Category: Sanya Oni

Sanya Oni

Most Nigerians have probably heard it said, again and again, that the world will not remain the same after the current pandemic.

Indeed, such has been the vast destruction and disruption wrought by the tiny virus said to measure some twenty-something kilobases in length that even the advanced industrial economies have not in any realistic sense begun to figure out a fitting response to its varied challenges.

With the miracle vaccine still very much far from the horizon amidst the fog created by the obsession with serendipities by the likes of Donald Trump (with his hydroxychloroquine and disinfectant therapies), matched by an equally aggressive pushback by the scientific community; those dubbing our home-grown efforts as “cut and paste” would appear not only uncharitable but unfair in their characterisation the heroic efforts of Covid-19 managers at a difficult time.

However, with the lockdown now in the fourth week, and with no meaningful signs of the curve flattening, there has, naturally begun, the debate as to whether the recommended therapy isn’t in fact proving to be worse than the ailment.

For if the whole of idea of lockdown is to prevent the spread of the virus, Nigerians’ overall understanding of the need for compliance, as indeed of the other elements such as the need for social distancing to limit the spread, the requirement for isolation where infections have already taken place, treatment and the management of the entire gamut, has been to put it mildly, suspect.

What do we now know?

As they say, we know only in part. That part of course includes the 981 Nigerians tested in a country of 200 million; the 1000 patients confirmed positive of which some 31 have died by weekend. And just when Nigerians, merely by the slow pace of testing after the month-long lockdown, have begun to wonder aloud whether the folks at the NCDC may have been administering a wrong therapy, we are finally hearing – thanks to the private sector task force, Coalition Against Covid-19 (CACOVID) – that things are about to change.

That some 250,000 test kits, 10 new PCR machines and 150,000 extractor kits are either in or already on the way!

Which means that the country might, in the coming weeks, be able to ramp up testing in the final push to flatten the infection curve while waiting like the rest of the world, for the miracle vaccine which even the leading experts in the field have long concluded won’t even happen until mid-next year!

So, what happens in between?

That of course is the big question.

First, it seems unlikely that Nigerians would stomach any further extension of the lockdown – which is a shame really considering that the infection rate is yet to hit the so-called plateau, which means that the worse is still far from being behind us.

Call the situation one of a Catch -22; the few that are appreciative of the dilemma facing the government have grown weary of being kept behind the shutters when very little testing is actually going on; the other –  the majority –  mostly the urban poor, hemmed in by the biting hunger occasioned by the lockdown, have long framed their situation as one of an unenviable choice between death by corona virus or by hunger!

For the Buhari administration, getting Nigerians back to work – and urgently too – has since become a task that must be done!

Secondly, the scope and complexities of the current problems are such that require fresh thinking –away from the narrow prescriptive policies which although comes highly recommended by our so-called development partners and global financiers, have little practical relevance to our current situation.

Already, we are seeing changes in the world of work on a scale that would have been deemed inconceivable only a few months ago.

The same with the traditional webs of social relations as we knew it; these are being altered on a confounding scale. And all of these in addition to the unprecedented disruption of the global logistics and supply chain that has now thrown the global economy into turmoil.

From the raw materials or manufactured goods (including critical goods like pharmaceuticals and medicines) that cannot be delivered as a result of the lockdowns, to restrictions or outright stoppage of international air travel, the global shipping sector forced to cut back as a result of vessels being placed under quarantine before being allowed sail into the dock.

Imagine in our case – the lethal combination – a country already in the throes of multiple underlying conditions now caught up in the wave of Covid-19 global infestation!

Today, perhaps more than ever is the need to address in a comprehensive sense, those disparate elements which over time have not only compounded our vulnerabilities but have revealed our policy wonks as thinking less than strategically!

Has anybody bothered to think through the implications of another month-long global lockdown on domestic supplies, say for instance, of vital medicines or even industrial spares?

