Ten days after the sack of Jim Obazee the erstwhile executive secretary of the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria, the mood across a section of Nigeria’s Christendom would appear far from assuaged; never mind that the ‘cheeky fellow’ who dared the ‘church’ establishment has been taken out; it seems there can be no appeasement – not after that sensational ‘stepping down’ by Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye, the revered leader of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, from the office of General Overseer in the early hours of January 7 – until all his acts in office are undone.
Clearly, if the boundless triumphalism and backslapping that greeted the news of his forced exit any reflection of the new-found power of a wing of Christendom, it would hardly surprise if the institution which deigns to entrench the culture of corporate governance into all facets of the nation’s public life is dismantled brick by brick.
At least, that much was said by Musa Asake, the cleric who currently doubles as the General Secretary of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in his first reaction to the sack last week.
“The sack of Jim is good riddance to bad rubbish. Anybody that wants to fight the church will find himself where he does not want.
“Jim got to the position by the grace of God but set out to probe and destroy the church of God. I spoke with him several times on this issue but he wouldn’t listen. He was going to take the church to what is worse than Armageddon”.
“That code should be thrown out completely because government should not interfere with the church. The church is a no-go zone for the government. Doing that has serious implications. If they attempt it, it will lead to confusion in the nation.”
The code in question of course is the National Code of Corporate Governance 2016 issued by the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria effective October 17, 2016. A three-part code covering the private, public and the not-for-profit sectors, it advertises its intentions as: “to develop the principles and practices of Corporate Governance applicable in Nigeria. Whereas the Code of Corporate Governance for the Private Sector is mandatory; that for Not-for-Profit entities is governed by the rule of “Comply or Justify non-compliance”; while that of the Public Sector is said to be awaiting executive directive from the Federal Government.
That regulation designed to entrench corporate governance in the nation’s public life has now been “suspended”.
Beyond what is now falsely presented as Jim Obazee versus The Church, or even FRC versus The Church; it is doubtful that many Nigerians can claim to understand what the issues at the heart of the brouhaha are. Simply because a section of the church is currently leading the charge, I have struggled to understand the basis of the unhelpful posturing which suggests that corporate governance is not just as an alien concept but a needless intrusion into the sacred terrain. Aside having no basis either in the scriptures, church traditions, or even recent church history, one only needs to refer at the template put in place by the early church to cast out any doubts about what ought to be the position of the church in the face of the raging contentions.
By the way, didn’t Apostle Paul say that the righteousness of the believer should surpass those of the Pharisees, the keepers of the law?
Taking the story as told in the book of Acts of Apostles Chapter 6: 1-4 as guide, it is clear that the early church not only anticipated the complexity that would inevitably attend to the quantum growth in the church, they actually left us a handy template to follow. I quote the entire four verses of chapter 6: 1 About this time, when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenists made a complaint against the Hebrews: in the daily distribution their own widows were being overlooked. 2 So the Twelve called a full meeting of the disciples and addressed them, ‘It would not be right for us to neglect the word of God so as to give out food; 3 you, brothers, must select from among yourselves seven men of good reputation, filled with the Spirit and with wisdom, to whom we can hand over this duty. 4 We ourselves will continue to devote ourselves to prayer and to the service of the word.’
Will the above not pass for a clear delineation of the priesthood from the mundane routines of administration? While that is self-regulation at its best, is there anything in the tradition and practices of the more established churches that suggest the kind of separation between the church and the state as being canvased by some?
Not in the age of terrorism and certainly not in an age of world without borders can that be contemplated. Certainly not when the churches are registered under the Corporate and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) – a factor that comes with its own obligations; not when the draw huge pool of funds from the public much of which are deployed not necessarily for not-for-profit ends.
Of course, I understand some of the anger about ‘term limits’ for General Overseers – a provision that is at best superfluous. Apart from the “comply or justify’ rule which render it nugatory, a careful reading of Section 9.2 which says “In the case of religious or cultural organisations, nothing in this code is intended to change the spiritual leadership and responsibilities of Founders, General Overseers, Pastors, Imams and Muslim Clerics, Presidents, Bishops, Apostles, Prophets, etc. which are distinguishable from purely corporate governance and management responsibilities and accountabilities of the entities” –should ordinarily dispel any fears about the intention of the regulation.
But then, this is Nigeria, a country where matters of faith are hardly amenable to reason.
Thank God Pastor Adeboye has taught by his force of personal example, not just the duty of obedience to the law, he has by so doing, displayed those virtues that sets him apart as a leader among leaders. It is something that the Nigerian church should be justly proud. In the long run, the Nigerian church can only be better for it.
Finally, I recall a book I read several years ago with the title – The man who could do no wrong written by an American Televangelist Charles E. Blair. To those canvassing the argument that matters of the church are best left for the celestial plane, it comes highly recommended. It is an account of a tragic but nonetheless riveting life story of a man who transformed Denver’s Calvary Temple into one of the largest non-denominational churches and presided over its growth for 50 years only to sink into the abyss after running foul of the law. I also invite them to take out time to read the story of the South Korean pastor, David Yonggi Cho, founder of the world’s largest Pentecostal congregation sentenced to three years in prison (suspended) for embezzling 13 billion won (US$12 million) in church funds.
You want to know my takeaway in all of these? First, is that neither the FRC nor its disgraced executive secretary is the awaited anti-Christ. Second is that the Nigerian church will be better served by greater openness and transparency. I speak here of the institution to which I am privileged to belong – by Grace.
Category: Sanya Oni
-
Not the anti-Christ
-
Not yet the magic year
Welcome to 2017. Talk of a year that is pregnant with expectations – a year like no other. Year 2016 may have been the year bookmakers fell flat in their predictions, the onset of the new year has again proven how far humanity is from giving up on the ancient art of future-telling. Trust many a Nigerian who never stepped in church from January to December; they made it just in time for the cross-over service not necessarily to offer their supplication but with an eye on what the prophets would declare. Like the ancient art of crystal-ball gazing, and considering that a good chunk of the predictions/prophecies of the past year went far off-target, one imagines that there would always be room for improvement. Anyway, that is a different story altogether.
For sure, the economy will dominate discourse this year. Again, it should not be hard to imagine. After being through a major recession – the worst in more than 20 years – brought on by low oil prices, it would seem inevitable. Today, the impact is felt across the board – the acceleration of inflation to an 11-year high of 18 percent, the continuing scarcity of forex in an atmosphere of unbridled demand; the record low trading of the naira at N490 to the dollar on the parallel market at the close of the year.
