If you read this, you will surely pray for Nigeria: ‘Nigeria has no dedicated budget for research’ A research carried out by Dr Sunday Abayomi Adebisi, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Business Administration at the University of Lagos, was recently awarded the Best Full Paper Award in Performance Management at the British Academy of Management World Conference. In this interview with NAZA OKOLI, he speaks about the research and his findings. Excerpts: You were honoured by the British Academy of Management. What is this organisation about? The British Academy of Management is an academic organisation that comprises management practitioners and scholars. It was founded in Britain, but it has members from all over the world. Most of the members are academics who conduct research in management and some other areas related to management. What does the work of a management researcher really entail? Science research has to do with providing initiative that will give long-lasting solution to environmental, technological, and human problems, as the case may be. But for a scientific research to be practicable, it has to be converted to a meaningful economic advantage, which the average scientist cannot do. It’s the management researcher that understands how to take the output of scientific research, look for where this output will be needed, evaluate the commercial value, and turn this output around in a way that it will become useful for the economic development of a nation. Your research is entitled ‘Public Management: Why Has Asian-Dragon Claimed its Title and African-Giant Still Sleeping in 30-Year Economic Race?’ What is this about? This research was conceived when I went to China. I wrote a proposal that equally caught the attention of the Chinese government. It was eventually funded by that government. It lasted for four months. My interest was to examine the factors responsible for the economic growth of China. I discovered that the feat that China has achieved today is the same feat that Nigeria has the capacity to achieve. In 1980, China and Nigeria were grouped together as developing nations with some other nations. At that point in time, everything you use to measure economic variables was far better in Nigeria, compared to China. In 1960, Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita income was $92.81, while that of China was $92.01. By 1980, which is the baseline of my study, Nigeria’s GDP per capita income had risen to $871.12, while that of China was just $193.02. Also, Nigeria’s Total Reserve was $10.64 billion while China’s was $10.09 billion. Also in the same period, Nigeria’ inflow of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) was $542.33 million while that of China was $430 million. Our poverty head count ratio ($1.25 a day) was 53.9 per cent, while China’s was 84 per cent. Today, as you can see, the reverse is the case. While China worked hard to transform its nation, Nigeria crashed heavily. Your paper begins with the word ‘Why’. Do you have reasons? There are a number of reasons. One of them is political instability. In Nigeria, a leader comes in and abandons the process that a previous leader had started and then begins his own process. These continue to pile up until you discover that there is no economic road map. In China, there is what is called the five-year economic plan. It’s like a baton: once a new leader comes on board, he is compelled by law to complete whatever the previous leader had started before introducing a new five-year plan. So, there is continuity. The second issue is corruption. Yes, there is corruption in every country in the world. What China has done is to ensure that this corruption does not destroy the pillar of their economy, unlike Nigeria where it is done with the highest level of impunity. Why do you think your paper was adjudged best? It caught the attention of the nearly 1000 people that attended the conference. Nobody had thought that Nigeria could be compared with China that way. So, everybody listened keenly. And when they saw the movement from 1980 to date – how Nigeria was better in 1980, and how corruption and the negligence of Nigeria’s infrastructure and human development led to the failure of Nigeria, they realised that, truly, Nigeria would have been competing today with China if we had toed the same line, because it had the wherewithal to be where China is today. You’re a researcher, not a politician. So, how do you hope to make the government to take up this challenge? One of the ways is this interview. Beyond this, this university, for example, always ensures that research carried out by its staff is placed on the university website, so that it can be accessed by anybody in the whole world. This university also attempts to push the research directly to government agencies and policy makers. There is the need to increase the relationship between the university and the government. In China today, there is hardly any policy of government that did not spring from the university. Any time China has a problem, the government moves it to their major universities. Whatever comes out from these universities is often implemented because the government believes it has come from experts. I hope our government would begin to do this, someday. Does the Nigerian government sponsor research of this nature? The government is not doing enough in the area of research, but I am grateful to the University of Lagos. My trip to China was sponsored by this university, but the research itself was funded by the Chinese government. Nigeria as a nation does not have a dedicated budget for research, and any nation that would make meaningful progress must have a dedicated budget for Research and Development. China today spends as much as 10 per cent of its annual budget on Research and Development, sponsoring research in universities. As I speak to you, the University of Beijing has about 5000 patent rights on products and researches that have been developed by them. They give these to industries, and are paid duly for them. It’s not like there are no scholars in this country. It’s just that research is often too expensive for the individual or a school to finance. The government can also encourage the private sector to sponsor academic research. Efforts such as these can boost our economy.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Nov 2014 23:44:11 +0000
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