Since we are in a season of ‘cut and paste’, why not borrow from the example of the United States where the appointment of Navy Rear Admiral John Polowczyk, Pentagon’s top brass as logistics czar is not only making a world of difference to the work of the task force on corona virus pandemic, but also underscoring the imperative of harnessing supply chain a time the world has to contend with global shortages in vital raw materials and critical goods.

Again, has anyone yet figured out the potential crisis lying ahead in the event of failure to take urgent steps in this regard? And if I may ask, what would it take to come up with broad, multi-sectoral but coherent strategies to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on the economy?

The issue, to be sure, goes beyond the perennial song of acknowledging the difficulties; it is about clear-headed initiatives to clear the wreck and to get the economy up and running in the aftermath.

Finally, my colleague, Segun Ayobolu had in his column on Saturday addressed the matter quite succinctly.  While pressing the case for the relevance for Keynesianism at this time, he quoted the South African political scientist, Lwazi Siyabomga Lushba as making the point that “in stagnant economies afflicted by low levels of aggregate demand, governments can trigger the economy through expansionary economic, particularly fiscal and monetary policies.

This they can do by increasing government expenditure, cutting taxes or lowering interest rates, thus leaving consumers with more disposable income and encouraging borrowing for investment”.

Of course, the logic is simple: while heavy spending offers no guarantee that the country will sooner be out of trouble; not doing so will guarantee her a dark long night in recession.

You ask where the money will come from?

Since when has sovereignty meant anything less than the full right and power of a governing body over itself, without any interference from outside sources or bodies?

By Sanya Oni

If you are any confounded at the degree to which Godwin Emefiele has transformed the landscape of the central banking to the point of becoming a gbogbonse bank, you are probably not alone. In fact, if the depth of activism of the traditional conservative apex banking institution could be said to be troubling in the last four years or thereabout, dear reader, like yours truly, probably want to put it to the unusualness of the times. Like the gbogbonse potion which in Yoruba refers to a multi-therapy, multi-purpose, cure-all medicine designed for all and any ailment under the sun, such has been Emefiele’s daring in pushing the frontiers of developmentalism to limits that the typically conservative brood have since become breathless!

I say this, not in the pejorative sense but in the context of the challenging role that the apex bank is routinely called to play at a time like this. Again, I make this point in the sense of the age-long, or if you like, traditional complementarity between the monetary policy side of governance and fiscal policy side of things as against the current tide under which the fiscal authorities appear to have gone AWOL!

And if I may refresh my old textbook reference to monetary policy as involving matters of interest rate and, money supply and fiscal measures as involving matters of taxation and government spending to influence aggregate demand, the imperative of their working together to deliver the public good stands out among the early lessons we were taught to imbibe.

Now, think of a twin-engine aircraft with one of the engines effectively out of action and yet must fly in troubled weather; or if you may, recall the late MKO Abiola’s analogy of a man clapping with one hand? Only in those contexts do you get a sense of the troubling inertia that has been the lot of the vital segment that should ordinarily take the lead at a difficult time like this.

Anchor Borrowers programme. Nigeria Textile Intervention Fund. Nigeria Electricity Market Stabilisation Fund (NEMSF).  Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme. Real Sector Support Facility (RSSF). SME Credit Guarantee Scheme (SMECGS). SME Re-structuring and Refinancing Fund (SMERRF). Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL). Non-oil Export Stimulation Facility; Youth Innovative Entrepreneurship Development Programme (YIEDP). Export Credit Rediscounting and Refinancing Facility. There are in fact many more! As if each passing day and hence the ensuing challenge must come with a matching initiative, our CBN has over time grown to become a jack of all trades and – who knows- master of none or all!

And all of these supposedly in a financial market environment that is said to have come of age!

However, say what you may of each or any of them, not only are they well-meaning, they were conceived with specific purposes in mind. Never mind their fancy appellations which sometimes leaves one wondering whether the programmes were christened at some party headquarters, they have somehow managed to fill the void created by what is increasingly proving to be the absentee government! And as far as taking territories go, the apex bank, via the initiatives, has moved from being a passive banker to being an active promoter of the public good!