Of course, to the extent that the old problems of epileptic power supply, constrained industrial capacity from such factors as scarcity of forex, unstable macro-economic policies, inflation and record high unemployment, the economy would continue to take the centre-stage.
Only last week, I wrote about a future hung on faith for the simple reason that the odds facing us remain not only daunting but impregnable. Aside the unprecedented infrastructure gap which would ordinarily require massive investments to turn the corner – something that the treasury cannot underwrite, nor the leadership shown the inclination to find the means, the inherent defects in the current economic structure are such that makes the prospects of any real recovery forlorn. I wrote about the continuing absence of any substantial manufacturing capacity; the near total dependence of our manufacturing companies on forex market almost without exception, the unbridled capital flows which goes on under various guises – all of which flow directly from the failure backward integration. These forces would certainly persist without fail in 2017 and beyond. Unfortunately, so powerful are these forces holding the country down that the country appears helpless to do anything about them.
And so, it does not matter what the prophets claim to see on the crystal ball – this year cannot be the year of the turnaround. To see anything different is to imagine that the country will not have to spend some 40 percent of its forex to bring in fuel to keep our vehicles on the road; that it would somehow find the will to cut back on its $22 billion food import bill and the countless other billions spent on raw materials, machineries and other invisibles of trade.
We know that will not happen – at least in year 2017.
Clearly, if the moods in the land are any upbeat, it’s probably more out of our propensity to pray than anything that we have done. I need to qualify that: quite a number of things are being done not necessarily by the government. One of such is the ambitious Dangote Refineries and Petrochemical complex – a project whose completion would see the country refine 650,000 barrels of oil per day. The project unfortunately will not come on stream until the first quarter of 2019; in other words, the nightmare that fuel import has become, is not about to come to an end until two years’ time –if that is any consolation!
The tragedy of a country said to be pursuing the course of substantive change is that there’s yet, little evidence of commitment to science and engineering infrastructure – except when it suits officials to make a show of so-called industrial parks – that are no more than secondary school technical workshops.
Presently, a nation that one aspired to a world-class machine-tool industry has become a byword in wastefulness and missed opportunities. For our bolts and nuts, we run to Asia, Europe and wherever and this at huge cost of forex while the billions of dollars invested in the Nigerian Machine Tools Industries, Osogbo, Osun State lies in waste. Ever heard of a country going into automobile manufacture not having a machine tool industry? Or even ancillary industries on the basis of which it could anchor a strategy of backward integration? Just imagine that for something as ordinary as resins used in industrial packaging – a petrochemical product – we run to South-east Asia; for paper and paper products, we run to South Africa and India – that is after investing (wasting) billions of naira in three paper plants – Oku Iboku (newsprint for the newspaper industry); Iwopin (art paper for book publishing) and Jebba (for exercise books). Little wonder that a country so blessed has become a joke among nations.
Does anyone see why I laugh each time anyone talks about imminent recovery? Recovery from what? Do you recover what you never had?
Let’s be clear what the current business of recovery is all about. It can only mean one thing: an oil price rebound. Only in these parts does recovery equate oil price rebound. Tragic. For sure, a rebound would translate to our ability to import as many objects of our fancy as we want; in fact, it would guarantee that we can import toot-picks bathroom slippers and all manners of junks without bothering about forex availability or costs – the same old inexorable path to the valley!
We have certainly been on this path before. Our situation reminds of the story of the village layabout who thinks booze would drown his sorrows. For our luckless country, it would appear that another season of revelries is here. With peace somewhat returning to the Niger Delta and the bickering oil producers finally agreeing to present a common front, the season seems set upon us. Need proof? Wait until mid-year when those gleaming SUVs; when those ships bearing rice and other household cargoes announce the arrival of the season! And who says we can’t savour the goodies before the real boom comes?
Once again, happy new year! -
Future hung on faith
A week after the formal presentation of the 2017 budget by President Muhammadu Buhari, there has been no shortage of prognostications on what it represents for an economy that has endured two quarterly cycles of depression. Never mind that the 2016 budget, dressed in superlative, reflationary robes ended a huge disappointment;, already, all eyes are on the N7.298 trillion spend – a 20.4% top up on the 2016 estimates – tagged “Budget of Recovery and Growth”, a budget described as pivotal to the administration’s growth and recovery strategy, “a road map of policy actions and steps designed to bring the economy out of recession and to a path of steady growth and prosperity”.
Never one to fail to rue the past, the 2017 budget presentation was another occasion for the President to bemoan the years of locusts during which the country is said to have wasted our large foreign exchange reserves to import nearly everything we consume – from food, clothing, manufacturing inputs, fuel, to basic household items. How for the past 18 months of low oil prices, foreign exchange earnings plunged by about 60%, while our reserves eroded and our consumption declined as we could not import to meet our needs.
Yet the President could not be more upbeat: The “old Nigeria is slowly but surely disappearing and a new era is rising in which we grow what we eat and consume what we make” is on the horizon. He spoke of farmers “who today are experiencing bumper harvests”, the manufacturers already substituting imported goods for local materials, the car assembly companies who today are expanding to meet higher demand” leaving the rest to wonder which economy the President was talking about!
“We will”, the President further said, “CHANGE our habits and we will CHANGE Nigeria…we will increasingly grow and process our own food, we will manufacture what we can and refine our own petroleum products. We will buy ‘Made in Nigeria’ goods. We will encourage garment manufacturing and Nigerian designers, tailors and fashion retailers. We will patronize local entrepreneurs. We will promote the manufacturing powerhouses in Aba, Calabar, Kaduna, Kano, Lagos, Nnewi, Onitsha, and Ota. From light manufacturing to cement production and petrochemicals, our objective is to make Nigeria a new manufacturing hub”.
While the President’s unbridled optimism is perhaps understandable if barely comprehensible, in vain has yours truly sought to find the concrete pillars on which his rather exaggerated expectations are to be erected. Surely, it cannot be the size of the budget which although bigger than last year’s in numerical terms is in fact smaller in real value terms. Certainly not the industrial sector – a sector that remains anemic from the stifling policies of successive administration; or oil sector, where although the signs would appear to indicate that the good times may be here sooner than later, there is nothing as yet, to suggest that the swing is over let alone the parting with the old ways other than the promise of being able to better finance our needs from the basic consumables to the exotica. And so it goes again that serious questions about the direction of the economy will have to wait – hard questions about our skewed industrial policy and, the imponderable lacuna as a result of which the entire industrial landscape is permanently hung on forex with a nary a prospect of backward integration; hard questions on a financial services sector unhinged – expressed in the predatory behaviours of operatives in the foreign exchange market; the preference by operators in the financial system for recycling of questionable so-called financial derivatives that are a little less than Ponzi schemes and other unconscionable activities that render them laws unto themselves. Nothing about the bloated bureaucracy and the associated overheads that continues to sap the nation’s vital juice; and nothing about the expensive tastes of our political operatives known to routinely demand sacrifice from the common folk. And yet the coming year is touted as one of redemption!
