A young woman caused a mild stir in Ibadan when she stopped to purchase Burantashi from an Hausa vendor. Burantashi[1] is a name for some herbal aphrodisiacs – drug supplements – for enhanced sexual performance in men. Supposedly, burantashi empowers men to properly perform their intimacy roles in marriage. If a bachelor takes burantashi, he requires cooperation of a female adult to test/exhibit the effect of his empowerment. As burantashi is a required empowerment for intimacy, so is practical knowledge the required empowerment for productivity.
Empowerment is a process meant “to give somebody more control over their own life or the situation they are in”[2] It is the development of the human capacity for controlling his situation and achieving quality life and goals. Empowerment enables people to solve their problems within the society, using available knowledge and resources.
Required empowerment in Nigeria is felt in both internal and external aspects. The internal aspect involves training the individuals’ moral, emotional, physical and intellectual abilities to solve problems and needs. The external aspect is the provision of the situations or materials with which and upon which the knowledge or skill will be applied for results. Just as an empowered man needs the cooperation of a female adult to produce babies, so do trained people require resources to demonstrate their talents.
In the society, humans are the male sexual actors; natural resources are the female adults while tech-knowledge and skills are the burantashi that empowers performance. As cooperation between an empowered man and healthy female adult produces babies, so does the cooperation between trained humans and natural resources produce useful commodities. But unlike burantashi whose effects fade with use, practical knowledge increases with experience instead of fading.[3]
Unfortunately, Nigerians are neither properly empowered with practical knowledge for production, nor allowed access to their natural resources. Instead, governments and their friends import and share foreign depreciating products as their form of citizen’s empowerment. One of the commonest shows of electioneering in Nigeria is the distribution of imported materials to poor and unproductive people. Politicians import and distribute motorcycles ‘okada’, barrows, grinders, foods, sewing machines, cups and plates. Once these items are imported and distributed, they begin to spoil until they are no more useful to the recipients. And because the recipients have no knowledge nor resources for producing the commodities, they start begging.
The imposed Nigerian constitution places no real importance on Citizens’ education. It states that,
“government shall… provide free primary, university education and free adult literacy program… when practicable…”[4]
Who decides the practicable timing for education, since politicians seem more interested in acquiring foreign estates and private jets for themselves and their children.[5]
Secondly, using the draconian Nigerian Mineral and Mining Act,[6][7][8] government seizes and auctions all mineral resources in Nigeria to foreigners and some of its local allies.[9]
Training engineers in school without allowing them use natural resources for production is like giving a man burantashi without access to a woman for producing children. It is like taking away a man’s wife and still abusing him for not having a child. Without a collaborator (resources) to produce his own children, a man can only admire other people’s children (products). But he cannot produce his own children, since he lacks the external aspect of the required empowerment in Nigeria.
The required empowerment in Nigeria for sustainable development may only be obtained when citizens are properly trained and have access to resources for producing what they need. The ‘political empowerment’ of distributing imported machineries cannot replace the capacity to utilize Nigerians’ natural resources for producing what they need. Hence, the two necessary elements for a required empowerment in Nigeria are practical education and access to mineral resources for production.
[1] Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burantashi
[2] Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, search: empower
[3] Cf. Francis Ogbimi, Solution to Mass Unemployment in Nigeria (Ile-Ife: OAU Press ltd, 2007) p46
[4] Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 2011 as amended, Section 18, subsection 3, paragraphs i, ii, iii
[5] Chukwunwike Enekwechi, Nigeria does not want your education http://restartnaija.com/2017/08/17/dont-want-your-education-in-nigeria/
[6] Nigerian minerals and mining act 2007 act no. 20, chapter 1, Part 1, Section 1, paragraph 2
[7] Nigerian minerals and mining act 2007 act no. 20, chapter 1, Part 1, Section 2, paragraph 1
[8] Nigerian minerals and mining act 2007 act no. 20, chapter 1, Part 1, Section 1, paragraph 3
[9] Chukwunwike Enekwechi, op cit.