Still think the CBN is taking on too many tasks for its own good? That itself is open to debate. Or think the interventions are irrelevant? Think of the alternative given the lack-lustre economic management team that superintendent over the economy in the Buhari administration’s first term; imagine how pretty little has changed in the depth of the thinking in terms of the things that truly matter to the ordinary Nigerian even in the current term. In all, think of the snail-paced delivery in the context of the mounting problems of development.

Governance, surely cannot be merely about moaning and whining about problems, about what could have been but moving gingerly to solve them.

I don’t know where the original idea came from; it seems to me that Emefiele’s CBN has again stolen the thunder with its proposed $39 billion (N15 trillion) InfraCo fund, said to be a world-class infrastructure development vehicle, focused on Nigeria, to be managed by an independent infrastructure fund manager.

This newspaper reports that the fund, expected to take off in a year’s time, will support the federal government in building the transport infrastructure required to move agriculture products to processors, raw materials to factories, and finished goods to markets. In a country said to require investment of between $33 billion to $35 billion yearly over the next five years to close its infrastructure gap, it’s certainly a worthy step in the long journey to turn the infrastructure tide.

Don’t ask me whose business it is to “harness domestic and external resources to finance projects and ventures that may otherwise not be possible or profitable for the private sector to undertake…. or to channel state resources into projects and programmes that make the greatest contribution towards the realisation of long-term growth and development objectives….”

What I do know is that nature abhors vacuum. Indeed, to expect the CBN not to mount the driver’s seat when the federal executive council would rather play the coy mistress in the face of national stasis would ordinarily seem a dumb thing to do!

In any case, as they say in my village, it doesn’t matter who, between a man and woman, gets to kill a dangerous snake, what matters is that the snake gets killed in the end.

Even that itself raises the legitimate question of the legal basis of the CBN’s many interventions.

To be sure, I have no problems with the ‘independence’ of the apex bank when matters of monetary policy management is concerned. Indeed, they are not expected to be subject to any supervening authority in those areas. Or when some banks, for some reason or the other, require massive financial support to stay afloat. However, much as those spheres of independence are not open to debate, far less settled is the situation in which an unelected banker to the government, could with the stroke of the pen, cause billions of naira to be spent from its vaults to address issues outside of the scope of monetary system management.

To be sure, neither the president nor the governors are invested with powers to spend without authorisation; such powers being vested in the parliament and executed through the instrument of the appropriation law. Neither should apex bank governors be allowed such awesome powers without some form of institutional control. Not even the spectre of abdication can justify such routine exhibition of power without control!

Sanya Oni

When World Bank President David Malpass, earlier in the year, chided a trio of development banks for lending too quickly to heavily indebted countries, not a few would have mistaken the typically imperial ‘advisory’ for a friendly fire.

“We have a situation where other international financial institutions and to some extent development finance institutions as a whole, certainly the official export credit agencies, have a tendency to lend too quickly and to add to the debt problem of the countries.”

The Asian Development Bank, he said was “pushing billions of dollars” into a fiscally challenging situation in Pakistan while the African Development Bank was doing the same in Nigeria and South Africa.

Talk of the hegemon-undertaker’s penchant to swallow the analgesic for someone else’s migraine: “We have a very real problem of the IFIs themselves adding to the debt burden and, and there’s pressure then I think on the IMF to sort through it and look at the best interest for the country.”

That was in February. But then, that would not be the first time Africa’s premier development-finance power-house would be harangued by those who insist on carving the global financial architecture in their own image to do things their way or risk have the spanner thrown into its works!

It started sometime last year with a little matter of the board’s decision to increase the bank’ share capital which, the big powers – the so-called non-regionals would have none of– or in the very worst case, only on terms they consider agreeable.