At a time like this, one could not but be reminded of the words in the holy writ to wit: Faith without works is dead! Whereas, the leadership of the country have just about enough faith to decree mountains out of existence, in reality, they have invested very little in tangible work to make things truly happen! Even if we grant hierarchs of the administration the illusion that things are beginning to look up, certain facts are at least incontrovertible.
The first is that the country remains effectively out of work! Minus the hawkers of all manners of currencies and their allies – the fat cats in the financial services sector who daily reap where they have not been known to sow, businesses, be they small, medium or big are in states best described as one of suspended animation. We know why. The country is a giant laboratory of self-help – everyone for self; no one for the collective.
Our financial houses would rather trade in money market instruments than lend to the productive sector. Banking top guns would rather trade off the careers of their operatives for their individual comforts hence the unending cycle of job cuts even when compensations for the top cream are on the rise.
The public sphere is in shambles. Public service is dead. Electricity supply is presently at its lowest ebb. Road infrastructure belongs in the past age. Railways are still no-starters. While our farmers have mercifully been spared the terrible cycle of crop failures – and so we celebrate little mercies – post-harvest losses continue to dampen any real prospects of the sector’s long-term sustainability.
The second is that the country does not even have any substantial manufacturing capacity to boast of. Now, has anyone quite figured out why our so-called manufacturing companies are permanently hung on forex market almost without exception? Today, many of them are known to source for forex to buy raw materials and equipment only to return to undergo the same ritual of Form M few months after. Does anyone worry let alone count the costs of the perennial capital flows?
Isn’t a shame that so-called blue-chip companies that have operated for more than 50 years which although cannot boast of 10 percent local raw material utilization continue to insist on being on the first charge on forex allocation? Whatever happened to their R&D units given the advantages which backward integration would ordinarily confer? Or is backward integration an exclusive preserve of affluent countries?
Again, I ask: do we really have an industrial policy?
How about a petrochemical complex on which a futuristic industrial strategy can be anchored? Has anyone in government yet figured it out given its centrality to any future industrial take-off? Why are we so unblest?
No wonder we grope on thinking that things would change. Now, we know what ‘change’ means: patching of few roads across the federation, building one or two dams, awarding all manners of contracts for all manners of purposes under the sun. Nothing about the fundamental reordering of the economic base that has not only ill-served but has yoked us to international capital.
Still think our problem is money? Wrong. Our problem is that those in government stopped thinking a long time ago. The result is the absence of a coherent strategy to get things moving and in the right direction.
Here’s wishing you Happy New Year in advance. -
This time last year
A couple of days from now, Christendom will roll out the drums to celebrate one of the most epochal days on its calendar – Christmas. For a good number of Nigerians, it’s time of reflections on a year arguably one of the most challenging in recent memory. No doubt, for the vast majority of Nigerians, describing the impending yuletide as bleak is probably an understatement. It’s like passing through a hell corridor. From the blue-chip forced to recalibrate operations in the terribly inclement operating environment; the small business bowled over by the asphyxiating monetary and fiscal policies to families forced to reset household priorities at a time of fast-shrinking incomes, there are just about enough tell-tales of a year better described as rough. Were Nigerians asked today to list their fears and concerns in the order of priority, it is predictable what the list will look like: Economy; Economy and Economy – in that order. Like it was in the beginning, everything stands – or falls apart – with the economy.
Talking about reflections, yours truly recalls that the same concerns ushered in last year’s Christmas. Indeed, so terrified by the relentless battering of the naira by the forces ranged against it, I wrote a piece published December 15, 2015 titled – Naira: What’s going on? Today, not only do I find the views expressed still relevant today, the reality, sadly is that things have gotten worse.
Here is what I wrote then. Enjoy.
“If the wailing of the business class has not reached the ears of the landlords of the villa, it must be due to either the impervious nature of the walls, or the pig-headedness of the dwellers of that rarefied abode of power. After months of shouting themselves hoarse about how much the stifling policies of the apex have come to hurt the real sector with no one pretending to have heard, the crunch may have finally come with the naira hitting the nadir trading at N260 to the greenback at the parallel market in the past week.
That development seems the closest sign to the troubling times that lie ahead, particularly in an in an economy which manufactures next to nothing and which exports only crude to finance its obsessively compulsive consumption habits. The exception perhaps would be Godwin Emefiele’s world of utopia where monetary policy comes close to doing nothing or where economic management is locked on autopilot!
Today, the naira is practically fixed at N197-N199 per dollar; it’s been so since Emefiele’s apex bank put the brakes on banks’ ability to buy foreign-exchange from autonomous sources, followed by its tightening of the noose on importers of some 40-odd items, ranging from toothpicks, glass to rice.
Several months on, the real sector complains of delay in the processing of Form M to import their raw materials and spares. The organised private sector, in particular cannot seem to make sense of what is going on. Businesses with outstanding settlement before the new policies commenced were particularly hardest hit with many unable to remit their due payments. Bills for collection, the facility which allows companies to ship in goods for weeks, months before paying back has dried up because of default arising from inability to transfer fund giving rise to credibility issues. In summary, very limited activities appear to be going on in the productive sector.
Meanwhile, the apex bank, like the Federal Government, insists on living in denial. And while the former swears by heaven that it has enough forex to finance all legitimate imports, virtually every sector of the economy complains of being ill-served by its current forex regime. The situation reminds me of the story of a surgeon who after a delicate operation pronounces the operation successful only that the patient had succumbed fatally to the knife! The surgeon, as you might imagine in this case is the CBN which insists that everything is fine; the patient of course is the economy currently reeling under the threat of extinction and with it the hordes of disparate players being criminalised essentially by the apex bank’s stifling monetary policies!
All of these – unfortunately – would hardly have mattered were the policies to be seen as delivering on their objectives. The reality is that this is far from being the case! One ready proof is the sinking naira – no thanks to the booming parallel market fostered by the CBN; the other is the constriction forced on the economy by lack of access to forex. The derivative is the parallel economy where no one can truly claim to be in charge.
