Can you be an Advocate for Fundamental Change in Nigeria?
Presented by Babatunde Sobanjo, PhD
At the 27th Annual Reunion of the 1989 set ('89ers) of Federal Government College, Warri
Held at the Hyatt Place, Sugarland, Texas
On
September 2, 2016
Here is the final medals table of the 2016 Olympic games:
It is no accident that the top 10 medal winning countries are the developed economies. What is responsible for their all round successes?
It is all about institution building and fierce protection of those institutions.
China came out of socialism to limited capitalism. It built government owned businesses, but they now operate under limited capitalist structures but with substantial state control. Any attempt to alter any of China's institutions outside of the ruling elites results in instant death. This is what I mean by the fierce protection of institutions.
In the US, the legislative process of changing institution is open, transparent and subject to public debates on C-SPAN before changes are considered.
In Nigeria, we build institutions poorly for the benefits of powerful interests and then we tinker with the institutions to increase or protect superlative interests. Regrettably, when these selfish manipulations happen, there is no public outcry either because of deliberate poor communication or inattention by the electorates often occasioned by ignorance or partisanship.
That explains why we are described as underdeveloped or to be politically correct, developing.
Discussing Nigeria should have outcomes; otherwise, they are exercises in futility. Apolitically, what's wrong with Nigeria? How can we fix it one chip at a time? Wouldn't that be useful? That is what I propose address today.
Nigerians in diaspora are more useful right now in the diaspora than they could be in Nigeria.
Many people in Nigeria would rather those of us in Diaspora return home if we are to have a say in the affairs of the country. But Nigerians in the diaspora have alternative views to the glass bottle views of those in the country. Therefore those in Diaspora need to play the roles of advocates on various issues. Through professional advocacy work, Nigeria may yet succeed in building new institutions and revamping old ones.
What is most striking to me is the failure of virtually all the institutions of governance in Nigeria. Unfortunately, the failure I see, that many of us see is not apparent to others in the country because we can analyse through various prisms not necessarily available to those in the country.
There is never any guarantee that policy will work or continue to attain its objective. What governments do is to undertake regular performance evaluation of policies to determine their effectiveness in achieving intended objectives. The results and recommendations from the evaluations provide early indications of what directions policies are headed. Recommendations are implemented promptly to terminate, amend, or otherwise enhance the effectiveness of the policies. In Nigeria, I do not believe the institutions exist to evaluate policies post or pre-implementation continually. If we such institutions exist and functioning, policy failures would be promptly identified which would trigger various reforms expeditiously at regular intervals not after several decades when things would have been degraded to the point of no return.
For example, it is a policy design failure that allows the sustenance of the immunity for governors in guaranteed in the Nigerian constitution. We copy America's presidential system of government and yet in America, as we speak, there are at least six former governors in prison. The immediate past governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, was convicted while still serving.
4 of the last nine governors or Illinois are either in jail or have been in jail
17 state governors in recent United States history have gone to jail.
The statistics for politicians as a whole is revealing.
Between 2010 and 2015 270 politicians at Federal, State and local governments have gone to jail for one crime or the other - mostly corruption.
This tells us that there is the Rule of Law. That is to say, NO BODY IS ABOVE THE LAW.
Corruption Redefined
In the history of the United States, it has successfully prosecuted and incarcerated several politicians. According to Transparency International's 2015 Corruption Perception Index, United States ranked 16th out of 167 countries and Nigeria, on the other hand, ranked 136th. If the United States can prosecute and imprison as many as 300 politicians for corruption in the past decade, one can only conclude that as Nigeria did not successfully jail any politician for corruption, then there is no corruption in Nigeria. President Jonathan was correct all along. Nigeria needs to redefine what we hitherto defined as corruption as "Economic Sabotage." Economic sabotage should be broadly defined as "Taking or converting for personal use, including the use of family and associates through any form of relationship, anything of value belonging to a Nigerian federal, state, or local government and its parastatals, a corporation engaged in economic activities in Nigeria and around the world." Economic sabotage should thus be a capital crime against Nigeria. I will address my prescriptive punishment later.
What Roles can You Play?
We need a healthy civil society to champion the changes that can reshape Nigeria. And that is where many of us can be relevant. We may not necessarily contest elective positions to contribute, but that would help. Many of us find the water too muddy.
