Football Club of Barcelona players are known with a connective and transitional style of football called TIKI-TAKA. Tiki-taka involves passing the ball among themselves from different positions until their opponents’ formation is disorganized to defend a goal. They make hundreds of accurate dribbles and passes among themselves till the opponents’ defence opens up for them to score. They understand that if everybody individually rushes to score immediately they get the ball, the team may never score. If African societies rush to export their crude resources without processing and trading among themselves, they may never develop technologically.
The human and mineral resources required for producing technologically processed products are not often deposited in one place. Twenty different resources may be sourced from ten different societies in order to produce one commodity. Leonard read’s “I, PENCIL”[1] illustration showed how millions of people in different societies unconsciously contributed in the production of a pencil without a central planning. They only needed to develop their resources before trading with other societies who utilize the processed resource for other products. The graphite, cedar-wood, rubber, metal and paint used in producing pencil were produced in different places before being assembled to form a pencil.
As with pencil production, the resources for industrial commodities imported by African societies are not deposited in one location, but are in different parts of Africa. They only have to be processed individually in their specific locations by trained people before being traded with other societies. There is no society without resources, there are only societies who have not discovered their human and later, mineral resources. These are societies who are distracted from exploring and utilizing the human and environmental resources within them. Hence, they seek to invade other societies who possess high-demand mineral resources for earning foreign exchange and finished goods.
African societies and nations must understand some football-derived principles about industrial development in the international economic game. Every imported finished good is like conceding a goal (own goal when you have the resources to produce the same commodity); every exported crude resource is like losing ball-possession, (fair-play when you are exporting the surplus); while the exportation of SURPLUS finished goods is the goal for every productive and organized society; winning the game of development is exporting more surplus finished goods than you import, and having good ball possession is importing or utilizing more raw materials than you export. African societies must form inter-African resource trade teams for their semi-processed resources among themselves, otherwise they will continue begging for international aids.
To form production teams, African societies must agree and reorganize their societies, for two cannot walk unless they agree.[2] This agreement is necessary because African nation states were not formed on the agreement of the different African cultures. Instead, they were formed by Europeans who used brutal force to cut and join unconsented kingdoms and communities.[3] The agreement will be directed towards discovering, managing and trading locally processed resources among African societies. This will lead to an increased interest in technological education and training towards modern methods for processing these resources. Organized intelligence is the new factor of production.[4]
Presently, like hypnotized maidens, some African nations try to outdo one another in auctioning their crude resources to foreign bidders. Some even rush to export staple food outside Africa when people in their locality have not eaten nor learnt processing those crude resources. Recently, a Nigerian House of Representative member, Hon. Mohammed Gudaji Kazaure from Jigawa, lamented on the futility of exporting yams to London, when many natives are yet to eat. Like other reasonable people, he maintained that export should never be prioritized at the expense of local sustenance.
Despite all these, a new standard is rising for Africans to develop their crude resources for Africa’s sustenance first, before foreign trade. Akwa-Ibom must produce and trade with Kogi and Osun, Anambra produce and trade with Kano and Taraba; Kano produce and trade with Lagos, Lagos must produce and trade with Ghana, Togo and Benin, and vice versa. Unless we collaborate to develop and trade our resources for higher productivity and sustenance, we may never appreciate the industrial value of our resources; we may never attain economic independence, and they will continue to call us “SHITHOLE COUNTRIES” and “FANTASTICALLY CORRUPT” people.
[1] Leonard Read, I Pencil, https://fee.org/resources/i-pencil-audio-pdf-and-html/
[2] Amos 3:3
[3] S. O. Oyedele, Federalism in Nigeria, In Issues in contemporary political economy of Nigeria, edited by Hassan A. Saliu. (Ilorin: T.A. Olayeri Publishers, 1999). P.57
[4] J.K. Galbraith, The New Industrial State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967) In Felix E. Ogbimi, Solution to Mass Unemployment in Nigeria (Ile-Ife: OAU Press, 2007) p.54