Of course we know what the situation is at the moment. Despite the so-called restrictions put in place, our ever the smart Alec club of importers have practically made nonsense of it with their heavy patronage of the alternative but hugely expensive parallel market. Now, thanks to the piggy banks of rich Nigerians in Diaspora or the club of Nigerians with fat off-shore accounts, you can access all your forex requirements without having to go through any financial institution provided you are ready to pay premium. One financial sector operative actually told yours truly last week that these accounts – which at the moment appear inexhaustible despite its attendant risks – are available to settle all manners of foreign exchange transactions but only at rates far above that obtainable in the local parallel foreign exchange market! With daily reports of trafficking in Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) cards and with recent reports of young Nigerians swallowing foreign currencies, there appears to be no limits to the desperate measures being adopted by Nigerians to beat the CBN measures. Given the situation, would anyone still be talking about respite for the naira anytime soon?
Is that what we bargained for? Has anyone out there yet figured out how the measures will get our factories roaring back to life? Today, with barely $30 billion in reserves – just about enough to finance seven months of imports, and with oil prices hitting a new low over of $36 a barrel at the weekend, some levels of control of foreign exchange utilisation have become somewhat inevitable. But while I would go as far as to argue that a return to the ancien regime of mindless liberalisation is neither desirable nor wise, I would also make the point that the current foreign exchange regime cannot and should not be seen as an end in itself. If anything, the goal should be an economy that is less dependent on imports for its day to day requirements.
This is where the CBN ought to have taken the views of the organised private sector more seriously in the making of the controversial policy. Insularity, in the current situation, is neither unhelpful nor productive. I say this because the business class wear the shoes; hence they ought to know where it hurts the most. The truth is – the restrictions are simply not working as it ought to. Moreover, it seems to me that the challenge facing the economy isn’t so much about curbing the influx of foreign goods as it is about giving the local entrepreneur the muscle to produce those goods locally and more competitively. Thus far, it has not…”
That was exactly a year ago. The question is – has anything changed? You be the judge.
Merry Christmas to you, dear readers. -
ECOWAS’s sweet poison
African proverb goes the not-so-gentle wind that sets the pap seller’s nerve on the edge merely serves notice to the flour seller that the danger is right at the door. So also goes the saying about the proverbial bird perched precariously on the line: neither the rope nor the bird would know comfort in the ensuing asymmetrical relationship. These sayings came to my mind as I reflected on the increasingly testy relations between Big Brother Nigeria and its ECOWAS neighbours – more so, in the wake of new measures being pushed aggressively by the Nigerian government to deal with the debilitating economic crisis.
Today, if the myth has endured that the Nigerian economy somehow possesses an infinitely elastic capacity to withstand all manners of abuses without tipping over, the new dawn would not only suggest how hollow our pretenses about our status as an economic giant, but the fat lie that we can become all manner of things to all manner of interests without paying a huge price. For while it seems given that the Nigerian economy given its relative size only needs to cough for the economy of its neighbours to suffer fits, the assumption has probably held all along that the Big Brother– ever ready to play the brother’s keeper – will continue to carry on, no matter what.
Some people are no doubt in for a rude awakening. For even if we didn’t cast away pretenses about being the sub region’s beast of burden; or even pretend that our nationalist forces, still too subtle if not incoherent, are barely recognizable; clearly, the dimming prospects of an early recovery from the current recession makes such a nary proposition a nary one at this time. It is a natural law rooted in the quest for survival. I guess it’s the dawn of our economic nationalism.
In this, Nigerians only need to pay attention to developments at our border posts to appreciate the point being made. Let’s flashback to May 2013. Then, the Federal Government had slammed a ban of rice importation through the nation’s land borders. Having set 2015 as target date for local sufficiency in rice production after massive investment promotion in the sub sector, the government had rightly reasoned that the booming trade puts its plan into jeopardy.
That was more than three years ago. The route, as far as we know remains shut to rice importers. Three years after –no thanks to the ability of our nationals to cut corners but more importantly, our neighbours’ ready disposition to subvert our economy without any threat of sanctions, more vessels from Thailand with thousands of cargoes are today headed for Benin, Niger Republic, borders than those headed for the Lagos Port even when these consignments have Lagos, Port Harcourt and Kano as final destinations. In fact, only last week, Agriculture Minister, Audu Ogbeh would raise the alarm about some 571,000 metric tonnes of parboiled rice from Thailand arriving Benin Republic headed for the Nigerian market for, as you guessed – Christmas.
Need I talk about frozen poultry products – which although officially banned, are not only found in every nook and cranny of our markets but are already massed in warehouses along the borders waiting to be smuggled in. And all of this at a time our local producers are gasping for breath.
Now, if all goes according to the plan of Audu Ogbeh and company, the entire 571,000 metric tonnes of rice would not be coming into the country anytime soon – certainly not for this Christmas or the New Year festivities.
The same is also true of the other major item of trade – the used car business. Whereas our local ports are next to idle – no thanks to the impossible forex regime that have rendered importation a no-go, Nigerians have found attraction in the neighbouring ports ostensibly because shipping and duties are by far cheaper. Never mind the agreement which mandates Benin Customs to hand over their Nigerian-bound cargo to the Nigerian Customs for assessment. These are observed in the breach. Or the cost to the Nigerian treasury said to be hundreds of billions annually. As it appears, the chicks may have come to roost – the Big Brother seems to have had enough: effective January 2017, vehicle imports will no longer be allowed through the land borders. Once again, our pretence about getting our neighbour to behave responsibly has fallen flat.
The reality of course is that times are changing. At a time of shrinking exchequer, Nigeria obviously needs all the revenue from all legitimate sources. That’s not all. Its agriculture and industry needs all the protection that it can get from foreign invaders hiding under the ECOWAS protocol. Not only that, it struggles to deal with the situation in which its backyard has become a huge dump for all manners of imports.
I understand the old debate about the unfriendliness of our ports, the crippling bureaucracy and the mind-boggling corruption said to make doing business such hell and how this makes the neighbouring ports attractive. No doubt, there is a lot to be said of the need to streamline our port operations and procedures to make the more competitive and business friendly. After cycles of interminable reforms, they are legitimate arguments to make now and for all time.
