@ARISEtv In as much as I want to believe you, Mr Chairman, on who to apportion the blames, but that period your body language and actions said otherwise. You weren’t calm to listen and address issues that period. All you wanted was to read our the results.
"What do the Igbos want?", Buhari asked during his media chat.
And now, Prof Obi Nwakanma, a poet, journalist, biographer and literary critic, has written an article in answer to the question, "What do the Igbos want?"
In Biafra, under three years, they were making their own rockets and calculating its distances; distilling their own oil and making aviation fuel, creating in their Chemical and Biological laboratories, new cures for diseases like Cholera, shaping their own spare parts, and turning the entire East into a vast workshop, as Ojukwu put it.
At the end of the war, the Ukpabi Asika regime brought together these Biafran scientists and set up PRODA. The initiative led, in the first five years between 1970-1975 under the late Prof. Gordian Ezekwe and Mang Ndukwe, to designs of industrial machinery models and prototypes for the East Central State Industrial Masterplan, which remain undeveloped even today. The Murtala/Obasanjo regime took over PRODA in 1975 by decree, starved it of funds, and basically destroyed its aims.
Secondly, Federal government policies centralized all potentials for innovation and entrepreneurship. Before 1983, states had their Ministries of Trade and Industry. These were charged with local business registration, trade, and investment promotion, and so on. But today in Nigeria, if you wish to do any business, you'd have to go to Abuja (it used to be Lagos) to register under the Corporate Affairs Commission. It used to be that local business registration was state and municipal functions. The concentration of the leverage for trade utterly limited Igbo entrepreneurs, particularly in the era of import licensing, once your quota was exhausted, you could not do business.
This affected the old Igbo money in Aba and Onitsha, who were the arrow-heads of innovation and traditional partners in the advance of Igbo industrial economy. It is remarkable that as at 1985, a least by a book published by the Oxford Economist Tom Forrest in 1980, The Advance of African Capital, the Igbo had the highest investment in machine tools industries in all of Africa, and the highest depth of investment in rural, cottage industries. In his prediction in 1980, if that rate of investment continued, according to Forrest in 1980, the Igbo part of Africa would accomplish an industrial revolution by 1987. Now, by 1983/85, Federal government policies helped to dismantle the growth of indigenous Igbo Industry through its targeted national economic policies. As I have said, there is a corollary between industrial development and innovation.
Thirdly, the severe, strategic staunching of huge capital in-flow into the East starved Igbo businesses and institutions of the capacity to utilize or even expand their capacities. There were no strategic Federal Capital projects in the East. There were no huge infrastructural investments in the East. The last major Federal government investment in Igbo land was the Niger Bridge which was commissioned in 1966. Any region starved of government funds experiences catatony and attrition. Private capital is often not enough to create the kind of synergy necessary for innovation. Rather than invest in the East, from 1970 to date, the Federal government has strategically closed down every capacity for technological advancement in the East and stripped that region of its capacity.
By 1966, the Eastern Nigerian Gas masterplan had been completed under Okpara. But in its review of a Nigeria gas masterplan, the Federal government strategically circumvented the East. Oil and Gas are under Federal oversight. The Trans-Amadi to Aba Industrial Gas network/linkage had been completed in 1966, to pipe gas from Port-Harcourt to Aba. The Federal government let that go into abeyance and uprooted the already reticulated pipes. The East was denied access to energy with the destruction of the Power stations during the war.
@GbengaWemimo Very interesting story. I liked the part you helped her mum despite her daughter’s behavior and the part were you patronized the lady in Dubai! Great work!
@Ekwulu If you can service your debt you are good. Nigerias' challenge is that our revenue has dropped, that's why our debt service has exceeded our revenue mainly because of 'oil theft' so you can say we have a revenue problem not a debt problem.
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A meeting with Pastor Chris?
A thousand times no!
This is The Foundation School Graduation in Christ Embassy Ghana.
When they said the churches Will no longer meet together, they didn't Factor Pastor Chris Generation.
No Man forbidden us!
#pastorchrisgeneration
@Ekwulu Take the vaccine if you want to, but I think people should begin to ask questions where this thing is heading to. Will I be taking booster shots monthly , yearly.....or for life. This CDC has been so volatile in their statements.....