The Federal Government’s resort to borrowing all the time was recently justified by the Senate President, Dr. Ahmed Lawan who argued that given the state of the economy, borrowing remains the only source of revenue to the government to fund infrastructural projects. What are your thoughts on this?
I am not sure what informed the views of the Senate President so I can only respond in a limited way. I do not see borrowing as the only way out. The truth is that you can borrow up to a point and nobody will consider you creditworthy. So what do you do when no one will lend you money? Let’s leave that and look at a few options. One option which Dr. Ayo Teriba has been doing much to draw attention to is building a register of our assets and leveraging on those assets to attract foreign capital, even for funding budgets. Brazil, India and many others have relied significantly on this.
There is also the attraction of private capital of which there is significant accumulation as a result of globalization, though much of that capital is concentrated in a few hands as the French Economist, Thomas Piketty who has become a global leading authority on the subject, points out repeatedly. Much of the capital can flow in through Build Operate and Transfer, Build Operate and Own etc., schemes. In some countries, governments are even selling roads they long built to infrastructure companies to generate cash.
The road I used to travel along as a graduate student in the United States of America 40 years ago, from Indianapolis, in Indiana, to Bloomington, is now owned and tolled by an Australian bank. The Australians are market leaders in that area.
Years ago when the road to Nnewi was immotorable, a friend of mine became Commissioner for works in Anambra and I advised him that if they floated a bond among Nnewi people with deep pockets who would derive the double benefit of return on their investment and better roads to facilitate weekend visits, they could score a double run. But his military governor lacked the courage to try the suggestion.
With appropriate creativity, discipline and positioning, we can be the beautiful bride of these owners of capital and point them to impact investment into our infrastructure sector.
Government closure of land borders was amongst others, premised on the need to boost local production of goods, particularly agricultural products. Yet, food prices continue to rise. Did the government get it wrong?
First, I am on record as saying that the closing of land borders as we were joining the African Continental Free Trade Area, ACFTA, was a contradiction. Secondly, our experience with such border closures is that it just made Customs officers and law enforcement people in general, richer, at the expense of the misery of the poor. I think we should be looking for how to expand aggregation across borders to be more competitive in international trade.
Local production has not gone up as it should because we lack a clear national strategy, infrastructure and properly targeted finance and not what will be captured by the champions of state capture when Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, type interventions come on.
Security challenges that have made farms inaccessible in many parts of the country have been a major factor also. These have affected food prices and the desire to diversify the base of the economy. What I have prescribed for years is a latent comparative advantage based on limited industrial policy to create competitiveness on value-chains of factors endowments.
Every government since 1999 mouthed diversification of the economy. Why is this so difficult to do? Is the problem more at the policy level or at the implementation stage?
The diversification failure has been a problem of serious leadership. I had hoped that we would look across the country and pick endowments like Gum Arabic and dates in the Northwest; sesame seeds in the North-Central, cassava and plantain, in addition to traditional cash crops like rubber and oil palm in the South-South, cocoa in the South-West; and cotton in the North-East; create industrial parks and wholesale produce markets that will be aggregation centres and support hubs for local smallholder farmers.
Policies supporting the domination of certain value chains would build up manufacturing from value-added to the endowment and help create quality jobs for a rapidly growing population.
I have also urged that we rethink the local government areas concept and make them economic development areas where they can manage from education to local infrastructure with emphasis on local factor endowments and their value chains. A champion that can be held accountable should be responsible for each endowment.
You have been an active participant in the nation’s political space in the past one or more decades. What will you say of the nation’s democracy today?
Nigeria’s ‘democracy’ has left much to be desired but it has been better than the alternative. To run a democratic system with actors who are neither democrats nor citizens in the classic sense of citizenship can only bring you to the point of the poverty capital of the world, decaying infrastructure, collapsing economy, insecurity and lack of clarity about the future. Thankfully it is still at a fixable stage.
I have just published a book on this phenomenon of debating democracy. The title- ‘Why Not?:’ Citizenship, State Capture, Creping Fascism and the criminal hijack of politics in Nigeria.
The base of the problem is that we do not have political parties in Nigeria. What we have are machines for the machine politics of capturing power for the exercise of state capture aimed at systemic and systematic corruption of governmental apparatus for the material benefits of the powerful. When the first thing politicians ask you is if you have, as a candidate, budgeted money for the Police, the Army, INEC, etc. You know that from the get-go they do not want the people’s vote to account. It is an oxymoron therefore to expect the well-being of the citizen to be their top priority. I hope that the reforms being proposed can redeem the political landscape.