At issue is whether these concerns should be allowed to obviate mounting concerns about duplicity of our ECOWAS neighbours, particularly when their activities are injurious to us. We must of course understand that none of these goods are produced in the sub region, which of course raises the unlikelihood of their ban being seen as a violation of the ECOWAS protocol on free movement of goods and services. Moreover, the idea that a supposedly friendly neighbour will deliberately set itself up as a transit camp for goods destined for a third party country in brazen violation of its own domestic policies would seem far beyond the pale of modern trade protocols. That, unfortunately is the terrible situation which the sub regional body has found itself.
And so what to do? Simple. The Big Brother may not have the money or muscle to build a Trumpean wall along its borders. What it must find is the will to enforce the rules governing trade with its neighbours. And this must come with a certain knowledge of costs of breaches being very steep. After all, the Holy Writ says that one should love one’s neighbours as – not more – than oneself. -
Of elite spat and the economy
Nothing epitomizes our tragedy as a nation than the latest squabble among the monetary elite over issues that would in normal times be deemed classified. For while I am well assured that these are no ordinary times, we must agree that it goes beyond the pale for an erstwhile number one banker to dare to hang the federal government and the monetary authorities out there in the merciless sun like the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II did at the the Savannah Centre for Diplomacy, Democracy and Development dialogue last Friday. Although never known to take prisoners, it was again vintage SLS in what is arguably the most emphatic put-down of the Buhari administration till date.
To be sure, that would not be the first time the monarch will be giving the federal government a hiding. Recall that the monarch had at the 15th meeting of the Joint Planning Board and National Council on Development Planning in Kano August 24 similarly took the Buhari-led federal government to the cleaners: “If you take a brand-new car and hand it over to a driver who doesn’t have a licence to drive it and you are involved in an accident, you can’t say you are surprised, unless you are some kind of an idiot…We should not just keep blaming the previous administration; we also made some mistakes in the current administration”.
However, whereas Nigerians may have lately heard such descriptions as “clueless” and “incompetent” in what has become the routine characterization of the administration; the monarch’s latest summation that “the problem of the current government is not having the right policies to fix the current economic woes” would appear to mark the final parting of ways between him and the Buhari administration, a final statement about his perception about those running the government. Here, it does not appear to matter whether the issue is the federal government’s 2017-19 borrowing plan which he insisted would not sail through, or the Central bank loose monetary management of which he accuses the latter of being only a little more than an appendage of a bumbling fiscal authorities, one observes, not just his barely disguised contempt for the judgment of those calling the shots but a disavowal of everything that the Buhari administration is doing to stop the downward slide in the economy.
“I can tell you for free, if the Senate today approves that we can borrow $30bn, honestly, no one will lend to us. It should be approved and I will like to see how you will go to the international market with an economy that has five exchange rates”, he says of the now controversial loan request.
Rather gloatingly, he would not hesitate to go for the apex bank’s underbelly: “CBN claims on the federal government now tops N4.7 trillion, equal to almost 50 per cent of the FGN’s total domestic debt… This is a clear violation of the Central Bank Act of 2007 (Section 38.2), which caps advances to the FGN at five per cent of last year’s revenues”. The country’s heavy indebtedness, he further claimed, has led into the situation in which out of every one naira made, 40 kobo of it goes to debt repayment and 60 kobo is left for salaries, health, education, power, and infrastructure.
That was Muhammadu Sanusi II at the SCDDD dialogue last week. Although the president’s spokesman and that of the apex bank have since issued separate statements denying the substance of the emir’s charges and accusation, it is expected that there will be no shortage of opinions on the matter in the coming days if not weeks over what smacks of the monarch’s indiscretion.
Was Sanusi in order? To start with, we must see something unusual in the revered monarch coming out as he did. Surely, the matter goes beyond stating the facts as he saw them; rather, it is about the exploitation of the revered office for a less than altruistic ends by an individual known to be given to exaggeration. Remember the erstwhile number one banker who could not even get his figures right before hitting the road to disclaim the other party only to be forced to eat the humble pie?
One had thought before now that mindless activism was incompatible with the revered institution of the monarchy, particularly when the occupant is an individual that has not only served at the highest policy levels but retains a measure of privileged access to the seat of power. Even permitting that his advice was shunned by hierarchs of the administration, would that suffice to take the administration to the laundry house? And who is making the judgment call? The lone individual who think he has all the answers as against a government that has the benefit of alternative viewpoints? And to what purposes? To force a change of direction or to needlessly antagonize the government? And who wins?
In the convoluted public space, Nigerians can permit themselves the luxury of which factions of the elite to support on the issue, there can be no debating the damage that such tactless interjection can do to the public cause. For while no one denies that the economy is in terrible shape; or that the therapies being applied by the managers are having their desired effects; and just as a lot has been said of the insularity of this administration, particularly its reluctance to be open to new ideas, the real issue really is whether what the nation deserves at the moment is an ‘all-knowing intellectual powerhouse’ firing all cylinders from outside of the cathedra of power. At this time, what we must worry over are contributions that are not only unhelpful but are clearly designed to maximally distract.
What alternative policies is Emir Sanusi offering? Nothing that the public is not already aware of. First, he is averse to debts. That is understandable. Unfortunately, he has not told us where the funds to finance the huge infrastructure gaps will come from. Are we to assume that this would also come from the nation’s reeling private sector? Secondly, he wants the CBN to let go of the naira. Yes, for the naira not only to find its value but to eliminate the multiple exchange rates. How that would address the current forex fetish, he does not tell. Or even crisis of management occasioned by the severe shortage of foreign currencies. Or the tribe of the currency speculators who have long mastered the art of shifting the goalposts at every whim? Easier, it appears to sell the mantra of a free floating naira than confront the delinquencies of the elite, the mind-boggling capital transfers which offer no tangible returns to the national economy, and the terribly short-sighted policies which have nursed the climate in which industries which ought to be sources of forex to the nation are themselves hung on the narrow forex market.
Surely, that is neither what the nation want nor desire..
-
Budget 2017: The coming firefight
“I am waiting for the 2017 budget to be brought to us in Council. Any sign of padding anywhere, I will remove it.”
That was President Muhammadu Buhari speaking to an audience of the Governance Support Group, GSG, at State House, Abuja last Friday. Recalling his sojourn in government as governor, oil minister, head of state, and chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) since 1975, he told his visitors: “never did I hear the word ‘padding’ till the 2016 Budget”. The newspapers would also report the President as remonstrating with unnamed parties said to be deliberately turning blind eyes to prevailing realities in the country: “They don’t want to reflect on the situation in which we are, economically. They want to live the same way; they simply want business as usual”.
