Daily Independent
Friday 10th, March, 2006
Why Youths Must Be Involved In Policy Debates – Inyang-Mbekwe
Dennis Etim Inyang-Mbekwe, a former NANS President (1994-95), was a nominated member
of the 1994 Constitutional Conference. He, however, shunned the invitation, describing it as
unpopular. He is presently the executive director of Network for Peace and Development
(NEPED) and an assistant site facilitator for the Debate to Action (DTA) Project, a World Bank/
British Council-sponsored project to facilitate policy debates particularly by the youth in Nigeria.
In this interview with TRAINEE REPORTER, Rafiu Ajakaye, Inyang-Mbekwe argues that the only
means to getting over the problems of policy formulation and implementation is for the people,
particularly the youth, to be involved in policy debates. He also makes case for the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) and National Economic Empowerment Development Strategy
(NEEDS) as means to eradicating poverty and unemployment that are the hallmarks of this
society. Excerpts:
What is the Debates to Action (DTA) Project all about?
It is to stimulate debates on policy issues as a step to fueling action. The objective of this
project is to create awareness on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the National
Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS). Some people might say the DTA
is to praise the Federal Government or support multilateral agencies. No, even as the project is
not against NEEDS, it is to create awareness about the issues of NEEDS and MDGs. Of course,
MDGs is global and is at the same time taking national dimension within the Nigerian context.
This is why we feel it is right to debate the issues raised in it to be able to determine the quality or
otherwise of it. But we believe in debates.
Who are the brains behind DTA, I mean the sponsor?
DTA Project is a World Bank Institute/ British Council partnership to promote development
education in Nigeria.
What are the activities of the DTA?
In the first phase of our operation, about 60 youth organisations with two representations
making a total of 120 participants from Lagos Abuja and Kano were trained as facilitators of
development knowledge. They are mostly youths drawn from youth-focused NGOs and civil
societies that are supposed to mainstream development knowledge within their organisations and
environment.
The second phase focuses on the NYSC where members were trained as development
knowledge facilitators. In that case, between 18 and 26 of February this year, the DTA project
took place at most of the NYSC camps at the appointed locations. And the motive of this is to
propel the youth to be well positioned to discuss policy issues and to take advantage or tap into
the opportunities such policy offers. At the level of advocacy, the youth, apart from spreading
development knowledge, become active players in policy formations and are getting involved in
tapping into the advantages of such policies.
What are the contents of the project?
You will agree with me that since the advent of NEEDS, most of the higher institutions of
learning are yet to mainstream the issues of NEEDS and MDGs into their curriculums. MDGs are
global development target. It has eight goals targeted at eradicating extreme poverty, meeting
specific targets for universal education, promoting gender equality/women empowerment,
reducing child mortality rate, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS and other diseases,
ensuring environmental sustainability and promoting global partnership for development. As you
can see, these are development issues captured in the MDGs, and world leaders in year 2000
further dedicated themselves to achieving these goals by 2015. But in the case of universal basic
education, it is expected that gender gap should have been closed by year 2005. In short, the
MDGs is like a global currency or barometer of development. While at the global level, the world
leaders, including Nigeria, are committed to achieving these goals, it is expected that at the
country level, there has to be policy instrument in place to set the tone for the country to achieve
the goals.
In the case of Nigeria, policy instruments are the NEEDS document at the national level, the
SEEDS at the state level, and LEEDS at the local level. NEEDS in Nigeria is the first poverty
reduction strategy paper with clearly defined set of achievable goals. In it, there’s a plan to grow
consumption by two per cent, GDP by six per cent between 2004 and 2007, create seven million
jobs, attain about 65 per cent literacy level, and increase access to safe drinking water. This is
spelt out in the four goals of NEEDS namely: wealth creation, employment generation, poverty
reduction, and value re-orientation. NEEDS is a mutually inclusive social charter.
We want to know what your activities really are at DTA, and of course the extent to which
you think NEEDS has gone to achieving its objectives? Looking at the situation in the
country today, it seems not that poverty level has decreased; it is in fact going up each
day?
Basically, what we are doing at DTA project level is to empower the youth with necessary skills
and knowledge to carry out such evaluation or to participate in debates to answer questions like
yours. The problem we have in Nigeria is people’s opinions most often are based on what they
feel or experience. While we don’t fault this, we strongly believe that to discuss a policy paper or
issue, you need to understand the policy paper itself and the issue raised therein so that you
don’t conclude that your personal opinion without a knowledge of the policies are necessarily the
verdict representing the views of the majority.
What do you say to the big shots within the civil and rights groups who contend that
these policies as contained in NEEDS represent the interest of foreigners rather than that
of the people?
These people naturally have their own opinions, and how they come about their opinions I may
not really be in position to say. It is not my intention to join issues with this category of people
because we appreciate people discussing policies. But come to think of it, if you look at the moon
and I look at it the same time you did, we are likely to see things differently. But what we are
driving at is that while there may be different perceptions to issues, it should fuel a debate that in
the final analysis should better the lot of Nigerians. Most of the youth do not really have the
opportunity to meet some generation, poverty reduction and value reorientation. of these
personalities but have their own opinions too. What we are doing is to retune our youths to also
participate in policy dialogues because he who wears the shoe knows where it pinches. Let us
come to the issue of NEEDS: it is a poverty reduction strategy paper that evolved through a
participatory means, which as I said earlier is a mutually inclusive social charter. If you look at the
four cardinal goals of NEEDS, I don’t think there is any Nigerian, including the personalities you
mentioned, who are opposed to wealth creation, employment But certainly they may have
different approaches to attaining it. But the reality again is that we live in a globalised world where
we either can choose to be players or victims of globalisation or new economic order.
