On July 1, 2023, cooperative movements, administrators, coop-federations, cooperators and other stakeholders worldwide will celebrate the International Day of Cooperatives (IDC). Marked since 1923, the 101th Day and the 29th to be recognised by the United Nations (UN), this years’s celebration is wrapped around Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with the slogan, Cooperatives for Sustainable Development. According to the information emanating from the International Cooperatives Alliance (ICA), the year 2023 Cooperatives Day is packaged to show how the cooperative way of working, inspired by the cooperative values and principles, has the accomplishment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of its DNA. My thumbs up for this.
Since the 1844 revolt against perceived underhand dealings, miserable working conditions, low wages, and unaffordable prices of food and household goods, a revolt that led to the establishment of the first modern cooperative enterprise called the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society, workers, artisans and entrepreneurs, alike, have been organising themselves to breathe new lease of life into their socio-economic lives by forming cooperatives. These cooperative enterprises, globally, have also been deploying their power of numbers to mobilise scarce resources for their financial well-being and their sustainable economic activities. From credit and investment perspectives, cooperative movements have become major force and noteworthy players in the global economic landscape, both in wealth creation and alleviation of poverty in a better-organised and sustainable manner. They are birds with strong wings, flapping the wings and soaring unhindered.
Since year 2010 that I became one of the trainers of the International Labour Organisations Start and Improve Your Business programme (an enterprise development initiative of the international body) and working with MSMEs and cooperative societies, I have been able to see the Cooperative Movement in a new light, and better understand the potentials and capacity available to the Movement in playing frontal roles in wealth creation, job creation, economic transformation and improving living standards of a people in different economies. Besides the credit opportunities enjoyed by individual cooperative members, a look into the World Cooperative Monitor, an annual update and reports on the performances of the top 300 cooperative groups worldwide has shown, unarguably, that Cooperatives possess the capacity to transform economies. In the latest report released December 2022, that 300 cooperative groups (and even more) operating in different economies could post annual turnover above US$1 billion, while the top performing group could boast of above US$88.9 billion in turnover in an economic period decimated with ease by Covid pandemic, means that the capacity of private individuals deliver through cooperative enterprises, should not be overlooked when it comes to transforming their economies especially in the struggling ones where poverty is much pronounced.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO), a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that deals with the world of work and enterprise development (founded in 1919 under the Treaty of Versailles), through its Recommendation 193 (June 2002) also recognises the need to promote Cooperatives because of the Movements capacity in mobilizing resources, generating investments, and creation of jobs.
Coming home, Cooperative enterprises in Nigeria have been trying to fly with deformed wings by concentrating more on credits to members. The effect of poverty so prevalent has made cooperative societies the run-to platforms for economic and financial succour. For these cooperators, being able to obtain personal loans is the primary motivation for identification with and becoming members of cooperatives. However, as worthwhile as this motivation is, very few of the cooperators apply the loans for the productive reasons they give in getting the loans. Greater percentage of the loans are misapplied and spent on consumptions and inanities; thereby making prompt repayment very difficult and good part ending up becoming bad debts. The absolutism in this paragraph on one hand, comparatively one can describe cooperatives credits mandate as a fully-developed wing that is on a scale that is keeping the movement away from asphyxiation. But for the movement as a bird to fully tap into its potentials and fly high, a wing isn’t enough but two. In Nigeria, cooperatives are bedevilled with deformed investment wing. This has rendered the cooperatives to be pedestrian in their activities, and to be seen and regarded by the middle class and the middle income and high income groups (MIGs and HIGs) as platforms for only the poor, the LIGs. During the celebration of the international cooperative day in 2018, I was privileged to deliver a paper on the focus of the years celebration, ‘Sustainable Consumption and Production. Despite the euphoria that the delivered paper elicited among the coop leaders that attended the event, a follow-up for the implementation of action plan tabled on the day was a different ballgame. Almost all the coop leaders had gone back to their individualism and micro activities.
Though some cooperative societies are trying their fingers on investments, these efforts have remained on micro level, performing at a level bedevilled with huge costs, little or no returns and/or loss of funds. These abysmally near-to-the-ground investment performances are not unconnected with low investment financial intelligence and poor leadership capacity saturating the cooperatives. Since it is difficult to give what one doesn’t have, most of these cooperative leaders hardly could understand the gist whenever the idea of sustainable industrial investment scale through cooperation among cooperatives is broached. They are very contented with and at times will hire drums to celebrate abysmal performances during their AGMs; self-praising after they must have naively committed funds into toxic activities they are quick to point at as investments. These below par activities have further alienated investment- and financially-literate personalities from participation in existing cooperatives, and abstaining totally from organising to establish theirs, since the movement has more or less regarded the platform for the poor.
With the present economic reforms that the federal government of Nigeria has initiated, it is safe to say that the country is about to witness the emergence of a cooperative economy. With the subsidy removal, floating of the forex for a single market and other economic reforms, MSMEs need to recover from the initial shocks to respond with survival tactics suitable for good business. As things are, the socio-economic and political landscape will be witnessing soaring costs of products and services, higher inflation, and increasing costs of doing business. Also more funds will be required to start new businesses or to reposition existing ones. There will be higher incidence of profits migrating from micro and small enterprises to well-structured medium and large scale businesses and collaborative group enterprises. Technology will be reshaping how business is done, and informal businesses suffering greatly and collapsing. To tame the negative impacts of the disruptions, people must start to organise and take advantages that only scaling up can deliver. These readjustment will enthrone cooperative economy in Nigeria.
Existing cooperatives in Nigeria will need to rethink very fast, reorganise and embrace contemporary approach to cooperative activities as we currently witness in Europe, Americas and Asia. The elites, middle income and high income groups also need to join the movement to enable reinvention to technologically-driven cooperatives and unleashing of innovations to enable us bring up models that the existing traditional cooperatives can follow.
Ola Emmanuel is a business planning consultant and founder of Leacent Incorporated Trustees, a network of entrepreneurs and group of cooperatives. He works with a team of international consultants to conceptualise and plan agribusiness and housing projects. As a certified trainer authorised to use the International Labour Organisations enterprise development modules, he trains entrepreneurs and organises workshops and seminars for potential and practising entrepreneurs as well as business managers and cooperatives. He also speaks and facilitates at leadership and management workshops on invitation. His book, Business Planning Made Easy: Step by Step Guide On How To Turn Your Idea To Profitable Business is the latest of the books authored by him. Tel.: +234(0)9068602954 (call and sms), +234(0)8023257707 (whatsApp only).
