By SMOLETTE ADETOYESE SHITTU-ALAMU

Dr. Akinwumi Ayodeji Adesina is a PhD holder in Agricultural Economics. He has very intimidating credentials as a globally respected technocrat and scholar. Since the year 2015, he has been the president of the Africa Development Bank (AFDB) the monetary institution based in Abidjan, Cote D'ivoire. He was re-elected for the same post in 2020 and would complete his second and final term as president AFDB this September. This very respected former Nigerian Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development did serve as a professional technocrat in government and in politics under the Goodluck Ebele Johnathan's presidency from 2011 to 2015. It was from that post that he went on to serve as president of the Africa Development Bank (AfDB).

Before reaching the global renown and heights he has attained in life as well as the commanding level he has reached today in the global world, the then young little boy had known life as the son of a poor farmer. Therefore he has known the pains of not to have in life. Although he is from Ogun State, he was born and raised in Ibadan like a typical peasant farmer's child. Young Akinwumi attended not a high sounding school names such as Kings College nor Igbobi College; not CMS Grammar School nor St Gregory's, but the modest Baptist High School in Ejigbo, the present day Osun State. At the then University of Ife where he later on studied Agricultural Economics, he was too brilliant and too diligent a lad not to have grabbed the First Class Honours result. Oh yes he did get that. Thus Adesina became the first ever student in the history of Uni-Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University to be awarded first class in Agricultural Economics in 1981. From Purdue University in the United States of America, Akinwumi Ayodeji Adesina bagged the MSc degree in 1985, and the PhD in 1988. His thesis won the Outstanding PhD Thesis Award in 1988. That same year Akinwumi Adesina won the Rockefeller Foundation's Social Sciences Fellowship. This award was what launched him into international career as an Africa and Development Expert.

Before becoming a federal minister in Nigeria he had always shown himself to be a firm believer in private sector-led growth for nations especially in the developing world. He was Vice President in-charge of Policy and Partnership at the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). In that capacity he had several bold and innovative policies and finance initiatives that leveraged over 4 billion dollars in Bank finance commitments to the African sector. He equally served as Associate Director and Regional Director for the Southern Africa Office of the Rockefeller Foundation.

Indeed, we are merely speaking about a Nigerian intellectual who has written about seventy scholarly publications and who as a Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development for only four years (2011-2015) radically changed the perception of the Agric value chain in Nigeria from subsistence to a viable business that attracted 5.6 billion dollars into private sector investment. The Electronic Wallet system he introduced as Minister, reached some 15 million farmers throughout this country. The system dramatically transformed the levels of farmers in Nigeria. The project succeeded in ending 40 years of corruption in the fertilizer business in Nigeria. By the twist of two fingers, local farmers readily got provided with subsidized farm inputs via their mobile phones. This is a bold reform but which has had to be carelessly abandoned somehow when he left office. As President of AfDB since 2015, he launched the transformation of human lives on the African continent, via his Hi fives programme namely Light up Africa, Transform Africa, Power the Continent, Feed Africa and Integrate the Continent's people so as to save the continent from itself as an economically backward landmass but which ironically is the richest in the world. Now to the purpose of this write-up.

Very recently, this highly professional Agric Economist who is the sitting president of the Africa Development Bank (AfDB) spoke out the truth to the Nigerian situation when he drew a comparison between the Nigerian people of 1960 at independence and their counterparts he finds on the streets 65 years later.

The conclusion Adesina drew was that Nigerians are worse off today then they were in 1960. Somehow this Adesina view has not gone down well with presidential spokesmen in the Villa

In a swift response to what the facts present and Dr. Akinwumi Adesina has only echoed , the presidential megaphone led by Bayo Onanuga who is Special Adviser to the President on lnformation and Strategic Communication condemns the Adesina position and blames him for basing his conclusion on what he calls "figures that do not align with available data." Onanuga went on to say that "no objective observer can claim that Nigeria has not made progress since 1960." But seriously speaking is Onanuga right? No he is not. In fact he can't be right. This is because having plenty of money in one's pocket does not translate into wealth. Or does it? If the common man fed his family with five or even ten naira in a month in the 1960 years but does so with five hundred thousand naira in a month today, 65 years later would we say such a man has progressed?

Bayo Onanuga went on to say that "even as the nation awaits the NBS's recalibration of our GDP, we can comfortably say without contradiction that it is at least 50 times if not 100 times more than it was at independence." lf our GDP is 100 times more than what it was in 1960 how has that helped us? We may ask.

The presidential aide also accused the AfDB boss of "speaking like a politician in the mould to Peter Obi but did not do due diligence before making his unverifiable statement". Habba, Bayo Onanuga. Will an Agricultural Economist like the AfDB boss make an unverifiable statement? Will he? Should he? Will he not do due diligence before he talks about his own country? Does he not readily see the result of government initiatives and policies in the people? Let us be more frank and factual. As President of AfDB, can Dr. Adesina truly be said to be someone who does not have economic indices of all African nations at his fingertips?

We may not be experts in Economic matters even as Onanuga wants us to believe. We can give it to him that GDP per capita is not the only criterion we can use to determine whether people live better now than they did in the past. All the same our little understanding of basic Economics tells us it is a poor tool for assessing the living standard of our people. Is GDP per capita not always silent on whether we as Nigerians enjoy better access to health care, education and transportation such as rail, and air now than we did in 1960 65 years back.

Yes Nigeria today has more primary schools, secondary schools, tertiary institutions than she had in 1960. We have more road networks, medical facilities, phone lines accessibility etc. But with a population leap from 45 million in 1960 to the nearly 230 million in 2025, has our population not shot up to about 5 times in 65 years? Is this not a problem? Have our facilities this exponential increase in population growth causes not rendered useless and inaccessible all the imaginary gains? Yes every Tom Dick or Harry has access to phones but have the available facilities translated into effective service provision? The answer is a big No. 65 years on, electricity supply to our homes remains on by which band you belong to. A B C or D. Is this something we must be proud of? Does this happen in the developed climes? Today 65 years after independence, our school system cannot contain all our children of school-going age. It is a known fact that 2,000 students in our higher institutions do receive learning in halls meant to sit just about 500 people at a go! The students when they come out can't access jobs for years and so have to Japa in the end.

There is insecurity in the land. Everywhere there is strife, there is disappointment hunger, thirst, frustration and killings. Nowhere is safe today. Yet in 1960 to the 1980 years one could travel the length and breadth of our country without blinking an eye. We had factories that produced or assembled cars, produced batteries brake pads and tyres. Food was very available. We lived a life of being our brother's keeper. The poor could eat and did not have to beg nor play tricks to live. Are we not worse at 65 years ago? We all are, except those in the corridors of political power and Yahoo Yahoo practitioners.

The presidency's rather dismissive reaction to Dr. Akinwumi Adesina's very clear statement of fact is rather worrisome. We conclude by stating that Dr. Adesina is right; but the presidency's reaction is very wrong.

Ethics as moral principles show how people should conduct themselves in social affairs. Ethics ensure the imposition of obligations on us as public functionaries to refrain from doing or saying whatever things are wrong. Our Presidential Aides must learn to study and develop ethical standards. They must try to live up to reasonable and solidly based conducts. They must refrain from being often time economical with the truth. They will do this by accepting to stand by the truth always and be able to stand on the side of the people they have been invited to serve.

? Smolette Adetoyese Shittu-Alamu is a former Director of News, Osun State Broadcasting Corporation.

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