And as if the proposal was not too audacious for their liking, Malabo, the Equatorial Guinea’s capital of all places, was chosen to host the annual meeting; and most ludicrously, if the baseless charge of Nigerianisation wouldn’t stick, why the bank’s bold and assertive president, Akinwumi Adesina, up for re-election, would seek to push to get this done before his re-election this year!

Of course, the bank has since moved on. First, it has since finalized on its capital increase, the largest in the its history with a capital base of $208 billion. As for Adesina’s second term, although not due until September, things appear to be very much on course, thanks to the endorsement of ECOWAS leaders at the 56th ordinary session of Heads of States and the African Union leadership.

In between, a petition penned by some disgruntled staff alleging sundry infractions by the AfDB president not only blazed forth, it was given voice by a French newspaper Le Monde.

This newspaper’s report titled Rumblings in Africa’s financial power-house published last Friday aptly captured the depth of the power play that threatens to turn the financial institution into a house of intrigue. And now thanks to the online newspaper The Cable, we now know of the dramatic U-turn by the same group that co-wrote the petition against Adesina.

To quote a portion of the group’s explosive letter: “We were members of the group called Group of Concerned Staff Members until we understood that we were being manipulated by a group of non-regional executive directors; not for the good governance of the African Development Bank but to discredit the candidacy of the current president for his re-election.”

Can there still be prize for guessing that the forces behind it are those who insist that the bank could only have peace on their terms?

Fortunately, those are not the kind of things to define the Adesina legacy at the bank. Rather, the real arena of battle is the development space where he’s increasingly proving to be light years ahead of his critics.

Here is a continent already in dire straits even before the Covid-19 pandemic. No thanks to the familiar plagues of weak industrial capacity and antediluvian infrastructure, a continent which is only beginning to play catchup in the most rudimentary elements of modernity, one whose polling is right down the line on social development indices is being asked to wait interminably for the masters of the coy game to perfect their game of dubiety. Think of a continent where basic items of manufacture are imported and where exports consist of basic raw materials being asked to wait until the others have had their fill before setting out.

Read Also: BREAKING news from Aso Villa, by Femi Adesina

Now with Covid-19 pandemic, experts reckon that Sub-Saharan Africa will be in the hole of between $35 billion to $100 billion from output decline and steep fall in commodity prices, especially oil. That certainly is a big hole to fix – in a continent where extant infrastructure gaps are already at record high levels.

Africans, nay Nigerians can therefore appreciate why the battle for the soul of the continental development bank led by Nigeria’s Adesina would be fierce. Malpass’ charge that Adesina’s AfDB has been “pushing billions of dollars” into fiscally challenging situations could therefore be seen in the context of that age-long but familiarly patronizing mindset that sees Africa’s gigantic challenges as neither serious nor particularly urgent.

It does explains why the global bank will deem a paltry $8.8 billion in loans and other assistance for the entire sub-Saharan Africa, a region of one billion people as inherently problematic while finding nothing amiss with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)’s lending of $13.5 billion to the Latin America and the Caribbean region of 644 million people.

But then, talk of of delinquency not being necessarily domiciled in Africa; consider for instance that the $475bn voted under the 2018 United States Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to purchase “trouble assets” from banks that had made stupid and reckless purchases is several multiples of the $8.8 billion loans voted for sub-Saharan Africa.

Consider also that the same US, the global economy powerhouse has no problem authorizing a $2 trillion lifeline to steady the economy in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic; yet some retrograde elements with the bank, notably, the non-regional members would baulk at COVID19 support facilities and the lifting of partial sanctions for countries such as Zimbabwe and Sudan in the wake of the on-going pandemic!

Thanks to the bold thinking at AfDB, we are finally beginning to see that the old-time fixation with corruption, debt and endless structural reforms are at best unhelpful minus a deliberate effort at upscaling national capacities. If anything, this is where Adesina and his AfDB team can, and have been making a world of difference.

The $10 billion facility support for African countries in the wake of the pandemic is certainly a good step in this direction; so also, is the $3 billion COVID19 social bond on the London Stock Exchange to help Africa deal with the economic and financial fallouts of the pandemic.

