A lot was said recently when Nigeria marked its 65th Independence Anniversary. In your view, how has Nigeria fared at 65?
Many people argue that if we had not received independence, if we had been under British rule, we would have fared better. Some even wonder if we got independence too early because they are now using some countries that got independence after us but seem to fare better. It seems as if you’ve left a child who is not mature enough to take care of himself.
It’s like a rich father who, by the time he died, had children who were just teenagers and so were not mature enough to understand a lot of things. This is unlike a man who was a billionaire and died when the children were already adults. So, there is an argument in that direction that, perhaps, we gained independence too early.
But there are many countries that got independence at the same time as we did but have done amazingly well. That brings us to the leadership question. We can give excuses up and down, but for me as an individual, I will say that, in the last 65 years, we may not be where we are supposed to be, but there are a lot of things to be thankful for. And I have my reasons for that.
Number one, we are thankful for life, and two, we are thankful that Nigeria still exists. You know, a lot of people were young and did not understand the civil war. But, for us, even now the trauma of that civil war is still around.
A lot of countries did not go through the kind of things that Nigeria has gone through – all the coups and other things that have happened, the communal clashes and killings in the last 20 years of insurgency – and we are still here.
We should be thankful for the level of development we have had, even though it could have been better, but we still should be thankful. Even though we are in a democracy, many people seem to have forgotten the military era.
The state of the economy provides a good parameter for measuring progress in any country. If you were to assess the Nigerian economy in the last 65 years, what would you say?
Economically, we have gone high. We have also gone low. We have even gone to the lowest low. I think we are beginning to climb out of the lowest low. So, we are still low, but we are coming out of the lowest low to come to the low. This is because we are looking at 50 to 65 years ago. Before we discovered oil, we had our cash crops. We had the groundnut pyramids, cocoa and palm oil, which were doing very well.
Our economy was top-notch because we were a productive economy then. But when we discovered oil, it brought in the curse of laziness, visionlessness and planlessness. And all the different things that we were doing that were producing for us were killed because we became a monolithic economy, focusing on only oil. We became lazy and complacent, and today, we are seeing the result of that.
Now, we have realised that by going to the lowest low, we need to be a productive country. And that’s why there is a lot going on now with reference to decentralising the issue of oil and going back to full-scale agriculture.
‘But when you talk of policy producing results, until there is something that touches a man in the marketplace, he does not know that there is a change. Somebody told me recently that, for all this they are saying about inflation going down, he’s not seeing it.’
In the last few years and going forward, we are going to see a lot in the area of cash crops; people are beginning to go into full-scale farming. That would help us become productive so that we can have something to export. Then, if you look at the economy, you will realise that in the last few years, the policy of the government has started producing results.
But when you talk of policy producing results, until there is something that touches a man in the marketplace, he does not know that there is a change. Somebody told me recently that, for all this they are saying about inflation going down, he’s not seeing it.
I said to him, let’s say a crate of eggs has gone from N400 to N6,000, and cement from N3,600 to almost N10,000. Now, when we say that inflation is going down, what we are saying is that the pace of increase has reduced. It is not that prices do not increase.
Recall that you needed two years to go before assessing President Bola Tinubu’s government. Now that the government has been in place for two years, how would you assess it?
President Bola Tinubu is an individual; he is the president of the country, and as the president, he is working with a group of people to steer the affairs of the country. They have set policies in place, and some of the policies they have put in place have started producing results. Irrespective of who is in government, there are other issues that we now have to look into. We look at corruption, security, and infrastructure.
For me, I will say to you clearly that the policies of the President Tinubu administration, based on the removal of subsidy, floating of the dollars, and regularisation of other things, have started producing results. That is very glaring for everyone to see, except you don’t want to be truthful to yourself.
That’s why I say our stock market is doing well, foreign direct investment is doing well, there is now more money for governors to do projects, and our currency is now stable. Also, remember the tax reform that will come in from January. The interest rate and inflation are going down. These are realities. So, we can now plan.
The negative aspects are waste, corruption, insecurity, and infrastructure deficit. In these areas, they have not done well. For most people on the streets, as far as I am concerned, everything we are seeing out there indicates that some people are above the law. We have a lot of people still walking around who should be sent to jail.
When do you think Nigerians will begin to expect the gains of these policies? That is, when will the gains begin to trickle down to the common man?
The gains will take a while to trickle down. We should just keep hope alive and continue to do what needs to be done. We should also be trusting that the government will be thinking of what needs to be done. During COVID-19, many people went through a crisis. But they would not have gone through a crisis if we had unlocked their pensions.
Do you know there are trillions of naira in pensions that are going to become useless as Nigeria goes forward? If they collect the money now, they know what they can do with it. But by the time the money is made available to them, it would have become useless because inflation would have eaten it up. There are a lot of things we can do to unlock a lot of things.
Recently, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has steadily cut down the interest rate by 50 basis points. How will this impact the economy?
Most of the time in an economy like Nigeria, where 75 per cent of the population is poor, many of these good news stories are indices. It is no news to the poor man because he will not feel it. In any economy, when you are coming up with a policy, you must think of its effect and come up with palliatives and systems to cushion the effects of the policy on the vulnerable population. We are talking about balancing life and livelihood.
Most times, our policies are not thought through. The major thing that people kicked against the petroleum subsidy removal was the way the President announced it. However, everybody from Atiku to Obi to Kwankwaso said they would remove the subsidy. So, the president did what was in the minds of everybody, but the way he did it created a problem that became too difficult to handle.
Dangote Refinery and the unions had a face-off recently. Thankfully, the government was able to contain it before it became a major crisis. Do you share the view in some quarters that giving Dangote Refinery a free hand will lead to a monopoly?
It is a disgrace that we are talking about Dangote having a monopoly when we have three or four refineries that were there before he came. So, where is the monopoly? It is a useless discussion. If the Port Harcourt, Kaduna, and Warri refineries were working, would you say it’s a monopoly?
It is because we are a bunch of unserious people that cannot manage our own that you now say that somebody who came to do his own is stopping you. Anybody making that kind of statement should feel stupid. If those three refineries were working, Dangote would have been one among others.
Dangote is not the only one building a refinery. Three others by other people will soon come up. When those three come up, will the monopoly argument still come up? Do you know that there are modular refineries that can be done in one year? Do you know that there are boys in the creeks refining oil every day? Why are we deceiving ourselves with all these stories?
If you say Dangote is a monopolist, how? Did he stop other ones from working? So it’s just an argument of lazy people. PENGASSAN and NUPENG should have a rethink. When, in the next 15 and 20 years, there is a change, who will they now go and fight? That is when they will realise they have been fighting the wrong battle. Fighting Dangote Refinery is not the right thing to do because you have refineries that would have been working. What stops all of them (the unions) from putting money together and building their own refinery in the country?
We are yet to witness transgenerational businesses and wealth like the Guinness and Coca-Cola of this world. How can a Nigerian business become transgenerational?
One of the reasons we don’t have trans-generational businesses is that the first generation is always a pioneering and generative generation; the second generation is a maintenance generation; the third generation becomes an entitled generation, and that becomes a problem. A speaker recently said that strong men create good times. And those good times create weak men. And those weak men will bring back hard times. So, you find out that every generation is actually supposed to be a generative generation. We actually have a lot of transgenerational businesses in Nigeria, but people are not telling their stories.
Because people are not telling their stories, we don’t know. We have Alabukun pain relievers. It still exists and is transgenerational, but nobody is talking about it because there is no structure or story around it. We also have some interstate transportation businesses that are transgenerational and still exist. We don’t tell our stories because some people give us wrong narratives of ourselves.