I realised a long time ago that I should have attended Isale Eko Grammar School, Orile College or any of the roadside secondary schools. At Federal Government College Warri and many other fine secondary schools across Nigeria, we were trained to be the gentlemen and ladies to hold leadership positions. Those that attended roadside schools or those that did not attend any school but faked their certificates were trained to be street fighters. Come politics; we found ourselves too couth to match those guys that scale the perimeter fence of the National Assembly. We tremble before jankara guys like Fayose, and we are mesmerised by the brazen thievery of James Ibori, Diprie Alamasiagha, Joshua Dariye and several that are yet to be unmasked.
But, we may yet be able "fight back" through monitory political activism a.k.a civil society. In the meantime, under the present government major problems confront us whether we are in Diaspora or Nigeria.
Unemployment
According to the August 2016 report of the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS), in the second quarter of 2016 alone – in just three months
• 4.58 million Nigerians became unemployed.
• 2.6 million Nigerians entered the labour market between April, May and June of 2016.
• 1.46 million Nigerians became unemployed in the third quarter of 2015
• 518,102 became unemployed in the fourth quarter of 2015.
• 15.4 Million underemployed increased
Unemployment and underemployment were highest for persons between the ages of 15‐34. These are our youths.
Unemployment rate – between ages 15 – 24 24.0%
25 – 34 19.9%
Underemployment rate 15 - 24 34.2%
25 – 34 19.9%
In real terms, 17.6 million of our future leaders were either unemployed or underemployed in the second quarter of 2016.
These figures are shocking but not surprising. Following the announcement of these statistics by the NBS, the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun admitted that these are the worst possible times for Nigeria. The Minister believes we are in a recession. I beg to differ. We are indeed in a depression.
What is the difference between recession and depression and why is the distinction important? A recession is characterised as a period of negative economic growth for two consecutive quarters. In a recession, unemployment will rise, output fall and government borrowing increases.
Depression is a recession much more severe and long lasting. There is no agreed upon definition of depression. But, generally, a depression would have just one of the following characteristics.
• Decline in GDP for a prolonged period e.g. greater than two years.
• A drop in GDP of 10% or greater.
• Unemployment rate touching 20%
Teamsters Union President Dave Beck (1894-1993) defined the difference between recession and depression. "A recession is when your neighbour loses his job; a depression is when you lose yours."
The distinction between recession and depression is important because there are different strategies for dealing with either of them.
The bureau of statistics figures suggests we have been in a recession close to a year. It accelerated in the last two quarters. Put all the indicators and characteristics of a depression together; you will see a depression is on and unfortunately accelerating too.
It does not matter whether the so-called experts admit it. If it walks like a duck, quirks like a duck, it is not a cat; it is a duck. If you want to play with a kitten, get one. This one I'm seeing is a duck.
The Minister of Finance did not offer any strategy by the government to address the recession, even if I agree that recession is what it is. One thing is for sure; you can't put 45% of your population on any form of unemployment benefit. It is unrealistic and a nonstarter.
My Thesis
What this government needs to do, and many may disagree, is to get directly involved in the production side of our economy. The government should fully own farms that produce raw materials for government owned converters or manufacturers. The reason is simple: the government has scared away foreign investors, decimated local capital, and turned the hitherto entrepreneurs to beggars. Banks are comfortable round-tripping foreign exchange that they don't want to lend and risk loan default. If the venture to lend, no sane investor would accept the terms except those who intend to default on the loan ab initio.
Having run the proposed producers and manufacturers for some years, the structures created can be sold off to private investors like Nigerians who work in those establishments, but not to be sold to huge institutional investors or monopolies. By so doing, we would have attempted to reduce the wealth disparity by giving the workers a head start to own what might well become very successful commercial ventures.
But guess what, the World Bank and the IMF will object to such ideas. The monopolists will object because their aim is to build monopolies without ANY FORM of competition. Sadder still, this government believes only a private sector monopoly can save Nigeria.
If you still believe in private sector-driven recovery, look around you, from where are the private initiatives to come? But with sound policy frameworks, the government can have proven business administrators to run government business enterprises profitably.
In proffering this solution, I am making some assumption, and I have some expectations.
I assume that the policy will be well designed, with checks and balances, regular program and performance evaluations. Who should object to this system but brutal capitalists?
