Our Mint dream: To be or not to be?

Aliyu Musa

In 2001, when Jim O’Neill coined the acronym Bric I was one of the incurable optimists who thought Nigeria had no business not being part of the bunch. The Bric countries, that initially included Brazil, Russia, India and China but expanded to include South Africa in 2010, were to hold the world spellbound by the speed at which their ingenious economies transformed within a decade. Brazil is a particular case study. Nigeria has got everything to make it a world power, well beyond being a regional bully. Yet a group of American experts on Sub-Saharan Africa rose from a meeting in 2005 to predict its balkanization within 15 years.

The last few years have been most horrifying for the country. Internal conflicts, corruption, maladministration and general hopelessness amplified its fragility in this time. And agents of balkanization went to town beating the drums of war, which several divisive groups responded to in the hope to speed up the collapse.

But out of this apparent hopelessness O’Neill, once again, sees prosperity. And the inexhaustible Goldman Sachs’ former economist invents yet another acronym, Mint. Mint is a compendium of four countries whose flourishing economies would for the next 20 years dictate the course and pace of global politics and prosperity, he predicts. Nigeria, most surprisingly, gets a place in this pack that has Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey to make a perfect team. Nigeria actually comes in as a substitute for South Korea, a country already considered developed and plays a major role in shaping the world’s economy.

What would make anyone see beyond the dream of those whole-heartedly working for Nigeria’s collapse to make such an astounding prediction in its favour, despite the litany of uncertainties 2015 is pregnant with? O’Neill has his points which cannot be ignored if critically scrutinized.

Mint’s uniqueness lies in their readymade demographics that would shoot up their working population and dramatically increase their GPDs. For example Nigeria, whose GDP of 0.26 currently places it 39 could go up by several steps to 13 with a GDP of 4.91, ahead of some European countries and Canada. But this would depend largely on how much and fast the country takes advantage of this factor.

O’Neill, again, points to geographical advantage that puts Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey in positions where they could directly benefit from regional and global economic relations. Unfortunately Nigeria is slightly disadvantaged here, given Africa’s not so significant economic development and trade relations. But this could be improved, he thinks, if Africans stop fighting and trade more amongst themselves.

Some years ago Nigeria impressively championed cooperation and integration in Africa and created a ministry to oversee this aspect of it foreign relations. Once it romanticized the idea of a common currency for the West African sub-region. The dream has long been abandoned. So, would Africa get it right this time to revamp genuine economic cooperation and trade relations amongst its vastly endowed countries? It depends on many variables, like resolving the conflicts ravaging the continent.

Most Africans still look up to Nigeria. But their hopes are increasingly diminishing in view of the country’s inability to deal with problems that are ordinarily manageable, but have proven to be insurmountable. Incessant religious and ethnic crises and rampant corruption often are cited as indices to support this frustration.

Nonetheless, O’Neill relies on Central Bank Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi’s assertion that corruption has not been a major barrier to Nigeria’s economic development. This suggests the relativeness of the term development, where the individual becomes a yardstick for measurement and not the society as a whole.

The ordinary Nigerian’s standard of living has since plunged to a subhuman level. And O’Neill’s admission that 170 million Nigerians share the same amount of energy (power) used by just 1.5 million people in the UK is a clear indication of that abjectness.

As we consider the possibility of a Mint Club and a G20 seat it is worthwhile to note that if Nigeria eventually sails to berth it won’t be because corruption is not a scandalous drawback, nor will it be because of the governments’ development of infrastructures, but solely due to the people’s resilience. A resilience that is driven by their determination to survive in spite of all odds, which explains why small businesses generate their own power and largely account for the 7 per cent growth rate of the economy.