That perhaps was the President’s way of serving notice that Budget 2017 would be different from that of 2016. Of course, not a few Nigerians would remember the many controversies which started shortly after it was presented to the National Assembly and which nearly aborted the entire exercise. Yours truly would recall that the original budget document presented in the full glare of national television would be declared missing days after, the handiwork of some sloppy officials at the executive branch, desperate to cover their incompetent asses!
The dust had barely settled when a group, described as ‘budget mafia’ allegedly smuggled some 6,000-odd items into the budget – ‘padding’ the expenditure estimates by N1.7 trillion. In the aftermath, the Presidency not only had to do a rework of the entire exercise but got the officials involved disciplined. Today, if the testimony of Abdulmumin Jibrin, the former chairman of the House of Representatives Committee has any grain of truth, the final copy signed into law by the President could not have been anything but a mangled job.
Today, if we discount the fact that the bungling executive has somehow managed to present a straight face in all of these to distraught Nigerians, more confounding is citizens’ indifference of face of the terrible performance outcomes of a document presented to them as embodying their quest for change. Little wonder the tolerability of the president’s play on the so-called padding.
But then, who remembers anything about Budget 2016. Few weeks ago, the National Assembly couldn’t get the executive to account for the performance of the 2016 Budget. Trust our lawmakers, the matter only came up because the Presidency accused them of stonewalling on the consideration of the Medium Term Expenditure framework documents presented to them since October. That was not before the lawmakers turned down the president’s request for a jumbo loan of nearly $30 billion over a three year period.
For now, no matter; Budget 2017 is here already.
Here is what matters: the economy is shrinking. Ten months after Buhari’s reflationary budget – a budget said to be unprecedented in the nation’s history, the economy, according to the National Bureau of Statistics reportedly shrunk again in the third quarter by 2.24 percent. In the quarter before, it contracted by 2.1 percent. No thanks to the administration’s fiscal policies, many more factories are closing than new start-ups are opening. Whereas manufacturers can’t get forex to buy, it is boom time for the so-called black market. Overall, the economy continues to dive.
A word on the semantics of ‘padding’. What is a budget? My understanding is that it is what the lawmakers pass as such and assented to by the executive. No doubt, the President reserves the right to withhold assent via a veto; the same way that the National Assembly retains the prerogative to override. Only in the context of the convoluted political cum institutional atmosphere in which the nation has found itself, would a sanctimonious President venture beyond the bully pulpit to the legislative arena. For while yours truly is wont to say that there are simply too many things wrong with our budgets, part of the reason virtually every Citizen Joe can claim to be an authority on the budgeting process is that it belongs to everybody and nobody! Has the bug hit the presidency too?
The budget is of course our problem. As we saw in the 2016 Budget imbroglio, the civil servants, as guilty as their masters in the political establishment in reducing the process to a farce. More than the politicians, they know where to insert the pork and the earmarks. Proof that they are masters of the game is to be found in the sprawling real estates in our state capitals and Abuja.
To be sure, the politicians, given to ostentation and conspicuous consumption, are in my view, very poor learners. You know when they are in town in their gleaming SUVs and other assorted vehicles in tow – riding dangerously through our crater-infested roads, threatening to run other road users out of the way! The civil servants, masters of the decoy, do theirs differently – always preferring to play Mr. Anonymous. They are the master class.
The problem with our lawmakers, as I see it, is their penchant to act the face of royalty – a privilege reserved for the executive branch. Many of us would rather indulge operatives in the executive branch living beyond the common herd than they would of the lawmaker.
I have said it before; the bigger problem is the executive branch. Beyond the annual ritual, what do we get? Excuses? We have heard them complain of inclement weather, funds, bureaucracy etc. as if these forces suddenly chanced upon us. In the end, we settle for a fraction of the value projected only to get back to the ritual of the next cycle of budget.
Back to President Buhari. Would the President agree that the budget instrument rendered only a little more than a piece of paper by a bunch of clueless operatives in the executive branch is less toxic than one filled with earmarks?
That, at least, is what the President appears to suggest to his audience last week. Isn’t it about time the executive began to remove the log in its eyes? -
Who defends the public interest?
Yours truly has in the past few days taken on a self-assigned task of finding the lesser evil between a clueless and indifferent government, one increasing known for its shocking lack of compassion, and a hopelessly inept service delivery sector that spends a good deal of time explaining why the job cannot be done than get on with it.
My reason, neither borne of serendipity nor brainwave was informed by separate but related events which not only exemplify the utter helplessness of the citizen when ill-treated by those expected to make life more bearable, but the complicity of the government.
You know the story of last week’s traffic snarl on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway. The harvest of deaths and destruction was supposed to be the climax of the daily agonies experienced by those unfortunate to ply the route, including those unfortunate to live along the corridor for nearly two months running. For the hordes of Nigerians forced to endure the daily rod of affliction inflicted by Julius Berger and the works ministry, the story of tears and sorrow must by now be mouthful. Nigerians, I guess, are expected to understand what is supposed to be a major surgery without anesthesia, one of the necessary sacrifices to reach Buhari’s Promised Land – yes, the dividends of their absentee government!
By the way, where else but in Nigeria would a construction company be allowed to shut a whole or part of a vital artery like the Lagos-Ibadan, probably the busiest on the continent without partnering with relevant stakeholders to deploy resources – men and material – to free up traffic and to guarantee the security of lives?
Truth is, it happens here only because no one thinks that Nigerians lives matter. How sad!
I move on to another tale – the poor service delivery culture currently threatening the power sector.
Early this year, my neighbourhood, like most in the country, was suddenly plunged into darkness. At the time, there was no guessing the culprit: the Niger Delta militants sworn to bring the nation’s economy to its knees amidst reports that they had successfully put out the Forcados Terminal gas pipeline – a facility that supplies 40 percent of the gas used in the power plants.
A high-powered visitation by no less than the Vice President two months after ended with the assurance that the facility would be fixed by May. And so began the waiting game. May came and went. Then June, July, August and September – with absolutely no improvement in power supply in the neighbourhood.
Convinced that the explanations would have to be sought outside of the general one about gas supply, the activist Community Development Association swung into action. Nearly two-score visits to the local Distribution Company, including a high-powered representation to the company’s management after, no one in the rank and file of the distribution company could be certain about what the problem was! Not the area controller who was obviously at the end of his tether or anyone among his team of engineers could locate the problem. In the end, the chief executive officer of the company could only offer platitudes.