But then, these are only a tip of the iceberg of the battle on the continent’s underdevelopment still ahead. Surely, the bank under Adesina has demonstrated unmistakeably that it has so much to offer the continent; and now thanks to his focused leadership, we have better appreciation of the nuances of development finance.

By Sanya Oni

It is a season of conspiracy theories. Thanks to a germ said to be 100 times smaller than bacteria; the world, it seems, has finally persuaded itself that it is on to a new era very much unlike those before it! That is more than 120 years after the Russian scientist Dmitry I. Ivanovsky and his Dutch counterpart Martinus W. Beijerinck availed the scientific community, nay the world, of their groundbreaking work on virus.

Here is what Gates told CBS News at the 2017 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland some three years ago on the  then looming crisis: “The impact of a huge epidemic, like a flu epidemic, would be phenomenal because all the supply chains would break down. There’d be a lot of panic. Many of our systems would be overloaded”.

He would re-echo the same concerns at the Massachusetts Medical Society’s annual Shattuck Lecture a year later: “Given the continual emergence of new pathogens, the increasing risk of a bioterror attack, and how connected our world is through air travel, there is a significant probability of a large and lethal, modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.”

Prescience? Some would rather smell conspiracy.

Conspiracy or not; the world now knows better. With body counts to the virus barely short of the 10,000 mark in United States on Monday and with projection that thousands more will succumb to the virus, even the typically obdurate Donald J. Trump has been forced to eat the humble pie!

We can only wish, at least for humanity’s sake, that those with the wherewithal, somehow find the cure for a disease that has in the last three months infected 1.2 million people of which more than 70,000 has since died.

Now, if the world ever paid attention to the dire warnings of Billionaire Bill Gates spoken three years ago, or humanity’s lack of preparedness to handle it whenever it berths, isn’t it strange that some now do so only in the context of the sprawling narrative of a so-called digital implant or ‘digital certificates’ which some, insist, equals the Biblical mark of the beast to usher in the reign of the anti-Christ?

Understandably, the claims and counter-claims by activists and their allies on the different sides of the scientific community spectrum are certainly not about to end; not the boundless controversies spawned in the endless search for the vaccine in a world increasingly suspicious of the agenda of the Big-Pharm ingeniously packaged as scientific solution.

Talk of a rich season of conspiracy theories, last week, Britons woke up to another chapter – an alleged link between 5-G masts and the ravaging pandemic – with a number of masts brought down by obviously misguided activists based on the unproven claim of linkage between the two.

Here is how the The Guardian reported the destruction: “Three recent mobile phone mast fires around the UK are being investigated as possible arson, amid concerns that people are attacking telecoms infrastructure because of a conspiracy theory linking 5G technology to the spread of coronavirus”.

To Liverpool Mayor, Joe Anderson “The suggestion that Covid-19 is somehow linked to 5G is patently beyond the realms of credibility – utterly bizarre”.

An equally exasperated National Health Service (NHS) director Stephen Powis, would go further: “I’m absolutely outraged and disgusted that people would be taking action against the infrastructure we need to tackle this emergency”.

Expressing frustrations at the sheer ignorance of the people behind the destruction Mayor Anderson would note: “In Liverpool these masts are being upgraded and ironically the very people that are using this technology are the ones who are believing these theories. I was mildly threatened yesterday by someone telling me to take them down.

“The reality is there is huge pressure on the network at the moment with so many people at home and that’s why engineers are upgrading it. The idea that I have entered into some kind of Machiavellian plot with the government is ridiculous.”

And that is coming from the good old Britain!

As for Nigeria, some elements have somewhat resolved not only to put all of the elements of the theories together, but to run with it – taking care to blend harebrained ignorance with spurious eschatology, to deliver the most outlandish of cocktails – or is it cock-tales – on the link between the budding 5-G technology and the Covid-19 pandemic!

