USA Africa Dialogue Series - Osuntokun: Views on Economic Summit

There is a cacophony of voices asking president Muhammadu Buhari to convoke a summit on the economy presumably to find a solution to the foreign exchange scarcity and the impecunious state of several of the federating states of the Nigerian Union. It seems the president is predisposed to just doing that . But exactly what will those invited be talking about that the averagely educated Nigerian cannot guess . Economics is not rocket science . We know what is wrong . Because of the collapse of the price of hydrocarbons ,the export of which our economy depends on ,our country is not earning as much as it used to earn . The fact is that our income has gone down by about 70 percent. To complicate matters our export of agricultural produce has also been affected by the fall in global price for them . China which was the driving force behind the global economy has slowed down and India another demographic and possible economic juggernaut is a story for the future . We import virtually everything including things that we do not need. Apart from spare parts ,automobiles ,medical equipment,drugs chemicals and educational materials we can shut down our ports and force ourselves to produce what we need while whatever foreign exchange we have is devoted to providing necessary infrastructure for our present and future development. Mazi Mbonu Ojike ,one of our early nationalists used to say we should boycott the boycottable and use whatever we produce. Whether we harken to this call now or in the future is a moot point . At the end we have to look inward to move our country forward . If we had saved well against a rainy day we would not have found ourselves in this pitiable situation. The mindless looting of the public treasury in recent times has made things worse.  The kind of looting we are being told ,happened is enough to depress any sane and patriotic Nigerian . The level of looting poses existential threat to this republic .  In China some of what happened in the recent past would have attracted ultimate punishment .There is no doubt about it . Some of the stories sound like stories from Arabian night and Alibaba and the forty thieves . People walk into the office of the National Security Adviser ,sign a piece of paper ,and walk out with a mandate to go to the CBN or banks where government has money to go and collect billions for some spurious work for government or the ruling party or for no work at all! Nigerian oil was sold without the treasury being credited with the proceeds. People have come out to say their accounts were credited with huge amount of money without their knowledge or without having performed any assignments for government .Billions if not trillions were shared among party bigwigs  as if people were playing the game of monopoly with the nation's money  .Government 's decision to bring the guilty parties to book had better been hastened  and speeded up before people lose their patience. Money taken from these economic saboteurs had better be deployed to pay the millions of Nigerian miserably awaiting the payment of their salaries  and pensions . The TSA must not be used to delay payment of salaries and pensions . The present situation of scarcity not only of foreign exchange but also scarcity of the Naira must not be allowed to drag on indefinitely. Instead of succumbing to the call for an economic summit government must continuously engage the public to apprise it of the situation. The president should broadcast to the nation about the dire state of the economy and what he is going to do about it . Nigerians are not fools . They know the president did not cause the present economic collapse and paralysis.People need to be told this to blunt the ridiculous allegation of the opposition that they did better while in office

What I expect government to do is to declare economic emergency and austerity by radically reducing the cost of governance. I know that there may be constitutional impediments to doing this but we just can not continue to do nothing . This will involve drastic cut in executive and legislative expenditure and even reduction of diplomatic missions abroad and merging of parastatals and universities and polytechnics at home .we may have to merge local governments and make parliament across board part time instead of the wasteful practice of the present Naira guzzling legislative houses at the Centre ,states and local governments  .If we do this ,it will send a message to all and sundry that these are unusual times requiring unusual measures and solutions. All these can be achieved through a declaration of economic emergency and economic siege.There must exist in the law books legal devices to make this happen. Some may argue that this can still be done through the economic pow-wow being suggested. Then it behooves government to put before the summit a well crafted agenda  instead of allowing the Nigerian mania of a useless talkfest to go on .This reminds me of the Bismarckian approach on national issues of not leaving the fate of the nation to verbal display and debates. What we need to do is clear . Cut down all the jargon ,cut down all frivolous importation of luxury goods , wines, champagne,rice, wheat,and All kinds of imported confectionaries . Let us eat for starters the much ballyhooed cassava bread. There is also nothing wrong in eating yams and other local staples.. While doing this we can then begin to produce all we need at home . Necessity is the mother of invention. The Chinese that we all admire today went through the same trajectory. For the sake of all black peoples  at home and in diaspora let us try and prove that the black man is not all talk and no action . Let us prove to the world that we can endure some pain in order to get the gain of sustainable development. A philosophy of providing what we need rather than what we want ought to be our new credo from this time onwards . If we do not take this route least travelled we will all end in the broad way leading to national ruin.

We must remind ourselves that our situation is not the worst of all possible worlds . We are neither Venezuela nor Libya!There is no need to panic . The problem we have is a global problem . We mustn't  lose sight of that fact . Thank God we still have a second chance to get things right . Indeed  in adversity we must have hope . This is not the hope of religious sermon but the hope that we can come out of the economic woods in which through our past action have put ourselves .if we are determined and if we are prepared to work hard , we can get out of this economic doldrums . Perhaps we can begin by looking at the 2020 economic plan put together as a blue print to make Nigeria one of the biggest twenty economies in the world . We can also look at other economic blue prints put together by previous governments instead of reinventing the wheel. If the civil servants cannot do this then government must look for willing and competent people in industry and the universities.  We must go back to agriculture as well as mechanize our mode of production . We need not put all hope on solid or hard minerals alone as some are wont to suggest . Of course we must diversify our economy to tap all sources of revenue . But our priority must be agriculture and industrialization.All this can go Pari passu  with the  current economic diplomacy embarked upon by the president, . But in all this, charity must begin at home .

Regards,

Regards,

Akinjde Osuntokun, Ph.D OON FNAL FHSN

Professor Emeritus of History and International Relations

Bapitan of Oyo