Second, Tinubu must look into the activities of certain Lebanese and Asians who imposed themselves as “consultants” and “middlemen” on exporters of agricultural products. Any exporter that refuses to hand them his goods and exports directly will have his products rejected as unfit for human consumption by the destination country. This is because these middlemen, embedded in our international airports, would petition against such export. Tinubu must arrest and prosecute these alien saboteurs.

Third, Tinubu should forget about Dubai and live among Nigerians. You have a better understanding of the problems when you travel by road from Sokoto to Port Harcourt, for instance. The industrialist-president should ask to be taken by boat from Lagos to Oron. The sea is there but you won’t see modern cargo and passenger boats except wooden “Cotonou boats” notorious for all the wrong reasons.
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Decommissioned passenger vessels, bought cheaply in Denmark, can be used to start a scheduled boat service between Port Harcourt and Banjul in the Gambia. From the ocean floor our industrialists can mine cobalt and make car batteries with it. Nigerians will benefit from the wealth of the sea if the new administration reorganizes our maritime.

Fourth, we should have a Bank of Export to facilitate easy documentation and payments. You present a sample of your export to this bank and immediately it ascertains you have a buyer overseas will automatically help you ship your goods on record time. When the bank takes up the financing of your export, it automatically means regulators must give way.

Fifth, we also need Land Bank to fund large-scale mechanized farming.

Sixth, we must encourage buying and selling by building thousands of modern markets. I once presented a proposal for Rivers State to build, at least, ten new modern markets. Since 1970 Rivers has only three markets, namely, Town, Mile 1 and Mile 3 Markets. Modern markets encourage people to go into commerce with dignity. You cannot fight street trading without first making provision for hawkers to trade within secured business spaces. Most of us are products of modern markets before transiting to production.

And last, Industrial Revolution is all about cheap and steady energy for production. We have five hydro electricity generating dams and 27 Thermal Electricity plants in Nigeria. They are grossly inadequate translating to acute energy crisis. The solution is not, and can never be, pre-paid meters. Clearly, two things must be done for Nigeria to break even. The first is the rapid construction of, at least, two hundred Thermal plants that use natural gas to generate electricity. The second is ensuring that electricity so generated reaches our homes and industrial packs through well mapped out transmission and distribution facilities.
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Since we desire change we must also change our mindset. We must appreciate Industrialist-President Tinubu for his doggedness. Despite his age, he fought like a youth thereby justifying his Lion of Bourdillon appellation. In the state of nature, when a lion runs and looks back it is not afraid of what is chasing it. It is only calculating the distance for a quick counterattack.

People thought because of his age Tinubu was not going to cover much ground but he surpassed all expectations attending even town hall meetings. We must appreciate him to see the good in him. As a progressive, he might positively change satiated Nigeria, as well as Africa, hooked on an induced culture of consumerism.

But we must remember that evil is cyclic. Second, no evil is happy. And third, there are consequences. Failure to quickly industrialize could lead to crushing poverty capable of triggering off social upheavals. Social upheavals will tempt the military to attempt another purposeless revolution likely to take us through another avoidable long night of nothingness.

Concluded

Osiagor wrote via Email: [email protected]
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