If you’ve been following #ThePlatformNG  since inception, you’ll know that Mr. Segun Adeniyi, who is the Chairman of the Editorial Board of THISDAY newspapers, is a regular speaker at the event. 

In his usual manner, he started his presentation with a story, this time, about a legend and his disciple.

It was about a family, that hosted the legend and his disciple while they were on a trip. The family told the legend how they experienced an economic turn around when they got a cow, and literally started depending on the cow.

However, after many years of being sustained by the cow, the cow started getting old and lean, and their economy started dwindling as a result.

When the legend and his disciples left, the legend instructed the disciple to go push the cow off the cliff. While the disciple found it difficult to make sense of the instruction or convince the legend to do otherwise, he had to obey his master.

According to Mr Segun Adeniyi, Nigeria’s oil well is our proverbial cow.

“Before the discovery of oil, Nigeria was doing well with agriculture. The discovery of oil did serious damage to the economy of our nation. Our naira became overvalued and we started importing even the most basic food items.

Then there was the problem of federal allocation that came with the oil money, making states dependent on the federal grants.

With oil money came a lot of other bad behaviors”, he said. 

While speaking he shared that Nigeria has spiraled into an economic crisis. He buttressed his point by sharing the following points about Nigeria; 

• A subsidy regime that focus on consumption rather than production.
• A culture of waste and bloated lifestyle.
• A culture of leadership without accountability.

Mr Segun believes that as a nation, until we push the cow that has condemned us to mediocrity off the cliff, we will not develop. While he argued that we don’t necessarily need to kill our ‘oil rent’ cow, we simply need to look beyond it to focusing on the development of human capital, which really is our real wealth.

He believes we need to focus on developing quality educational systems and robust health care in order to build a sustainable future. We need to have a conversation about our future in an orderly manner or it will be forced upon us. We have to invest in the capacity development of our people.

Finally, he adviser that we diversify our economy and build necessary infrastructure for ease of doing business and invest substantially in agriculture.

“The hour has come for us to push our lean cow over the cliff”, he said as he rounded off his session.

You can glean more lessons from the cow in the story Here