Only last week did the company successfully punctuate the reign of darkness; and this came after the community’s reported plan to storm the corporate suites of the Disco this week. Trust the company; it returned the community to status quo ante hours after! Talk about a simple engineering problem in the hands of a sector famed for its efficiency enduring for more than six months!
I write here about Ikeja Disco. In truth, the story is no less true of the distribution companies in Lagos, Enugu, Ibadan, Port Harcourt, Yola and wherever where the tales continue to abound of unending frustrations in the hands of inept operators that have since run out of alibis. Where operators are not complaining of inability to recover debts owed, the electricity bulk trader is being crippled in the event of the discos not meeting up with their financial obligations. The result is an industry in jeopardy – short of something drastic happenning.
And so the question arises: where is the future in all of this?
At the moment, only the federal government can afford to pretend that the future is anything but dire. Only last weekend, the Managing Director of the Benin Electricity Distribution Company, Olufunke Osibodu, told Nigerians not to expect any improvement in the power sector in the next five years.
Her exact words: “We need to be ready as citizens also, to accept and live with the pain that we have to go through, and allow time as our friends. As Nigerians, often we are the ones that deceive our politicians. The politicians believe that the only way to go is to promise everything immediately possible. Promise that everything is possible today so that they can get elected. But when you see that it is not, so we want to give them time and use time as our friends.
“It is the same story for the power industry. When I tell my friends, that forget any improvement for the next five years, they are scared, but that is the truth. We need minimum of five years to invest before we see result”.
And then her parting shot “Because Nigerians are impatient, we start pushing our governments and they start reversing good things they have done in various ways. So we need to be more patient.”
Patience?
By the way, those were the very sentiments expressed by Babatunde Raji Fashola, Minister of Power, Works and Housing when he recently told those calling for the reversal of the power sector privatisation exercise to perish the thought.
Said the minister at the 5th European Union (EU)-Nigeria Business Forum: “The Federal Government will respect and uphold the contract it has been committed to and inherited from the past administration…If those calling for revisiting of the privatisation of the power sector meant to say improving the governance, performance and efficiency, then, I am here for that. If revisiting it will mean that Distribution Companies (DISCOs) should open up and investments should come in, I am for that. If it means that the entire power sector will become very efficient, I will support it. But, I will not support cancelling of the contracts we had with them”.
Like Osibodu, the minister obviously thinks our world will cave in without the inept investors: “If we revoke privatisation of the sector, investors will carry their bags and go, they will tell others that Nigeria is not reliable for investment”.
In vain did I find any remote reference by the minister to any fresh initiative by the operators to jumpstart the sector or even to address some of the lingering concerns that have stifled their operations. Neither did I detect a push by the government to commit them to a work plan to bring succor to the hapless electricity consumer in the shortest possible time.
A bungling service provider in serial breaches of MoUs, taking solace in a nebulous contract to escape sanctions; a minister, sworn to defend the public cause, invoking the letters of an agreement that is as good as void? Does anyone still see why some people say that the country is not serious? -
Lessons of Trump whitelash
Days after the phenomenal whitelash of November 8, I came across an article by Simon Jenkins in The Guardian of London. It was something of a prognosis of Trump presidency. Titled “Be Calm: trump is not the worst and won’t go unchallenged”, he had written: ‘This is not about sanitising the unthinkable. It is about adjusting to a new reality. Trump is not the worst candidate to become president. He has to beat Andrew Jackson, Warren Harding and Richard Nixon for that title. He is unknown and unqualified rather than proven to be incompetent’.
By no means a consolation to the throng out there who, unable to find any redeeming grace in the prospect of a Trump presidency have come to see it as the modern equivalent of Armageddon, rather, it sought to draw attention to the infinite power of the country’s institutions to rein in a wayward president. I guess the throng would include the allies of the world’s sole superpower, whose leaderships, assailed by his nativist instinct and jarring demagoguery, are forced to recalibrate their position in the wake of the emphatic victory of the individual who not only swore to make America great again but has promised “to bring our country back”. The exceptions of course would be the Nigel Farages and Marine Le Pens of this world whose far right positions are fast changing the face of European politics.
Howbeit, the reality is that the world is today stuck with a man who not only defied the books but broke every known rule in his journey to the White House. A man who proposed to ban Muslims – albeit temporarily – from entering the United States; an individual who derided Latinos, Africans and who promised to deport some 11 million illegal immigrants; who not only promised to scrap the Trans-Pacific Trade pact but to build a wall along the Mexican border – is now president-elect.
Need we say more? A man which Washington Post’s celebrated right-leaning columnist Charles Krauthammer once described as “authentic” but “unelectable”; of whom he had painted an unflattering character sketch days after he attacked the Gold Star family: “I used to think Trump was an 11-year-old, an undeveloped schoolyard bully. I was off by about 10 years. His needs are more primitive, an infantile hunger for approval and praise, a craving that can never be satisfied. He lives in a cocoon of solipsism where the world outside himself has value — indeed exists — only insofar as it sustains and inflates him…Most politicians seek approval. But Trump lives for the adoration. He doesn’t even try to hide it, boasting incessantly about his crowds, his standing ovations, his TV ratings, his poll numbers, his primary victories. The latter are most prized because they offer empirical evidence of how loved and admired he is…”
That is the newly elected leader of the so-called free world.
I have read Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter, his 100-day anchor designed to restore prosperity to America’s economy, security to communities, and honesty to government. Undoubtedly, the document which purports to speak to the primacy of America’s interest merely taps into the anger and deep frustrations of a class of Americans left behind by the forces of globalization. In the context of the anti-immigration sentiment sweeping through Europe and America, it seems the perfect setting for the toxic brew of isolationism championed by Brexiters and now Trump.
I don’t think it’s time for the world to mourn. There would be enough time in the coming months to bewail what happened to America. What the world should brace for at this time is a presidency that would be defined more by symbols than any real substance in the long run. For a good number of the voters who jumped on the Trump train which promise of the good life, it seems only a matter of time before they discover that the smooth-talking billionaire, who obviously thought it was chic to exude raw power, and who believed that it was a smart thing not to pay federal taxes, actually conned them.
There are however positive lessons to take from the Trump challenge. Topmost is his idea of putting his country America first. Never mind America’s claims about being the global policeman, Trump obviously understood that his charity should begin right from his front door. Obviously, if the president-elect thought little of the trade deals which, in his view, disadvantaged his country, he has practically no patience for the open trade promoted in the guise of globalization which has turned swathes of manufacturing complexes into abandoned warehouses while the country turns to China and Mexico for imports. A country like Nigeria whose leaders, apart from pretending to be more catholic than the Pope, are known to perennially whine over issues of trade to the extent that landscape which once boasted of vibrant manufacturing concerns have now become empty storehouses, it seems there is some lesson they can take here. I think one of the greatest tragedies of leadership on the continent is the penchant to pander to interests other than those of the electors. Again, our leaders could do with some basic lessons on how to connect with the people from the American president-elect.
