Our senators recent vote against outlawing petroleum cars epitomises our short-sightedness

By Ayo Akinfe

(1) Yesterday, a bill sponsored by Senator Ben Bruce-Murray to outlaw petrol and diesel cars by 2035 was rejected by the senate. Typical of us and the way we think, many senators spoke against the bill saying we do not manufacture electric cars and as such, they would not be available to users, so outlawing fuel automobiles would cause untold hardship to users and members of the public

(2) For starters, when did Nigerian senators start caring about members of the public? We are talking about people who earn more in a week than the average Nigerian does in a year here. I find their comments hypocritical and patronising. After they rubbished the idea of electric cars so badly, Senator Ben Bruce-Murray was forced to withdraw his private members bill

(3) Once more, we have been caught out by a lack of foresight. It is this thinking about the here and now that was responsible for us building Tin Can Island port without a railway link, for us not adding 20,000MW of electricity to our national grid every 10 years and for us not dredging Calabar, Port Harcourt and Warri ports. We only start thinking of solutions when we are faced with a crisis as is currently the case at Apapa, the world’s largest trailer park and urban ghetto

(4) The sad thing is that we did not always think like this. When Alhaji Alhassan Dantata introduced that idea of groundnut pyramids in Kano in 1918, he did not think of the here and now but the future. The British buyers did not need more then a few 100 bags from him at a time but he had sure he always had ample stocks. Thanks to the vision of Alhasaan Dantata, Kano became the commercial capital of northern Nigeria and remains so until this day

(5) As fate would have it, that cursed liquid called crude oil led to the demise of the Kano groundnut pyramids as we abandoned agriculture are decided we could live off the proceeds of petroleum doing nothing else. The good thing is that today, things are gradually changing. Nigeria is now the world’s third largest producer of groundnuts with an annual output of 3m tonnes. China produces 16m tonnes and India is second with 7m tonnes. Not only should we seek to match their production but above all, we should process our nuts by adding value to create wealth and jobs

(6) About half of China’s peanuts are crushed into oil used for cooking, prized for its subtle nutty flavour and its ability to be heated to high temperatures without burning. Chinese consumers are also turning to nuts as a healthy snack and producers have had a limited ability to keep pace with the growing demand. However, the export market has not really been tapped into as less than 6% of the world groundnut crop is traded internationally, with export revenue averaging only a mere $1bn per year

(7) With a comprehensive expansion policy that includes widespread commercial cultivation, the building of warehouses, the construction of processing plants and the building of a rail link to get groundnut meal, oil and processed peanuts to port, Nigeria could easily come to dominate global trade. We should aspire for an export revenue target of $5bn. However, we need to think five years ahead if we want to do this as market dynamics and technology keeps changing

(8) As we have just seen with the Electric Car Bill, our inability to visualise the future is legendary. How Frederick Lugard figured this out ages ago is beyond me. The fact that Lugard was a colonialist exploiter and a military imperialist does not negate blatant truths just because they came from him

(9) Once the new National Assembly resumes, I want President Buhari to send several new bills to it. These should include:
(i) Nigerian Infrastructural Development Bill, which will compel all new expansion projects to have inbuilt within them a power source and a rail link 
(ii) Nigerian Commodity Value Added Bill, which will make it illegal to export raw agricultural products 
(iii) Nigerian Agricultural Storage Bill, which will compel all local government areas to build storage facilities, warehouses and silos for farm goods, which will serve as the modern day replacement for Alhaji Dantata’s groundnut pyramids

(10) We will only start manufacturing electric cars when we ban the use of fuel ones. If we had outlawed petrol and diesel cars, we could then have pushed automobile manufacturers to open electric car assembly plants in Nigeria. If they refuse to they will lose this lucrative market. Maybe that is what we need self so Innoson can grow and fill the vacuum. Sometimes, necessity is the mother of invention. Our biggest albatross today remains this free oil money. It is a total liability holding us down!