Essentially, we are trying to equip the youth with skills to take part in debates on how the goals
of the NEEDS and MDGs could best be actualised with the youth being active participants and
beneficiaries. To do this, they should be able to speak for themselves from their own experiences.
But there is this argument that economic plans as NEEDS and the so-called MDGs of
which privatisation is an instrument are not homegrown policies and cannot serve the
purpose of Africans. Now that the World Bank/ British Council is funding your group, don’t
you think there would be suspicions that the campaign is another step to pauperise the
people?
Firstly, NEEDS is a homegrown document. The World Bank/ British Council did not in any way
determine the content of NEEDS. The government has said that the NEEDS is a policy
instrument to meet the MDGs targets. So the World Bank/British partnership is only trying to
improve the content of debate and participation of the people and broader ownership of the
document, because the more the participation, the more the perspective brought to wealth
creation, employment generation, poverty reduction and value reorientation.
People, such as Professor Charles Soludo, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, both of whom are
the leading lights of the economic team of the Obasanjo administration, are alleged within
the rights community to be moles planted by the multilateral institutions to impose the
economic interest of western nations on Nigeria…(cut in)
In the first place, these people you mentioned were mere facilitators of the process that gave
birth to NEEDS document. They ensured wider participation of the civil society groups and the
private sector to collate views and strategies that are captured in the NEEDS document. They
were only raising issues and asking open-ended questions without actually dictating what goes
on. The civil society and the private sector were active participants in determining the contents of
NEEDS. Come to think of it, there is one growing mentality that I don’t like associating with:
name-calling, fixing blames. What we have at stake is fixing problems and not fixing blames. You
find out that most people they brand and call all sorts of names are those considered to be
political or economic threats. So, if you say Soludo and Okonjo-Iweala are so and so, tell me, can
anyone say they are corrupt people and should not be in office? What is more important is the
integrity and not sobriquet invented by those suffering from ‘push him/her down’ (PHD) syndrome.
Arguments of these activists are that governance is all about making life easy and worth
living for the people, and in case you have policies that are turning out to be anti-people,
it is better such policies are stopped forthwith.
Please, do flash your mind back to, say, 1994. It was very difficult in 1994 to make phone calls
to places like Sokoto or any other parts of the country, but today from the comfort of your room or
your car you can do that conveniently. Can you say that is bad or good? If it is good, certainly not
all the policies as your question portrays is evil. Coming to the issue of development, it is only
when you and I and a teeming youths and other strata of the community sit down and discuss
effectively and monitor implementation of policies that we can begin to chart a desirable course
for our own development. We must begin to take responsibility and make inputs into what
concerns us and our future. We must abandon the “We against them mentality” that is presently
prevalent. We need to begin to discuss effective ways of equitable income distribution. You will
agree with me that there is more economic activity and money in the economy today. It is only
when we come out with clear strategy on equitable income distribution that everything can go
round.
There is this notion that what African nations need is not debt relief but trade equality
between it and western countries. What are your views?
I quite agree with you that most Nigerians do feel this way. During the training session at the
NYSC camp at Iyana Ipaja, Lagos, one of the participants Nkemdilim Osai raised this issue and
even suggested that in signing trade agreement, developing countries such as Nigeria need to be
very conscious of certain clause that gives “favoured (developed) nation” some kind of
advantages. So you can see the project itself is already stimulating youth discussion in that area.
So, what we are talking about is that the project is actually growing an increasing number of
development knowledge facilitators among our youths. These corps members that are trained will
also embark on an extension programme on the MDGs and NEEDS issue in our communities
namely local governments, schools, and anywhere the corps members are serving. They are
expected before the end of their service year to reach out to at least 60 participants in their
programmes. And some of the pioneer sets are already reaching out to more than a hundred. At
the end of the day, we have informed youths discussing effectively issues that affect them within
the context of policy instruments of any government. At this level, as a facilitator on this project,
my personal opinion does not really matter. What matters to me is the amount of youths who can
effectively debate these vexed issues. Once I am out of this context of speaking as an assistant
site facilitator, I can start talking about my opinion. This gives you the understanding that those
who are facilitators of development projects have the responsibility to stimulate or fan up
discussions that will lead to agreed solution and not just start imposing views. As a facilitator, I
would like to see more youths discussing development issues and not just echoing my views
because I said it and therefore it is standard. To avoid that, I would want to see more debates.
As a former NANS President, aren’t you sad to hear the present helmsman calling for
another term for Obasanjo even as many are opposed to it, besides the fact that people
have rated this administration as the most antagonistic to free education for the people?
First of all, I must say I have not been personally in touch with current NANS executive. But going
from what I read in the papers, majority of the executives, more than two thirds and all the four
zonal leaders, have already come out to state clearly that the NANS’ position is the opposite! If
you recall in 1994, I was invited to the Constitutional Conference then organised by Abacha
regime but I rejected participating in that confab and mobilised effectively to relaunch June 12 on
the streets of Nigeria, even states like Benue (Makurdi) and all over the country, there were
protests. But, surprisingly, in the just concluded confab even when it was alleged that it was a
hatching point for the third term, NANS participated and had two representations. I don’t quarrel
over that because it is a different scenario. This is not military rule, as they put it, so you agree
with me that what matters most is the content of the debate that informs NANS’ position. And I
still believe we have very capable students activists to handle debate at that level.