Last week, the Labor Party in the UK was talking about re-nationalizing the public infrastructure the country privatised in the 1970s. So, my thesis is not a crazy idea. If anyone loves Nigeria at this moment in time, with all the pillars of the country crumbling around us, this is the time to jettison all those Western capitalist ideologies. This is the time to take bold steps and go back to the drawing board to think critically because "we don miss road".
Only the government has the purse to rescue the situation as it is. The situation cannot be resolved by giving money away to a handful of unemployed youths.
I see things from the paradigm of institutional design. If our policies at the point of formation are not padded with self-interests, there is no reason to be afraid of limited socialism, which is the sociopolitical ideology behind my thesis. We have sunk below the level at which pure capitalism can help us.
We should eat the humble pie and regress a bit, only this time, when we begin to advance, we do so with both eyes opened, or as they say in Nigeria, we will shine our eyes. Now is the time, more than ever before, to have our homegrown policies on economic development. The Chicago, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and LSE models have failed to work in Nigeria. China came from pure communism to limited form of Capitalism to threaten to knock off the US from the top spot as the biggest economy in the world.
My point is, there's always another way and as a nation, we should not be afraid to travel new roads.
I see the policies of President Buhari's government as mere tactics. I don't see or hear any overarching strategy that can turn the tide. I believe we have sunk to a level where, structurally, the fracture in the economic fundamentals has become very severely degraded.
With the level of employment, we cannot spend our way out of the hole because that is the policy thrust, according to Babatunde Fashola who pronounced that contractors who were owed for close to 2 years were paid, and these contractors were expected to rehire the people they laid off. Businesses are created to make a profit. Why should any business be established or remain opened just to create or sustain jobs? Are they not to produce something at the end of the day? Are the products not to be sold? What is more, the contractors had accumulated bank interests that would be paid from the money the government released. Where is the incentive to re-hire unless you are giving juicy contracts out to the contractors? We need to be alert here. The body language may suggest the government could be awarding/rewarding contracts to select contractors without going through the mandatory bidding process. We may go from frying pan into the fire. When companies close down, resuscitating them is not simple or cheap.
The nation is bleeding badly. How do we stop the bleed?
There must be ongoing program evaluations that alert those in charge when things are not going according to plans. I am not sure this form of program evaluation exists. If it does, it should be under the purview of Nigeria's Supreme Audit Institution. The Office of the Auditor-General for the Federation (OAuGF) should publish the reports of its engagements for Nigerians to read and make sense of them. The website of the OAuGF indicates it performs "Programmes & Performance Audit" but there are no reports of such audits on its website. We do not know what programs have been evaluated and what the results and recommendations are from the audits. Best practice for Supreme Audit Institutions is to publish the reports of individual audits without any form of restriction to access such reports.
Assumptions and Expectations
• I assume we will step back and think of right policies and diligently implement them.
• I assume we will not implement policies in the same old way in favour of class, section or individual interests.
• I expect we will treat economic sabotage as a capital crime.
• I assume we will diligently and swiftly carry out any capital punishment.
• I expect anyone found guilty of economic sabotage will forfeit to the government and people of Nigeria all he or she ever owned.
• I expect everyone who benefits from the proceeds of economic sabotage indirectly as a spouse, children siblings and associates will forfeit to the government and people of Nigeria all they ever owned.
• I expect we will approach the new direction with determination to succeed as a nation, not as individuals.
• I assume the rule of law will prevail in all we do in implementing this policy.
There are alternative ways out of this morass. We only need to think them and be committed to our collective selves and destiny.
It is an indictment of the government that it did not foresee the problems of today. It did not foresee the consequences of its Foreign Exchange policy which is the central policy that tipped the economy over the edge. Why should operators of the black market determine the destiny of our nation? When announcing the foreign exchange policy, the CBN governor had assured Nigerians that bureau de change would be faced out. When? How? He did not say. We were hoodwinked. There has never been a better time for round tripping and bureau de change. I believe by now; the President would have replaced the CBN Governor. Why on earth is he still in charge of the economy?
What could trigger a change in the policy direction in this government? I wonder. I don't want to be dramatic, but if this government does not learn to feel the pulse of people on the streets of Nigeria, it will not recognise the inevitability of policy change.
Conclusion:
So I implore you to get up and act. Join or support civil society activism that questions government and makes government work for the people. You may not be on the streets to demand government accountability, but you can be engaged with the people who do. Find them and support them in any way you can.
I thank you.
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