I have participated, to get politics to work for the people, but have met the worst of treachery, the triumph of what they call politics and primitive abuse of the agency function of being a representative. Unfortunately, the middle class fear the dignity of citizenship. We must aim to restore the dignity of man in Nigeria.
You have regularly spoken about the need for government to do more to secure Nigerians and their properties. And the government continues to assure Nigerians of its preparedness to rid the nation of banditry, terrorism, kidnapping, and similar vices. Are you optimistic about these assurances?
The impediments to effective security are legion. They include weaknesses in the constitution, the quality of people who have ascended to positions of leadership, and consciousness of the role of the state. Where policing works in the world, it is a local function. Local people know better the people in the community, including those who constitute a threat to security. They also have a better knowledge of the terrain, the landscape.
My US experience as a graduate student some 43 years ago reinforced the view. Bloomington Indiana where I first lived had armed campus police set up by the university. The city had its armed police, as did the county and state with its troopers and National Guard.
The current order has fared badly here. I don’t know the source of their confidence but I am hoping that involving stakeholders more in the collective responsibility to rid us of this state of insecurity should help matters.
2023 is gradually drawing closer. Are Nigerians expecting to see you on the ballot either at the governorship, parliamentary or Presidential level?
Running for its sake is not what I am about. I have a citizen’s duty to be involved lest I be part of the complicit middle I warn about. But I do not have to be on a ballot.
I do not know what I will do, what I know is what I will not do. It’s unlikely that I will run for governorship or serve as a Minister. At 65, I think I am getting a little old for those. I have also been quite ambivalent about the legislature as presently constructed. Change, which includes constitutional and electoral process reforms are important for people whose primary goal is service and the advance of the common good to take a bearing. What is most certain is that I am willing, able and determined to put the talents and gifts that God has been kind and generous to me with to work for a better, more prosperous and secure Nigeria.
So much has gone wrong in our past but we should look to the future and away from this sad yesterday. Acrimony from the bitterness of yesterday’s wrong consumes the possibilities of a greater future. Let yesterday’s men deal with the day before in an attitude of repentance and reconciliation but those determined to build have to ignore the rear-view mirror or take a glimpse at it only for finding pitfalls to avoid. The front windshield to the future is where we should be looking. I also plead the heart of Joseph to all. We ought to forgive yesterday’s betrayals the way Joseph forgave his brothers who sold him into slavery.
Do you nurse any fears that the 2023 elections might not hold as recently expressed by INEC?
I think the 2023 elections holding without some necessary reforms would make them a waste of time. The truth is that we need to begin again regarding elections in Nigeria. The process has been ridiculous and is sucking legitimacy out of the democratic order. INEC needs to get bolder like the South Korean electoral commission did if we are to save this order.
What is your assessment of the six years stewardship of President Muhammadu Buhari? How will you rate him on the planks of war against insurgency, anti-corruption and the economy?
Please do not steal my thunder (laughs)! I am hoping to do a book on that. For now, let me just point to a matter of some amazement. How President Muhammadu Buhari managed to bring together a coterie of people who do not like him and had expressed so privately and sometimes publicly and handed them the government, shutting out those who shared his views on fixing Nigeria is a puzzle I ponder daily. It is not a surprise that the hands of the clock were set back. The paradox of an anti-corruption government runs by some of the most corrupt people in public life beggars commonsense.
It is no surprise that foreign investors are flexing, capital flight from locals is ride and insecurity defines the times. I am also struck by the limited imagination and creativity in the regime in these trying times. He would have done much better with Sule Hamma and Buba Galadima.
Give us your thoughts on the nation’s leadership recruitment process?
Our leadership recruitment process is severely challenged. Bear in mind that leadership is not restricted to politics. We need leaders in business, civil society, the academic, public service, as well as public life. Values shape human progress and Nigeria has suffered a collapse of culture and redemption depends much on leadership example. Leadership recruitment platforms like political parties must be open, transparent and purpose-focused using the yardstick of service in the lives of the leader wannabes as a measure.
Presently, Nepotism trumps merit, cronyism devalues professionalism and traditions of corruption spur uncertainty. Nigeria is blessed with talented young people that can lead us to harvest a demographic dividend from our youth bulge. But the best needs to be recruited and mentored.