Is it just me but should replicating Britain’s Industrial Revolution or America’s unprecedented surge in production during World War Two not have been the centrepiece of the recent UK-Nigeria summit

Ayo Akinfe

[1] Nigeria is a nation of very intelligent people who constantly come up with novel ideas and are superb at coming up with prototypes of machines but alas, that is like only running 50 metres in a 100 metre race. Over the decades, Nigerian inventors have come up with automobiles, aircrafts, drones, etc but as a nation, we lack the capacity to mass-produce all these items

[2] When I look back at World War Two, there were so many battle tanks, assault rifles, dive bombers, fighter jets, submarines, that were manufactured but never mass-produced. It is when you mass-produce a contraption that you discover faults like over-heating, uneconomical fuel usage, mechanical breakdowns, etc. Nigeria as an economy cannot boast of one company or corporation, either private or public that can produce 1m units of any product annually. Nobody in Nigeria can produce 1m police uniforms, pieces of footware, laptop computers, mobile phones, automobiles, flatscreen TVs or wrist watches

[3] In 1760, the Industrial Revolution got going in Britain and almost overnight, the adoption of mechanised textile spinning techniques and the high rates of growth in steam power and iron production, radicalised human existence. Personally, I think the Americans surpassed this during World War Two when the Willow Run factory in Michigan began manufacturing one B-24 Liberator bomber an hour

[4] If you ask me, during his recent trip to London, President Tinubu should have taken along Nigeria’s industrialists like Aliko Dangote, Femi Otedola, Mike Adenuga, Tony Elumelu, Folorunsho Alakija, Cletus Ibeto, Allen Onyema, Innocent Chukwuma, Abdul Rabiu, etc and got them to sell an industrial masterplan to the City of London. They should have committed themselves to replicating what the Brits did during the Industrial Revolution what the Americans did during World War Two

[4] Personally, I still believe that our best bet of getting a national manufacturing concern going is for the general overseers of our evangelical churches to pool their resources together and create a Nigerian Mitsubishi, Samsung, Fiat, Citroen, Siemens, Vauxhall or Skoda, called Man of God PLC. This company, backed up with the deep pockets provided by daily tithe payments, can become an international manufacturing conglomerate.

[5] You know, in Greek mythology, it was believed that humans were created by the gods as slaves to build their cities and temples but man rebelled, freed himself and decided to do his own thing. It appears that the African was not part of this rebellion and simply lacks that defiant spirit to create an alternative world to the one in which he finds himself. We are content to remain the slaves of the gods. No wonder religion has taken such deep root in our society

[6] Nowhere else is this docility and lack of initiative more pronounced than in the area of technology. Every serious nation on earth has a department or directorate of reverse engineering that looks at technological developments and seeks to clone them. This is done with automobiles, aircraft, battle tanks, ships, assault rifles, machine tools, trains, etc. No people who want to progress socio-economically sit back and refuse to dismantle and develop technology they currently enjoy

[7] For example, since the Nigerian Civil War, the Nigerian Army has been using the Soviet T-55 battle tank, while the Nigerian Air Force has been using Soviet Mig fighter jets. How come it never occurred to us to reverse engineer these machines and start manufacturing them? During the Cold War, these tanks were deployed to Czechoslovakia and Poland but guess what? They both started manufacturing T-55s. Nigeria is currently going to the Czech Republic to buy obsolete Soviet era T-72 tanks for millions of dollars to confront Boko Haram

[8] Nigerians drive around in Toyota and Mercedes SUV jeeps, fly about in Gulfstream private jets, use Honda speedboats in their thousands but yet, it has never occurred to us once to reverse engineer and manufacture these products. If you want to really know how dumb we are, check this out - we are the world’s largest buyer of medium size generators but do not manufacture them in Nigeria. Now this is not a human trait and goes against that spirit of the early Homo Sapiens in Greek mythology who refused to act as slaves for the gods

[9] You know, if extra-terrestrial aliens were to invade earth today, Nigeria, as the world’s largest black nation would have to be one of the countries they visit. I suspect they would actually launch their invasion from Nigeria as we are the least equipped or prepared to defend Earth against an external invasion of all the world’s large nations. Basically, we are the soft underbelly of the human race

[10] If we want to be honest and objective, a nation that cannot defend her against a rag tag army of Boko Haram religious fanatics and illiterate Fulani nomads deserves to be conquered by a master specie and converted into slaves to build their economies. It is totally unacceptable for a nation of 200m people not to manufacture their own weaponry, automobiles, aircraft, shipping vessels, battle tanks, etc. We had a recent opportunity to address this in London last week but alas, we spurned the opportunity

ayoakinfe@gmail.com