According to a former banker and a friend, “the lowest level of governance shares unearned income and palliatives; the highest creates opportunities and supports creativity to manifest”. I found his assertion very apt considering the current situation in Nigeria.
The socio-economic challenges confronting Nigeria took a dramatic turn for the populace and the country’s economy in January 2023. The CBN’s twin policy of new naira notes and demonetization not only further aggravated the impacts of COVID-19 on the economy, put paid to the concept of individualism in enterprise, but also fully introduced into Nigeria what is known as cooperative economy. The mid-year policies of the new administration (fuel subsidy removal and forex floating with rates unification) effectively sounded the death knell of the economy. To the knowledgeable and remote watchers of the economy, it was clear that Nigeria will have no other option that to inject intervention funds into the system and launch fully into social and solidarity economic activities (SSEs) if the country wants to get out of the socio-economic doldrums that it is mired. But the opposite is what we are witnessing every day.
Social and solidarity concept is about interdependence of individuals in a society, which allows the people to believe that they can enhance the lives of others directly by themselves. This is the core principle for collective action, one that is established on shared values and beliefs among different groups in a society. In economic terms, Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) is an economic formation which seeks improvement of quality of lives of a people in a region or a community on the basis of solidarity, that is, through the deployment of power of numbers or making of joint efforts to set up local businesses and/or establish not-for-profit endeavours. With this understanding therefore, the Social and Solidarity Enterprises include cooperatives, associations, mutual societies, foundations, self-help groups and other enterprises or entities operating in accordance with the values and principles of the SSEs. With the astronomical costs of doing business and intractable costs of funds that is destroying MSMEs at an alarming rate in Nigeria, it is expected that the various tiers of government will choose to do things differently in looking to make use of SSE platforms to engage in production and revitalise the comatose economy instead of the Father-Christmas dolling of so-called palliatives that achieve nothing.
While developed economies make use of Cooperative Movements to mobilise mass participation in economic growth and development, Nigeria has relegated the cooperative concept to an idea meant for junior employees and the poor in the society. Today, in a population of over 200 million people, less than ten percent of the population know and participate in social and solidarity enterprises in Nigeria. At the recently-concluded conference (in which I participated) that was organised by the ILO and African Union to give a report about SSE in Africa, with reports from six African countries, figures from Nigeria cannot be said to be encouraging. Going by the roles being played by Agricole in France, Mondragon Corporation in Spain and IFFCO in India, Nigeria has made a terrible mistake in relegating cooperatives to mere employees and poor people’s gatherings. In one of my previously-published articles that I titled, “Cooperative Economy: The Next Best Model For Nigerians”, I referenced the words of Gar Alperovitz, in the interview published by Orion Magazine. For emphasis, he says “in contrast to corporations, which have every interest in cutting costs (and maximising profits) wherever possible, locally rooted cooperative institutions are inherently responsible to people and place. They give local people a stake in the enterprise, which means that the health of the community comes first”. Let me also repeat the views of Dovev Lavie as revealed in the book, The Cooperative Economy: A Solution to Societal Grand Challenges: “societal grand challenges have taken a toll on humanity which finds itself at a crossroads as a result of concentration of wealth and economic inequality. The ethical, community-driven exchange system that relies on collective action to promote societal values while accounting for resource constraints is the appropriate answer”.
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While cooperative movements in developed economies are doing international businesses and they are posting revenues far above US$100 billion in 12 months, Nigeria is oblivious of such great performances and would rather look the other way instead of embracing such SSE movements to make the people participate directly in revitalising their own economies by themselves. The developed economies will always use cooperative movements to galvanise their people and foreigners to their own economic advantages through ever-increasing jobs creation and employment generation. The earlier the federal, state and local governments in Nigeria use cooperatives to stimulate MSMEs instead of wasteful, individuals-focusing, and poverty-entrenching palliative distributions, the better for the economy and the people. Use cooperative movements as a tool of engagement to confront poor production bases and fight unemployment that is feeding banditry, terrorism, and insecurity. Governments should create special funds for grants and single-digit loans for industrial (producer) cooperatives with tenure not less than three years, well monitored and not handed over to politicians or corrupt government employees to administer. Nigerians need to be productively engaged as government goes about its economic reforms.
Ola Emmanuel is a business planning consultant
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