Life Patron of AIESEC Alumni Nigeria, Dr. Michael Omolayole, speaks with Ugo Aliogo and Shalom Uzochukwu about new development in AIESEC, and the Omolayole Management Lecture Series. He also shed lights on policy interventions to promote economic growth. Excerpts:
Can you tell us about the Omolayole Management Lecture Series that lasted for 37 Years?
OML is the acronym for Omolayole Management Lecture series, which was conceived in 1984 by AIESEC Alumni Association as a surprise which they announced at a reception organised in my honour when I was retiring as Chairman and Managing Director of Lever Brother Nigeria Limited now Unilever Nigeria Plc. When the announcement was made by a group, prominent among was Mr. Shola Oyetayo (FCA). I honestly did not take it seriously. I thought it was youthful exuberance by trying to show that they appreciated my support and encouragement to AIESEC Nigeria and AIESEC International.
The history of AIESEC in Nigeria is virtually the same as the history of my relationship with AIESEC Nigeria, which started about 60 years ago. It is a very long story. I can only summarise it by saying this; when AIESEC Nigeria started at the University of Ibadan in 1961, my late friend Prof. Aboyade had started to establish his reputation as a foremost Economist in Nigeria. And so when the request came from AIESEC Nigeria for assistance by the company which I worked for to participate in their International Student Exchange Programme I made sure that Lever Brothers Nigeria Limited was willing to help. I was then the Head of the Human Resources Division and was given the task of liaising with AIESEC Nigeria. I took the assignment seriously and in no time AIESEC Nigeria started to establish itself at the University of Ibadan.
AIESEC international was established in 1948 in Paris as an International Student Body. The acronym AIESEC stands for Association
Internationale des Etudiants en Sciences Economiques et Commerciales. By the time the concept came to Nigeria, AIESEC International itself was just a little over 12 years old. The growth of the association in Nigeria in the early 1960s was however interrupted by the internal crisis of the national branch. When it appeared to be losing ground and strength, AIESEC International sent a field officer to me to try and assist in revitalizing the body. By then my friend late Professor Aboyade had become a Professor of Economics at the University of Ibadan (UI).
I assured the delegate from Europe that he should consider the job done. Therefore, by the late 1960s, AIESEC was fully re-established in Nigeria and a successful effort was made to expand its activities to the following Institutions: The University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN); The University of Lagos (Unilag); The University of Ife (OAU); and the Ahmadu Bello University Zaria (ABU)
In the early 1970s, I gladly accepted the invitation to become the Chairman of AIESEC Nigeria National Board of Advisers. By the time I became Chairman/Managing Director of Lever Brothers Nigeria Limited in 1975, AIESEC was strong and well established.
By the mid-1970s, AIESEC Nigeria had proposed my membership of AIESEC International Board of Advisers in Brussel Belgium. Consequently, my connection with AIESEC was both at the National and International level and I had the honor and privilege of being one of the AIESEC International guest speakers at the 1st AIESEC International Conference in Brussel in 1978. I was also a guest speaker at the 2nd AIESEC International Conference in New York in 1980. That made AIESEC Nigeria proud. Due to these efforts, the AIESEC leadership announced their intention to start a lecture series, to be named Omolayole Management Lecture, was announced.
The next stage of the development of the Omolayole Management Lecture (OML) started with the first lecture which was very well organised. The first guest speaker was Chief Ernest Shonekan who was then Chairman and Managing Director of UAC and later became Nigerian Interim Head of State; the Chairman of the 1st lecture was Chief (Dr) Chris Ogunbanjo. Both the first Chairman and the first guest speaker are very close to me. The two of them are still going strong. The Chairman will be 98 later this year. The young AIESECers who arranged all the initial lectures were very confident, articulate, serious-minded, and showed early signs of leadership and management qualities. Hence they were able to convince highly placed and very busy senior citizens to participate.
It is noteworthy that the Chairman of the third lecture was Papa Elder Akintola Williams now age 102 and still going strong.
When the lecture series had lasted for 28 years, I started to reflect and think deeply about what had passed, the lessons learned, and what should be the projection for the future. I was convinced that it was a lecture series that deserved to be well preserved for future generations unborn, certainly well beyond the lifetime of the honouree.
One of the ways of achieving that objective was to link some existing strong Nigerian Institutions with the annual event. I had been privileged in my years of service to the nation to serve on the Governing Councils of many strong Institutions. I selected 4 out of these Institutions following their longevity in the service of the private sector.
What can you say about the challenges facing Nigeria’s economy and what steps do you think the government should take to tackle the challenges?
To my mind, the challenges are so weighty and so many that a comprehensive answer will occupy several pages. I will do my best to pick the ones that are easier to tackle and lead to the profound result within a relatively short time using what is called in management science Pareto’s principle.
The first challenge that comes to the surface is the huge and suffocating unemployment regime, especially among young people. It had reached an unbearable proportion and needs very urgent attention. Not only is the percentage according to statisticians as high as 33 per cent but the average length of unemployment (for young university graduates in particular) is also often measured in multiple years! What a calamitous situation.
The solution to my mind is a massive programme of training in vocational skills that will make it possible for millions to find employment in agriculture and the building of infrastructure.
All the governments (Federal, State, and Local) should invest heavily in Infrastructure and Agriculture.
The second challenge is the economic downturn due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The solution to my mind is to educate and persuade all citizens to accept that vaccination helps. In the same manner, the medical protocols such as social distancing, the wearing of a mask, and the use of sanitizer had produced good results. The protocol should continue. Every effort must be made to get able-bodied citizens who can be gainfully employed to get back to work without breaking these protocols. Citizens should pay attention to work and wealth creation more than socializing through endless parties. Our citizens must reduce the penchant for over-celebrating.
