The Association of Nigerians Abroad (ANA), an Internet- based http://www.ananet.org/, nonpartisan organization wishes to welcome President Olusegun Obasanjo to the USA and to this important All Nigeria Conference in Atlanta, September 8^th to 9^th, 2000. We thank the President for this unique and historical opportunity to dialogue with Nigerians professionals in the diaspora. We are presenting below our contributions to this conference under the sections as requested by the organizer of this conference. We hope that our contributions along with contributions from other Nigerians at this conference will go a long way to help in shaping the development, progress, peace, and unity of our country.

a Investment and Economic Development

Availability and low cost of basic amenities like pipe-borne water, good telephone system, and reliable and efficient postal system and electricity are very important to attract both foreign (internationals and Nigerians in foreign countries) and domestic investors. There is no stressing it that today, the Nigeria postal system is very unreliable, those of us living abroad have found out painfully that mails will never reach home and when they do they will be tampered with any luck for delivery to the intended destinations. How can anyone do a business when documents cannot be mailed? It will be cost prohibitive to use DHL and the other specialized mail delivery options, which should be reserved for emergency/urgent matters. However, using DHL is the norm because of the failed postal system and how many small man businesses can afford that cost to attract them to invest in Nigeria? Basic economic justification for setting up of a business, especially highly mechanical/chemical industry, is the cheap and uninterrupted supply of electricity. NEPA is anything but reliable source of electricity. Apart from the fact that clean water/industrial water are crucial to running of most chemical companies, the health issue on individuals that want to set-up companies in Nigeria is a serious issue. The idea that borehole water with inadequate treatment can cause typhoid fever among others is a significant drawback. Many rural areas and others not so rural are without pipe-borne water. These are alarming facts that both the State and Federal Govt. should address. We recognize the progress made by the government in area of telephone system. More efforts are needed to make the telephone system of less of pain and within the reach of an average Nigeria to spur and support new businesses. It cost arms and legs to get telephone line hooked up. There is too much pain in getting documents faxed to Nigeria. Serious businessmen/women will not have the time and waste resources to spend endless time to successfully send documents by fax. It goes without saying that modern day businesses are conducted over the phone and Internet. These are little but important factors that can discourage investments.

We can talk endless about the big picture of giant economic development (attracting international corporations, privatization and other big buzzwords) though important but the underlying little things mentioned above form the bedrock that the "big dreams" can thrive on. We have had too many abandoned projects in Nigeria costing us billions of naira. Let us pause and ask our selves the simple question, why the abandon projects? Why is it that in the early 1960s South Korea and Malaysia for example were behind Nigeria in development and today we are far behind them? The Koreans and the rest of the economically booming Asians countries understood the basic things that economic development is based on. We can do better than them because we have the large pool of human (excluding China) and natural resources than the rest of them.

We also need to address law enforcement, which is the backbone of any economic development in any democratic environment. How serious people follow regulations that guide their work ethics, and how much they understand their civic duties, depend upon if, when, and how laws are enforced. Do office executives follow the same rules that are made for the office messengers? It is about time Nigeria observes the simple rule: "Self government will not work without self discipline."

b Health-care Delivery in Nigeria

The health care system in Nigeria is in a serious deplorable situation. We remember the reference in the infamous speech in 1983 to "our hospitals are glorified clinics" by no other person than the dead dictator, Abacha. The late dictator turned many of the glorified clinics to pathetic "mortuaries". As a nation, where is our pride when we flew our finance minister, Adamu Ciroma, to Germany for treatment? What is wrong with our mentality that the rich ones among us pride themselves to going abroad for annual medical check up? It is a simple fact that many rich Nigerians can fund and established world-class hospitals. Government does not have to do it all. It is in the interest of the rich ones to do this to benefit the society at large and particularly themselves because the very small elements of time in case of emergency that flying abroad will not help, that that very small moment should be enough for any right thinking individuals to put their money into the health delivery system. Nigerian was once proud of teaching and specialized hospitals like UCH, Ibadan. Where is UCH, Ibadan today? It has gone the same path those many similar others have gone under. It is sad and ironical that there are far more Nigerians medical doctors in foreign countries especially the USA than in Nigeria. More sad is that majority of these Nigerians doctors were trained in Nigeria with government subsidized education. Like the rest of other citizens, these doctors have to look for a better place to live and support their families. We need to revive/overhaul our health care system. A sound health begets a sound mind. Preventive medicine should also be addressed. Many of the ailments that eventually kill people can be prevented. For example AIDS and typhoid fever has killed many Nigerians sending them to their untimely deaths. Typhoid fever can be prevented, it is cause simply by lack of good drinking water that many rural areas are plague with.

c Education/Civic Orientation

What is the value of education, if a highly literate man behaves as if he has never gone beyond the corners of his village? Civic courses should be included in our education system. Let us teach our young Nigerians who are the future of Nigeria that corruption not only destroy the society, it destroys the very person that practices it. The only future for Nigeria is that if the education and reorientation starts from home, that we stop glorifying the rogues among us, we ask questions on how people become rich overnight, and also we reward/recognize the contributions of conscientious ones. We know how to make great education system in Nigeria: we have the Fafunwas. It is simply for us to go back to our past and salvage our current deplorable educational system. Nigeria education was once the very pride of our nation to the outside world. We note with acknowledgement that the Murtalla-Obasanjo regime invested a lot in the education of our citizens especially in the university system. This current democratic government is on the right track and it can put things in the right order on UBE (Universal Basic Education) and other initiatives. Investment on education including well funding of our university system with modern technology and research centers is the right investment. Today most of our universities lack basic resources (computers, library, etc.) to compete with the outside world. Our country has suffered terrible brain drain to foreign countries. We can and should reverse this trend.