Leading the pack is Pastor Chris Oyakhilome, founder of Believers Love World, aka Christ Embassy. On his TV network recently, he claimed that the virus was created to popularize the 5G network across the world. Asserting without proof that many people are sick due to the 5G network, he claimed that COVID-19, 5G network and the vaccine soon to emerge, are a part of the devil’s schemes to connect the entire world with the mark of the beast!

And his authority? He points at Revelation Chapter 13!

“All these happenings”, he was further quoted as saying “are the plan of the antichrist for a new world order which include one-world government, one world religion and one world economy!”

Mercifully, not every Christian leader agrees. To Pastor Matthew Ashimolowo, Founder of Kingsway International Christian Centre, the man is talking nonsense. Warning Christians not to join Christian leaders in promoting conspiracy theories, he says the talk about a correlation between 5G and end-time signs is pure bunkum.

“If coronavirus is caused by 5G, why is it in places that does not have a 5G…It has always been the nature of Christian leaders to plant fear in their members whenever there was going to be a major world occurrence.

“The church”, in his view, “should be more concerned about preparing their members for the Second Coming of the Lord instead of condemning a major technological breakthrough.

“It’s fake news to associate 5G to coronavirus,” he said.

To this I say – well said!

As it is, Nigerians must have lost count of the endless tales being spun to force fear down the spines of the followers in what is increasingly, an unedifying instrument of mind-control by religious leaders.

Nigerians should have no problem locating the culprits should our masts suddenly come tumbling down – whenever the country deems fit to sign on to the cutting edge 5-G technology.

Here’s wishing my dear readers a solemn Easter celebration.

Sanya Oni

WITH the ravaging coronavirus pandemic displacing virtually other items on the news menu in recent time, it was little surprising that the development, even merely for its symbolism, passed, almost unreported: the introduction, earlier this month, of body cameras and breathalyzers into the state’s traffic management system by the Ifeanyi Okowa-led administration in Delta State. In a society where outlawry walks on all fours; where the boundaries between law-enforcement and law-breaking are increasingly ill-defined, yours truly considers the event as not only worthy of celebration but deserving of consideration by other agencies charged with traffic and security management.

Now, some might argue about the ranking of the initiative in the hierarchy of the state’s needs at this point in time. That, certainly is a matter of opinion. The point is that the good thinking behind it would be difficult to assail. In any case, most Nigerians would appear to have long appreciated the imperative of such simple but elegant devices in moderating the conduct of both state officials and the general public in testy moments. Whether it is in Lagos where worrisome numbers of traffic officials have been murdered in the line of duty after minor disagreements; or on the federal highways where the police and personnel of the Federal Road Safety Corps, acting like the lords of the Manor, routinely cast professionalism and decorum into the mud-pit; to aver that relations between motorists and traffic managers have not always been an easy one is to understate the depth of their mutual antipathy. Left to one, the other would rather be dead!

So why not deploy the simple and tested technology to ensure than the erring party in a traffic feud is called to account? Okowa’s Delta seems to have finally provided answers to the question.

You ask – why has the FRSC and the police in particular not thought about it? Or, would it strip the duo of their legendary insularity?

To be honest, yours truly does not pretend to have the answers!

Here is what Navy Commander Azubuike Idah (Rtd), the Director-General of the state traffic agency – DESTMA said of the devices: “the body camera acts as a deterrent for all drivers in the state who may be tempted to violate the traffic law; it provides documentary evidence during a traffic stop, and protects all parties involved against false accusations, assault and overzealous actions of DESTMA officers….”

The devices, he further noted will “reduce violent confrontations, reduce assaults of DESTMA officers, hold DESTMA officers accountable for their actions and increase public trust. It will also help us provide safe roads for all road users in Delta State while refining the attitudes of DESTMA officers when dealing with the general public.”

Note the emphasis on the two-way traffic of deterrence and public accountability!

