The Economic Growth and Development Centre (EGDC), a non-governmental organisation with the aim to enrich its citizens, is of the opinion that institutionalising human capital development will grow Nigeria’s economy and impact Africa and the world at large. BINTA SHAMA reports.
Recently, the Economic Growth and Development Centre (Economic Center), at a press briefing, announced its foreign partnership with one of the top development organisation in Canada, Economic Developers Alberta (EDA) on a major training and study tour to train African professionals and development practitioners.
Human capital development
The Executive Chairman of Economic Growth and Development Centre (an economic expert and promoter of human capital development) Professor Magnus Linus Kpakol, while entertaining questions said, Nigerians and Africa at large should respond to the dire demand of manpower development as a nitty-gritty for the needed economic transformation in Nigeria and the continent at large.
“The Nigerian economy has under-performed for over the years affecting its global competitiveness and its GDP which is the reason for the nation’s poverty. We should begin to pay more attention on how we can grow the economy. When we talk about economic development, we are actually talking about economic development plus other things including the raising of the level of living, raising personal incomes, increases in wealth and prosperity where some people call it share prosperity.
“I suggest that we institutionalize human capital development to sell it as a convention internationally, to be a national norm where everybody understands what human capital development means. It’s not just going to school nor obtaining certifications because certificate doesn’t produce economic value but what amounts to much is the application of the skills being acquired. We should have continuous education on human capacity, of our citizens that have graduated and are working, who have capacity.
Training of retirees, civil servants to grow Nigeria’s economy
“I also intend that we look into our armed forces to a very large extent, they have one of the best trainings in our nation, they have very strong emotional and social behavioral skills that they have acquired over the years and what tends to happen is, when they leave the armed forces upon retirement, they go for the most part and languish in their villages. Some attend farming that they don’t know how to do nor have training on it but I think with the skills they have, they should be developed to help grow the economy at every level even at the local government levels where we lack skills. So I think that we should strongly have a program of institutionalization of human capital development where we look into the retired angle of the armed forces to participate at the various angles of endeavors. And also have them participate in the private sector, helping people to become more productive.
“Another area of importance is the civil service. The quality of work and the people or professionals in the civil service levels has deteriorated inconsiderately. We need to improve the quality of the civil service because that’s where political decisions are made. Until our elected officials are trained, we will not get quality service because we need a higher level of quality from our officials.
Trainees to get trained for the nation’s benefits
“Is time when people get their minds off the personal benefits attached to training but to rather get more equipped and professional of that specific field by checking to see if they actually achieved the goal they went for and so we think that the quality of civil service has to improve because that’s where we are implementing political decisions we make and for that we are assuming that the quality of the goods and services of the electoral officials is good, but for me it is not good at all because we need a higher level of the polity/quality of our electoral officials, they need proper training, because that’s what other countries do.
They go for training and not just for a retreat, let’s have constant training for our electoral officials and that’s why we are setting up our economic program with Economic Developers Alberta, one of the real strong developers in the world. And we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with them and we have trained elected officials, other people, professionals across Africa because we are just aiming at Africa. We will have a series of training coming up quarterly next year. Not only for training but collaboration with counterpart as a way of making investors to come to Nigeria.
I believe in our country and across Africa, we must engage strongly in local partnerships. The other countries that are successful, that was what they did. The Koreans have strong partnership with the United States, for example especially south Koreans turkeyline and also the Chinese, they also have strong partnership with the United States. Many USA companies have shops in China like the iphones, they’re produced in China, Singapore and even in Hong Kong and so we have to have this partnerships. It is one way of making sure that you blow up the stuck-up of human capital.
Can democracy help economic development?
“Democracy is supposed to help economic development in the sense that it is supposed to bring about political and economic freedom but what tense to happen to our democracy has an imperial situation. The guy gets into office and begins to act like an emperor, and as a result, a lot of people working with them cannot make contributions. It is high time we begin to have situations where that person recognizes that he has to bring people to come to the table and freely bring their ideas. That’s what democracy is all about.
“To the extent that, even the far ranking people in the society bring their ideas. That’s what democracy is about. When you have that, then you can have economic freedom and with that freedom, you will produce goods and services in a very diversified manner that the people of the world want. Finally, if you produce good and services and nobody wants them, you will be poor. You can’t escape poverty nor be rich, if you cannot produce goods and services that people want. So I often say that the human capital development is about the process and ability for us as a people to produce the goods and services that the people of the world want. Look at the situation that we have, we sometimes talk about the remittance from overseas.
Nigeria, last year we got 21 billion dollars in 2022 in remittances but what happens is that, more than 60% of the remittances go back to where they came from. Most people aren’t looking at this. For instance, somebody says my son is overseas, send us money or the phone that I had, got broken, and then money is sent. Most of the things we acquire are imported or made abroad. So basically the remittances are coming into Nigeria and flying back to where it was from. So these days what we do is, we train people to fly overseas to get resources and fly back overseas and that’s because we don’t have a strategy.
“For us as an economic and development center to have a process, a training programme, where we want people to come to us. We have it online, in Canada where you learn the real stuff and receive the proper certificate after being equipped which at the end you will know how to practice and achieve economic development. You will learn how to raise the income levels of people and human capital stock and we will include the banks. You can’t do this without the participation of the banks. You must have financial intermediation. And so I am calling for a situation where the banks, private sectors, far people are coming to work with us, because our aim is to promote economic development of our country, to raise that human capital stuff properly, targeted at real production output, real production of economic value, and that’s what we want to do.
“We want to promote economic development worldwide and so we want to make an impact on Nigerians and we believe that at the income levels of Nigerians will go up and that will help other organizations and as well strengthen ours to get partnership as we have collaborators and think that will promote the things that we are doing and gives us the ability to do more
