depriving Africa of much-needed vaccines.
Have you ever wondered why Nigeria has four petroleum refineries, but ends up exporting its crude oil, only to turn around and import petroleum products? Have you also ever wondered why there are so many fluke Turn-Around-Maintenance of the refineries without any appreciable results?
Well, the answer is that neither the petroleum refining machines nor their spare parts are manufactured in Nigeria. And while Nigeria boasts of many petroleum engineers, there are not nearly enough (with the requisite competencies) to fix the refineries. Of course, many Nigerian petroleum engineers will vigorously dispute this assertion.
Some argue that the departing colonial powers set a booby trap for Nigerians, by first, selling their lifestyle to Nigerians, then fooled Nigerians into thinking they were industrialising with the import-substitution model that is significantly dependent on imported machinery, input and technical personnel.
Pioneer economist, Adam Smith, who wrote his treatise, “The Wealth of Nations,” in 1776, the same year as the Declaration of Independence of America, the bastion of unpretentious capitalism was written, once counselled his British compatriots.
He asked them to ship their expensive, but slick, consumer products to countries like Nigeria, and take away the crude oil and the foreign exchange earned from this commodity, that Nigeria cannot make use of.
His words: “When the produce of any particular branch of industry exceeds what the demand of the country requires, the surplus must be sent abroad and exchanged for something for which there is demand at home.”
A disarticulated economy as that of Nigeria, which produces what it doesn’t need (or lacks the capacity to process), like crude oil, but cannot produce what it needs, like petroleum products, will always depend on other countries for its domestic needs. “Kii s’epe,” It’s not a curse; but an acknowledgement of stark realities.
The more tragic aspect of this “peculiar mess” is that the inputs needed to run even the most basic infrastructure, like railway lines and coaches, seaports, airports, electricity, steel mills, even roads, are imported.
Consider how Nigerian policymakers foolishly mortgage the future of Nigerians by taking loans, whereas they could simply shift their focus to science and technology, to produce everything that is needed to establish and run all the industries that will produce (most of) the consumer goods needed by Nigerians.
When Apostle Paul was sufficiently frustrated, he exclaimed, “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth?” He probably would have admonished Nigerians, “O foolish Nigerians! Who made you read your economics textbooks upside down?”
But of a truth, you will not find these insights in economic textbooks, written either in the North economies that prefer the status quo to remain nor in those of South economies that suffer from these limitations.
While it is not in the favour of the former, who knows this uncomfortable truth, to reveal this in their books, economists from the South economies probably know not that the situation was deliberately contrived by conniving colonialists.
Those with the responsibility to think out industrialisation policies for Nigeria must have a holistic and long-term projection for Nigeria’s industrialisation. Anything short of that will end up in failure.
Anyone who thinks that the World Bank and International Monetary Fund will conjure policies that will save Nigeria from the current industrialisation confusion must be living in a fool’s paradise.
The brief of these Bretton Woods institutions is to look out for the interest of the Western world. And that won’t change.