As it appears, good thinking by the Okowa administration goes a long way back. Few months after its inception, the administration undertook a rather ambitious initiative in universal health care coverage for people living in the state. And the initiative: the state-supported health insurance programme which came by the Delta State Contributory Health Commission Bill signed into law in February 2016. Its by-product, the Delta State Contributory Health Commission (DSCHC) comes with the grand mission to “ensure access to quality healthcare and financial protection for all residents of Delta State using a healthcare financing mechanism structured through a mandatory pooling of cost and risk with fair utilization of all available resources and private sector participation that leads to an equitable distribution of healthcare across the state for an efficient healthcare service delivery”.

The big story here is that the individual, under the informal health plan, is only expected to pay a premium contribution of N7,000 for a period of one year to enjoy comprehensive health services.  And still talking of good thinking, the scheme has, according to reports, churned out 677,071 enrollees as at December 31, 2019.

Finally, I move to the educational sector – a sector which most Nigerians readily concede has long lost its bearing. Today, with most of our so-called tertiary institutions churning out products often described as unemployable, perhaps only few of our current occupants  government houses still live under any pretensions that the strictly unilineal  6-3-3-4 educational structure still holds much hopes for our teeming youths.

At least not in a state like Lagos where a robust agency – Lagos State Vocational Education Board, LASVEB – currently drives the vocational education segment and certainly not in Delta where a Ministry of Technical Education was created by the Okowa administration in 2019 to give impetus to vocational education.

Today, the ministry has six functional Technical Colleges in Agbor, Sapele, Ofagbe, Utagba-Ogbe, Ogor and Issele-Uku and six Vocational Education Centres in Asaba, Sapele, Ozoro, Agbarho, Bulu-Angiama and Otor-Owhe to superintend over. Hence,   the state is not only moving deftly to reskill the youths in the state for the emerging world of work, the leadership is at once driving a new paradigm in which “tech-preneurship”, as against the old but worn emphasis on certification would assume primacy.

Again, I call that brilliant thinking.

I close with the views of Matthew Lauer, Head, Strategy, Mercuria Energy Group on the subject – future of work. Writing in a recent World Economic Forum article, he notes: “The real challenge of the Fourth Industrial Revolution… isn’t the robots – it’s that we aren’t properly training humans for the available jobs”.

He went further to note that “while the outlook for jobs is positive, on average, 42% of skills requirements are expected to change by 2022 alone. Reskilling is one of the major necessities and challenges of our era.

“Many of these skills” he went on “can’t be learned in the university lecture hall. The skills required for the skilled job at the auto factory aren’t taught in the traditional university – and you can throw an intelligent, highly educated graduate with a business or math degree on a commodities trading floor, and there’s no guarantee they’ll succeed”.

“But if you put the intelligent, intuitive individual on the factory floor or trading floor to learn the complex supply chain and shadow the most skilled in the business, then you not only give them a well-paying job with growth potential, but you also give them the bespoke skillset to flourish in the role and the industry”.

He calls the model – apprenticeship. I agree.  In this, Governor Ifeanyi Okowa has blazed the trail for others to follow.

By Sanya Oni

Guess some Nigerians probably saw the appointment of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala into South Africa’s Economic Advisory Council more newsworthy than the looming fire threatening to consume their homesteads.  Who cares that South Africa, the country of Cyril Ramaphosa has again slipped into recession – the second in two years? What mattered, as far as many Nigerians were concerned, was that our Okonjo-Iweala (which some say has been denied recognition by her home government) has been drafted by the South Africans to help the country pull its chestnut out of the raging fire!

But then, it would not be entirely in our character if we are not to be found chasing rodents when our house is literally on fire. Only a few weeks back, our ever boisterous tribe of “hailers’ actually gloated at the prospects of an economy on firm rebound; as against the International Monetary Fund had projection of 2.1% in 2019, the gross domestic product actually grew by 2.27% in 2019 – according to the National Bureau of Statistics. In that, the NBS would note that: “The strong fourth quarter 2019 growth rate also represented the highest quarterly growth performance since the 2016 recession.”