The third challenge is the challenge of the humongous debt hanging over the Federal Government and State Governments. It had led to the egregious depreciation in the value of the naira and the scarcity of foreign exchange. Our agriculture must be revived and made to earn far more foreign exchange than the mineral oil sector. We must curb our appetite for imported foods. We must learn to grow what we eat and to eat what we grow. We must pay more attention to tree crops such as cocoa, rubber, oil palm, and cotton. We should process our crude agricultural produce rather than by exporting raw materials. We must pay more attention to “manufacturing” including aiming at exporting refined and manufactured products. We should stop our precarious existence as hewers of wood and carriers of water for highly industrialized countries.
The fourth challenge is that the country had become so “strike prone” especially within the high-level manpower, grade in the social sector in particular lecturers and doctors. It is not an exaggeration that in the last 30 years there is hardly a single year in which Nigeria did not suffer from the strike of lecturers and doctors. Consequently, our social sector had been ruined almost beyond redemption. The use of dialogue must be promoted with every sincerity of purpose. Our social partners must learn to “jaw-jaw” rather than “war-war”. You can never beat a sincere spirit of dialogue in resolving disputes. A good industrial relations system must find a way of accommodating trade disputes instead of ultimatums. The issuing of the ultimatum is not a language of peace it is provocative and combative. It reflects an attitude of negativity.
Finally, our industrial relations system in the public sector should emulate what happens in the private sector, where the influence of NECA, collective bargaining, and sanctity of agreement had led to a reasonable peaceful industrial relations atmosphere.
The entire public sector in this country must go in search of peace and harmony in place of strife and strike.
The fifth challenge is solving the problem of epileptic electricity supply. Access to a regular supply of electricity at a reasonable price is a “sine qua non”. In the last 40 years, the supply of electricity has worsened progressively every decade. The supply had never caught up with demand. The country has become the dumping ground for the world manufacturers of standby generators. If this country fails to tackle the critical issue of electricity supply, it will never make it industrially.
The sixth challenge is the dangerous experience of very bad living conditions of citizens with regards to the safety and security of life and properties. There is a complete loss, of amity between citizens and the security forces in particular between the police and the young people. The Nigeria space appears to be an occupied territory or a war zone. Bandits and kidnappers must be vanquished. Otherwise, the country is doomed.
The seventh challenge is the issue of disconnected ineffective and expensive governance restructure. Unarguably the political system in Nigeria is characterized by over-centralization. Our federal system of government will appear to be so only in name. It is too far away to influence community development, which is the undoubted basis for sustainable development.
The eighth challenge is General poverty in the country as captured by statistics. The poverty is so profound that, Nigeria is regarded as the “poverty capital of the world”. It is caused mainly by very high inflation and a depressingly high cost of living.
What has been the impact of the series of lectures on Nigerians, and the key roles of the hosting partners concerning the economic development of the Nation?
In my own opinion, any high-level lecture worth its salt is given by an intellectual giant is an intellectual feast and an invitation to partake in a nourishing food for thought. Human beings are endowed with cerebral power as well as visceral capacity. In simple parlance, one refers to brainpower and the other to emotional intelligence. Most problems are solved satisfactorily in this world through the application of exceptionally brilliant brainpower. With all modesty, I believe that the series of lectures over the past 36 years had been given by people who were well endowed with brainpower and therefore they have given a lot of items of food for thought. The Guest Speakers were the best and brightest in Nigeria. In a country where there are very few think-tanks lecture series like Omolayole Management Lecture (OML) help to fill the gap. Business leaders and political leaders of any of the numerous sectors and groups that constitute a nation can do well to pay attention to intellectual products of these lectures that are available to the entire public free of charge.
It is hoped that by drawing attention to the paucity of think-tanks in this country, the government, as well as the private sector and civil society organizations, will seriously start to spend time, talent, and treasury on establishing think-tanks in this country. So far, Nigeria is still far behind when the world talks about the knowledge industry. What will accelerate our entering into the knowledge-led era is by paying enormous attention to the acquisition of knowledge, in particular scientific and digital knowledge. I believe very strongly in a cliché that says “progress stands from translating knowledge into wisdom”. Any good lecture series helps to achieve that.
As for Impact on the general economic development, a good public lecture by a guru helps to analyze information and data critically and thereafter to hypothesize and synthesize towards a thesis that finds a solution. Any attempt to solve the problems without thorough exercise in thinking will only lead to futility in action. Most of the speakers in the lecture series were not just thinkers; they have demonstrated an enormous capacity for taking actions that had produced successful results in the development of this country economically, socially, and politically. Most of them have been CEOs of large successful organizations, who were thinkers as well as doers. They were and are icons in the area of Nation Building, it is my opinion that no nation can rise above its brains. National problems and challenges are solved by the application of brilliant rigorous and brainy thoughts from serious-minded citizens. All the lectures had been national events, open to Nigerians young and old, men and women, thinkers and doers. Most of those who participated, believe that the country is better together and bigger together.
In fact, in the year 2017, I composed a Song of Unity. We sing that song at the end of every OML (Omolayole Management Lecture Series) since that year. Nothing can demonstrate faith and work towards nation-building more than that.
Above all, the strongest foundation for nation-building is the belief and the pursuit of education passionately for all citizens from the lowest level to the highest level.
The OML lecture series and the hosting partners (LCCI, NECA, NIM, and CIPM) appreciate and support, encourage and promote education with an emphasis on verbal literacy, mathematical literacy, and digital literacy in addition to the acquisition of skills. Whoever doesn’t believe and pursue passionately the education of the masses is only paying lip service to nation-building.
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