Description
INTRODUCTION
Let me begin by expressing my profound thanks to the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Uyo, Professor Nyaudoh Ndaeyo, for his very warm welcome. Grateful thanks also to the Head of the AHE Centre for Public Policy, Professor Ntiedo Umoren, for inviting me to deliver the Third Akpan Hogan Ekpo Birthday Lecture. Judged by the illustrious personalities that have preceded me on this podium, I am humbled as well as honoured. And let me also appreciate all of you who have taken time from your busy schedules to be here today. Thank you!
I have known our distinguished celebrant for almost two decades. We were both colleagues on the Board of Directors of the Central Bank of Nigeria. My friend and brother, Professor Akpan Hogan Ekpo, is easily one of the most accomplished scholars of our generation. Acentral banker; one-time Director-General of the West African Institute for Financial and Economic Management (WAIFEM); President of the Nigerian Economic Society (NES); and a former Vice-Chancellor of Akwa lbom State University and University of Uyo. Our paths also crossed when we both served on the same Macroeconomics Policy Committee in 2009 during the economic planning exercise for Vision 2020.
Throughout the years that I have known him, Professor Ekpo has not only been an economist of rare erudition and profundity; he has also been a consummate administrator and public servant; with an uncommon commitment to social justice, patriotism and professional integrity. He is a true scholar in the best traditions of that vocation; a Nigerian patriot – an illustrious son of Akwa lbom and the Niger Delta.
One incidence remains fresh in my memory. A few years ago, after a conference at the University of Uyo, we were invited to dinner at his home in Uyo, where we were lavishly entertained by his beautiful Kenyan wife and himself. We were shocked and alarmed when a thief tried to jump over the fence while the party was ongoing. He was fortunately overpowered by the security staff. Professor Ekpo was concerned throughout that the young man was not rough handled. After the dust had settled, we went back to the party, whereupon he continued to hold court until dawn on the merits and shortcomings of Karl Marx!
Let us please give him a standing ovation!
The organisers of this lecture series were generous enough to give me the latitude in choosing any topic of my liking. Blank cheques are, of course, always attractive. But it also raises several challenges. It can be quite agonising searching for a suitable theme that fits the moment – that is both relevant to the hour and pertinent to the intellectual interests of our celebrant. I would locate Professor Ekpo’s work ideologically on the neo-Keynesian, heterodox left: with research interests broadly been in macroeconomics, monetary policy and development finance.
Considering all the above, I have chosen as my topic for today’s lecture, “Insecurity and Economic Development in Nigeria”. Most economists, with exception of people like Paul Collier and Frances Stewart, both of them of Oxford University, have tended to shy away from topics centring on insecurity, violence and conflict.Perhaps this is because it is a theme that is not easily susceptible to elegant algebraic equations and the kind of econometric modelling that dominate economic science today.
Mr Chairman, I trust you will all agree with me that insecurity is the single biggest challenge facing our country today. Insecurity and violent conflict have impacted gravely not only on our economic Prospects but on the very foundations of our nationhood, development and the very survival of our democracy and our image in the comity of civilised nations. They have eroded the glue of trust and solidarity that held communities together. New secessionist groups are emerging; generating fear and anxiety among mass publics in our country. The smell of waris in the atmosphere. And it is as thick as a nuclear mushroom cloud.
It reminds me of the doomsday warnings by the immortal poet Christopher cee Okigbo: “And the secret thing in its heaving threatens with iron mask the last lighted torch of the century.
Like our celebrant, Professor Akpan Ekpo, I remain an old fashioned Nigerian patriot. Like him, I am also a believer in the old-time religion of social justice, peace, democracy and the rule of law. As social scientists and public intellectuals, I am persuaded that duty and task — our dharma — is to commit not only to rigorous scientific research but also to undeviating truth and objectivity in all our intellectual endeavours. And it is incumbent upon us to continually elevate the level of public discourse over and above the mundane idiom of ethno-sectarian and regional biases that is so rampant in our country. Nigeria is in dire need of organic intellectuals that are fearless in defending the truth and generous in embracing and celebrating our diversity.
We are the salt of the earth. And woe betides that nation that has lost its proverbial saltness — that is bereft of its thinkers and sages who can point us in the direction of hope, righteousness and justice.
This lecture will be delivered in four parts:
(1) Violent Conflict Development and Human Security;
(2) The Nigerian Dilemma;
(3) Understanding Insecurity and Violent Conflict;
(4) Economic Social Consequences; and Strategic Options.
