Poverty of good mgt, a deadly virus – Expert

By Amaka Abayomi

A PROFESSOR of Economics at the University of Ibadan, Ademola Ariyo, has said that poverty of good management remains the most deadly virus that could afflict any nation.

Ariyo said this while delivering the first public lecture of the Faculty of Management Sciences, National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) in Lagos.

Themed ‘Budgeting and Nigeria’s Sustainable Development, Some Key Management Imperatives’, Ariyo said it explains why, despite abundance resource endowment, Nigeria currently wears the toga of paradox of ‘a rich nation, poor people’. He noted that the transmission mechanism is the enduring culture of budgeting mismanagement, which was being sustained and aggravated with the proverbial ‘oil curse’.

Ariyo said “We also believe that these problems amount to wages of two sets of ‘management sins’ that Nigeria has been committing persistently since its independence in 1960. The first set is what we called fundamental management sins, namely lack of collectively owned, long term national economic goal/interest. The other being lack of long term planning.

“These two led to the inevitable secondary management sins which are unproductive, organizing and coordinating functions, as well as poor performance monitoring, evaluation and reward functions.”

The don added that the persistence and severity of both categories of management sins are usually fueled and aggravated by the elites’ selfish exploitation of the peoples’ rich ethnic and religious diversity.

Stressing that it had become a tool for encouraging extractive behaviour in promoting ethnic, religious and sectional interest groups, Ariyo added that our national budgeting has been on the receiving end of these sins, hence the persistent chronic mismanagement of our abundant national resources.

Describing the lecture as apt, the Dean, Faculty of Management Sciences, NOUN, Dr. Timothy Ishola, said the lecture was an agenda setter, a challenge as well as a clarion call to government to recognise the need for a paradigm shift.

His words: “A shift that would introduce sound management principles and practices into the various implementation stages and processes of the national budget as a cardinal compass of the Federal Government change mantra. “It must be noted and indeed credited to the vice chancellor, NOUN, as a success story that the institution, as a temple of knowledge is today, the most consistent vanguard for policy reform and national rebirth.”

 

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