d Technology Transfer/Industrial Development

With the current democratic dispensation, the government is in a good position to negotiate with developed countries for assistance in technological know-how. President Obasanjo has done a lot to project the good image of our country to the outside world. His government can seize the very successful recent trip of President Clinton to have more favorable link of technological help to our country from the USA. It is no secret today that the backbone technology use by Japan was developed in the USA. We have to convince the developed world that it is in their best interest as well as ours that the most populated African country catches up with the rest of the world and thereby be in a position to contribute to the development of the rest of the African countries. Licensing some key technologies to be practiced in Nigeria is one way to put the technology transfer on a fast track. Another way is the TOKTEN Initiatives being funded by the United Nations where foreign-trained Nigerians take few months to go back to Nigeria and engage in impacting their knowledge to targeted areas. In ANA we have taken seriously the TOKTEN Initiatives and many of our members have signified their intentions to take part in the TOKTEN program as one little way we can make contributions to our country.

We have to put more interest in the petrol chemical industry. Our crude oil can fetch us more money and more industries if we process more of the crude oil internally than just shipping it out. Japan with no crude oil is one of the world industrial nations: Japan took our crude oil and those of others and turns it into more profitable products. Graduates unemployment should be thing of the past. There is no industrial development until we have self-discipline and put the interest of Nigeria above our own selfish interest. We have to ask our selves what happen to the Ajaokuta Steel Complex after many billions of naira has been spent? What happen to other industries? Will any one want to invest in a porous economy?

e Sustenance of Democracy/Political Development in Nigeria

This is the one if not the only one where failure of the current democratic system will be a deadly blow to our nation. It is very embarrassing that our top leaders grossly misunderstand the very kernel of the current presidential system of government that requires separation of powers between the legislature, judiciary and executive. Without excusing President Obasanjo, he has done a lot of good to move from a once military dictator to now the leader of a democratic government. He has to do more on the mutual respect of the independence of the legislative and executive arms of the government. The constant feuding rather than cooperation between the executive and the legislature can only do more damage. The two arms of the government should settle their differences and stop embarrassing our country. They should realize that if they ever play to a point where the legislative arm institute a probe of the executive and the executive refuses to cooperate, the show down will be a beginning of the end of democracy in Nigeria. Only God will help us if the judiciary will have to come in and take side or exercise their independent. Our past history has shown where the judiciary will be. The judiciary has, during the military regimes, lopsidedly on the support of the dictators by condoning decrees. We are not in any way in support of witch hunting by the National House of Representative that has refused to purge itself first before embarking on purging others. Charity begins at home. We are worry though that chipping of the power of the legislature will be devastating to our country and destroy the separation of power doctrine enshrined in our Constitution. We have many Nigerians living in the USA that understand how the presidential system works. ANA in particular will be willing to organize workshops for our key legislators and executives to understand the separation of power. This will be a better and more dignify way to our self- pride than asking an USA firm to teach us how to practice what we have in our Constitution. We are tire of the constant change of leadership in the National Assembly via impeachment. The instability does not augur well for laying the foundation for democracy in our country. It goes without saying that stable political system and economic development go hand-in-hand. Businessmen want to have security on their investments to get a return and unstable political system is a deterrent. Sustaining our current democracy is a task that must be done. We cannot afford to fail. The Senator Wakus in our midst has learnt that calling for military to take over power is very retrogressive and damaging to our country. We hope the military will stay to their traditional roles, and if they ever make an attempt by any guises to stage a comeback, it will be the end of Nigeria as one nation. The stake is very high.

The very doctrine of separation of power requires that the judiciary should be requested to intervene when there is fundamental question on interpretation of the Constitution. We are dismay with the handling of the Sharia controversy leading to many lost of innocent life. We are not happy that the issue was not resolve by following the judicial process. We do not belief that the Supreme Court cannot be entrusted to impartially interpret the Constitution on Sharia irrespective of the composition of the Supreme Court and how mostly the past dictators appointed its members. The separation of State and Religion is very fundamental and guaranteed by our Constitution. Religious issues if not maturely and fairly handled can lead and in some countries have led to destruction. Religious and political instability has only one outcome to destabilize a fragile democracy. For example, there is no amount of incentives that will make foreign investors to come to a country where the next day could be daylight butchering of the citizens.

We have to accept the very fact that our democracy is based on not very firm root. There are many unanswered questions, so many contradictions on values, and so much at stake. We cannot keep postponing the need for a National Conference, call it Sovereign Conference, call it Conference of concerned citizens, call it any name you want, we have to sit down as a people and take stock of why we are where we are. If we cannot sit down and talk to iron out our differences, then we have no basis to be one country. There is strength in diversity and we can achieve our set goal of becoming a great nation if we respect our diversity, and be more tolerant of our differences giving every Nigerians fair and equitable treatments.

We praise the efforts of President Obasanjo on his anti-corruption stand. Accountability at all levels should be our watchdogs. We hope this will go a long haul without any sacred lambs/untouchable powerful individuals who have obviously wrecked our country and siphoned away to foreign countries the wealth of our nation. Negotiation with the Swiss banks and other foreign banks should be total to recover some of the ill-gotten wealth back to our country. It is ironically that the sweat of our nation is being used to develop other countries implemented by no other one than our selves. What a tragedy for black nations that the attitude to stock away money in foreign countries at the expense of ones owns country is as barbaric and pathetic as the enslavement of our mentality. We need to educate these squirrels on the damage they have done to the future generations of their race.

The Association of Nigerians Abroad (ANA)