Like in trade so it is with security. Trump for instance, would have NATO understand that the burden of security would henceforth be a shared one. To the Russians, he would rather find common cause rather than embark on adversarial moves that have proven to be quite often, needless and unhelpful. Thanks to Trump, it seems obvious now that the NATO security framework would have to be overhauled at some point. In a country where money and materials come before strategic thinking, our leaders could do with a page in the Trump manual to understand how to put the nation’s strategic interests first. It seems about time our leaders begin to properly articulate the nation’s interest in the sometimes complex matrix of global politics.
There is no better time than this, in my view, for the Nigerian government to reclaim our country back – for us.
-
The circus, all over again
Had the economy not shrunk to the lowest levels in the nation’s chequered history, Nigerians would, most probably have been entertained by the circus currently playing out between the Muhammadu Buhari-led federal executive and the National Assembly. For while Nigerians may be a boisterous, mirthful lot, there ought to be a limit to citizens’ forbearance in the context of the kindergarten governance that has become their lot.
Today makes it exactly two weeks since President Muhammadu Buhari forwarded a request to the National Assembly seeking its approval for his administration’s 2016-19 external borrowing plan of $29.960 billion to execute key infrastructural projects across the country. That by the way, is supposed is to represent the most spectacular shove by the administration to jump-start the economy said to be so ill-served by infrastructure that the limited economic activities still taking place qualify to be described as a miracle.
The funds, we were told, will fund targeted projects cutting across all sectors with special emphasis on infrastructure, agriculture, health, education, water supply, growth and employment generation. And then of course the administration’s flag-ship programmes in the area of poverty reduction, governance and financial management reforms.
You know the rest of the story.
Against all expectations, the Senate threw out the request last week – without debate. It turned out that the presidency – as usual – didn’t do its homework. The letter from the chief steward is said to have contained no detailed information about the loan. Moreover, a certain reference to an “attached” breakdown in “the first paragraph” of the letter would raise a red flag: Convinced that the reference could well have been a dummy since there was no attachment, the senators resolved to give the president a thumb down.
As if the omens are not bad enough, a similar storm would converge around the 2017 appropriation bill. A month ago, the President had forwarded the 2017-2019 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper to the National Assembly. With the National Assembly not forthcoming, the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udo Udoma, was quoted as blaming the lawmakers’ failure to attend to the documents as causing the delay in the laying of the Appropriation Bill before it.
Trust the exasperated Senate to immediately draw the sword.
Said the Senate leader, Ali Ndume at plenary last Thursday: “We received the MTEF on 30th of September instead of submitting it according to the law not later than the 1st of September. That is not even the problem. I have a copy (of the MTEF and FSP), I went through (it) and the copies have been circulated. I talked to some experts. Even in this chamber, we have people we can call experts…If you look at this document that they call the MTEF, it is empty; it is empty and it doesn’t contain anything. If you have nothing, how do you consider nothing?
“Going through (it) and knowing that it is empty, on October 19, I wrote to the Minister of Budget and National Planning…I stated, ‘To enable the Senate objectively to review the MTEF from a holistic fiscal perspective, we deem it necessary to invite you to a meeting to brief the leadership of the Senate on Tuesday, November 1.’ But the minister failed to turn up.
“Before then, I said, ‘You are requested to please send the following documents ahead of the meeting’, because that is what will make us to have something to consider. I said, ‘(a) the Medium-Term Development Plan (even a draft copy) upon which the 2017-2019 MTEF is founded;’ you know that is important.
“Secondly, I requested for a comprehensive report on the implementation of the 2016 budget (as of the third quarter, that is, September 30); that is also an important ingredient.”
Ndume would observe: “Up until now, there is no communication as to that (the requests).”
And so, miffed by the failure of the Budget and National Planning Minister to honour its invitation to explain the short comings of the MTEF and FSP documents, the Senate again resolved not consider the two documents because it was empty and lacked all the materials required of it by law to qualify it as MTEF and FSP.
If we worried before now about the antics of a hubristic legislature – one whose directing principles is self-help, it couldn’t be worse that the country is currently stuck with bumbling executive branch, a team clearly out of depth with the requirements of how modern governments run, sadly at a time the economy is faced with daunting challenges. If it seems any measure the depth of disaster on our hands, clearly inexplicable is the arrogant posturing of an arm of government, which lacking rigour and any sense of responsibility, has now elevated finger-pointing to an art.
Describing the situations as tragedy would pass for an understatement.
The truth however is that the drama has only just begun. If we had thought the nation was done with the nightmare of budget documents missing in transit, the topsy-turvy of an exercise whose final product was mangled to the point of rendering it of dubious provenance, we are again learning that nothing has changed in any shape or form about the annual ritual called budgeting. Even at that, there must be something spectacularly enervating in the antics of an administration that prefers drama over substance; an administration that has now made a habit of draping signature incompetence in the colours of patriotism. This is where the latest fire-fights and turf wars in the count-down to Budget 2017 is not only wearisome, it is one distraction Nigerians would gladly do without.
By the way, it is nearly three months since the administration gave hint of a need for emergency powers to stabilize the economy. That was to be the harbinger of the so-called “Emergency Economic Stabilisation Bill 2016”. While the text of the bill supposedly to be presented to the National Assembly on resumption from vacation September 12 would later be denied, hard to deny are the grim realities what gave it justification. In any case, that hierarchs of the administration chose fly the kite at the time would itself be indicative of how much it appreciates how extraordinary the times are. Nearly three months on, no prize for guessing what has happened: it’s all part of the drama.
With less than two months left of Fiscal 2016 to run its course, it is probably too much now to expect that the administration would get the papers right for Budget 2017. That is if anyone is still talking about the ‘impact’ of the 2016 ‘reflationary’ budget said to have been targeted at infrastructure renewal and boosting consumer spending. With every citizen currently engrossed in the corruption dog-fight, such concerns are now academic. As for the tribe of Nigerians still whining over matters of coherence in the administration’s economic policy or general thrust, isn’t it said that the end justifies the means?
And by the way, when did the ‘end’ cease to be what they say it is?