My response attends to a central aspect of Dr. Edobor's address about 1) prerequisites in the "global environment," to attracting foreign investors to Nigeria and 2) whether Nigerians have reasons to be afraid of globalisation. Moreover, I note that Dr. Edobo omitted a vital element of readiness for international commerce - educated nationalism or education, understood as a conscious preparation of citizens to encounter the world on their own terms. Besides, while it seems reasonable to expect that, mutual equality of standing is essential to participation in a transaction, such a the one enunciated, Dr. Edobo preconcludes that, in order to participate in "global" commerce, Nigeria must offer itself as cheap labor.
Allow me to offer a philosophical analysis of your central assumptions that a cooperativist globe in which nations consciously respect each other's best interests is a possibility and that, by offering itself for exploitive, cheap labor, Nigeria improves its chance of attaining measurable economic development. I posit that neither is achievable in the short term and both will sabotage further, Nigeria's survivability, being a marginal state. Instead, I recommend that Nigeria approach philosophically, all proposals for international trade. A commercial exchange, which does not result in the coincidence of mutual advantages is robbery and no rational person allows him or herself, to be deprived of rightful goods.
The misconstrual, globalization, purports the existence of a world equalized by shared conceptions of the good and satisfaction of ends and means. Such a world is unrealizable, given two factors. One is the ethnocentric miserliness of rich nations toward needy ones. The other is the differentiated conceptions of the globe and its constituents, as these exist in the minds of ethnoracial groups in the world. In other words, there is no unitary view of the globe or what is good. Since conceptions of the good underlie human exchanges, and is the essential tool for a conceptual analysis of reality, there is no unitary view of commerce. Consequently, attempts at globalization will nullify egalitarian impulses and would be appropriated by those, who are knawed by their sense of racial and technoscientifc superiority, to accomplish their desire to breach necessary, national spaces, which separate markets, rather than shrink unnecessary gaps among nations in terms of their access to necessary resources. There is no doubt but that rich and powerful nations will impose their conception of reality to wreak a consumption pattern upon those nations, which are incapable of sustained resistance.
No doubt, Nigeria's educational philosophy influences and leads to its inability to manufacture products which compete with Western outputs and for its citizens to make nationalistic choices between imported and domestic products. Manufacturing and commerce understood properly, are peculiar insights into the world of form and matter, which are particular to a distinguishable collective, predicated by its history. Similarly, education is the process by which such a perspective is inculcated, to enable a nation to draw upon its philosophical uniqueness, to construct schemes of autonomous, social, economic, political, and cultural organization, development, maintenance, and persistence, irrespective of what anyone thinks, outside the borders of its reality. Thus, neither trade nor manufacturing can be logically globalized, in an authetic, culturally coherent nation, because, group conceptions of reality structure and demarcate choices collectives make regarding such synthetic productions, as manufacturing. Autonomous educology ensures a people's ability to render such decisions, without external duress.
Unfortunately, Nigeria's education is itself mortgaged to external worldviews, given which, its sorry position in the world can only be exacerbated further, by leaping into an unexamined "global," economic arrangements.
Manufacturing and trade are tools for a particular place, for constructing a path in the world of competing visions of reality. When this is transacted with other nations, it is a statement about the internal coherence in the offering nation. This is why premodern trade was transacted in the manner diplomacy is done today - involving long, ritualized and well-orchestrated process of give and take. In this perspective, trade is a function and product of how a people see the world and education is the tool for organizing sauch a worldview, while commerce is the means to exploiting comparative advantages between one nation and naother.
Wherefore, a well-conceived trade must lead, necessarily, to a specific, ungeneralized place, where commerce ensures Nigeria's best advantage, given that, seller and buyer are never other-considering pals. If this is true, how can Nigeria venture into a global thrust, to maximise its advantages? What are Nigeria's possible advantages? What does it have to offer to its untrammelled advantage?
Dr. Edobor precludes this possibility and has asserted that Nigeria should become a pool of exploiutable, cheap labor. But this is not advantage!
Consider this: Britain has numerous, economically depressed oases of misery, with over 40% unemployment. Why has the government of Britain not allowed US, Indian, Chiense, or German invesstors, to set-up Third World type, three pounds an hour sweat shops there?
Why does that governemnet continue to welfare payment to such large popualtions, instead? Why does Austria, where Dr. Edobor resides, forbid foreign investors paying low wages to its citizens? And, would Dr. Edobor encourage his daughter to submit to such dehumanization? If not, whose brother, sister, or child would he proffer?
While it is true that some Asian countries provide cheap labor of the type Dr. Edobor describes, the fact is borne out that, this is accomplished, not with the approval of a self-respecting government but with the collusion of a selfish, unethical, capitalist elite, aligned, not with its own people, but with foreign exploiters. Ultimately, cheap labor strategies hurt and do not help any economy to grow. Many Asian economies stand in evidence of this truth.
Contrary to a gobalist thrust, Nigeria must rather emulate India and China, by closing its borders, except to intra-African commerce, and forcing its populations to adapt to what is necessary and is produced in Nigeria, until it develops the capacity for equal competition with developed economies. Why? Because, the propagandazed idea of globalization will not serve well, the interests of a militarily, technologically, and economically weak nation, such as Nigeria. A full-scale entry into this seductive club, will intensify Nigeria's status as dumping ground for Western goods. Already, such exploitive relationship eventuated in its extreme indebtedness. I recommend developmental programs, that suit its people and times. It should invoke Marcus Garvey's Africentric policy of pari pasu - each single product proposed for sale by one country, must be complemented by a product of the same price, accepted for purchase by that country. Ideally, the best commerce is complementary barter, no more, no less.
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