All of that now belongs in the past. That the same economy is headed for trouble today is an understatement. As if we do not already have enough trouble mapping the potential impact of the Corona Virus on the economy, OPEC, the oil producing cartel was confronted with a stunning discount by the Saudis of between $6 to $8 on every barrel of their crude headed for Asia, the United States and Europe – the consequence of which the Benchmark Brent crude oil futures has tumbled by 30 per cent to below $34 per barrel – the steepest drop since the Gulf War in 1991. And this is nowhere the trouble still looming with OPEC’s leading oil producer, Saudi Arabia locked in oil-price war with the non-OPEC Russia over production cuts with the latter scoffing at the calls.

We do have a fair idea of what the immediate future bodes. Never mind the rather optimistic picture painted by the finance, budget and national planning minister, Zainab Ahmed, about oil production mitigating the adverse developments; the single issue now is how much of the items contained in the N10.59 trillion naira ($35bn) budget instrument could still be salvaged in the face of the massive cutback in revenue.  And we are not even talking of such parameters such as the lavish assumption of $57 per barrel of our crude, or even the N2.18 trillion ($7.2bn) deficit hole – which the government hopes would be financed through foreign and domestic borrowing – all of which has, quite frankly, rendered the 2020 budget unrealistic.

Soon enough, Nigerians would be required to prepare for another round of structural reforms a la belt-tightening. Trust our officials, critical projects would be gutted; for sure, nothing will happen to the massive gravy embedded in the service wide votes for which the bureaucracy is renown; or their legislative equivalence put out as running costs. Trust the executive branch to somehow take care of its own in the elegantly woven scam that our public finance has since become; the poor hapless workers in the bureaucracy are welcomed to another season of the gnashing of teeth!

That was how it was in the past – and will – most unfortunately – remain in the foreseeable future!

Nigeria is, after all, a place where strange things happen. For instance, only in Nigeria can a whopping $253 million (N91 billion) disappear from the excess crude account in a space of one month without the parliament or the states raising hell!

Remember the alarm raised in February at the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) that the strategic reserve account – the Excess Crude Account – went down from $324.968 million recorded on January 15 to $71.814 million by February! And the so-called rainy days have not yet set upon us! Has anyone yet raised question about the authorisation let alone the question of whether or not the amount in question was duly appropriated?

So what have we learnt since 2016 – the year the economy hit the bottom? Never mind that claims of achievement are oftentimes outlandish; that the administration scored some hits is agriculture is merely stating the obvious. Sure, the country has done well in the area of boosting agricultural output; however that it has done pretty little to optimise the nation’s food processing potentials renders the claims of sufficiency exaggerated. We may have shut our borders to give junks and other unwanted stuff from coming in; only that we have done pretty little to address the roots of the problem: the poor operating environment which renders our manufacturing companies non-starters in competitiveness.

So much for our claims of resilience, our economy continues to bleed from massive imports. From fuel to consumables. As a consequence, our currency – the naira has remained fragile – so fragile that Godwin Emefiele’s Central Bank has had to pump billions of dollars to keep it from hitting the bottom. With oil price now sub $40 a barrel, he will certainly need to do more and so Nigerians had better mount a vigil so Emefiele can find magic of keeping their beloved currency from a free fall!

One good thing – we wouldn’t have to worry about fuel subsidy while the current cycle lasts! The government should be making profit instead.

Think Armageddon is far-fetched? Think about it this way: picture what it costs to keep the war in the Northeast going – an expensive business; what the country requires to contain the banditry, kidnapping and other variants of anarchy across the entire federation.

Add to it what it would cost the nation to put the 13 million out of school kids back into the school system; put the economy that is barely growing at 2.2 per cent side by side with population growing annually at rate of 2.5 per cent. Only then can one begin to picture the bleak future which lies ahead. And we have not gotten around to talking about what it would cost to modernise our infrastructure – a critical pillar in our quest to create a sustainable future.

Still in doubt as to where the latest cycle of plunge in oil prices will take us?