The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sanya Oni

  • Naira: What’s going on?

    Naira: What’s going on?

    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 pigheadedness 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.

    And by the way, where is the wisdom in seeking to technically outlaw the importation of some 40 items while doing nothing about the capacity issues?

    Still want to know the surest path to saving the naira? How about getting the economy revving full throttle first? Trust me, Emefiele and company wouldn’t need to bother about how forex are allocated after. That seems simple, isn’t it?

  • Some observations on arms-gate

    Some observations on arms-gate

    Like some tiny bits of an intriguing puzzle, Nigerians may have only begun to make some sense of yet another chapter of the Jonathan-era malfeasance described as armsgate. As it were, armsgate would surely qualify as the biggest scandal in years. And that is saying a lot in a country where corruption is more or less a daily staple. I say this not necessarily because of the princely $2 billion-plus –said to have been plundered by PDP’s primitive gang under the cover of arms purchase, but on account of the multi-layered heist as well as the unprecedented violation of the nation’s financial protocols as reported.

    Admittedly, the story is only just unfolding. However, the elements and the plot, the twists and turns that have emerged thus far would seem the classic stuff of the Nigerian story. In a sense, the soap titled armsgate is actually the Nigerian story being re-told in a fresh way.

    For obvious reasons, I can only dwell on the general – rather than specifics – at this stage of the incredible story. To the extent that there are already different accounts of what has been discovered by the investigators, or even the details of what transpired at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commissions (EFCC) over the course of the past week, yours truly will only make some preliminary comments at this stage.

    How much does the former President Goodluck Jonathan know? That is no doubt the billion dollar question. At a conversational forum co-hosted by the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), United States, the former President had stated emphatically: “Where did the money come from? I did not award a contract of $2billion for procurement of weapons!”

    Now, the man at the eye of the storm, Sambo Dasuki says otherwise. In a statement issued last Wednesday, the former NSA stated that all contracts and accruing payments were made based on the approval of ex-President Jonathan: “Nigerians should note that all the services generated the types of equipment needed, sourced suppliers most times and after consideration by the Office of the NSA, the President will approve application for payment.”

    That was before the intervention by Raymond Dokpesi Jnr. – son of the media mogul, Raymond Dokpesi who was earlier picked on account of a N2.1 billion cash payment. While clarifying his father’s involvement in the scandal, the younger Dokpesi reportedly said: “We will like to make it abundantly clear that Dr. Dokpesi’s Daar Investment and Holdings Company Ltd, developed a proposal presented to the former President Goodluck Jonathan proposing a Multi Media Strategic Development Support Project to promote and project the achievements and highlight the challenges of his government whilst demystifying false information gleefully circulated by the propaganda machinery of the then opposition party”.

    That proposal, according to him was submitted to the former President in person by the older Dokpesi and his team in the presence of the former Vice President, Namadi Sambo, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. More significantly, he further claimed that the proposal was “thoroughly studied, approved and paid for by the Presidency through the office of the National Security Adviser” which “has multiple budgetary sub-heads including for communication and information”. Of course, he would also insist “that the proposal had absolutely nothing to do with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), nor the Presidential Campaign Council (PCC)”.

    Really? Anyway, that was Dokpesi Jnr.’s account.

    Now, I do not pretend to know how the Jonathan presidency worked but then the account, if true, would appear hardly flattering either to the prestige of the number one office or its occupant. The implications are simply mind-bending. By personally accepting the proposal from the DAAR team for whatever reasons, the President of course stands rightly accused of overtly subverting due process and the law under some phantom exigency. To imagine that we are not talking of some “chicken change” but a whopping sum of N2.1 billion – imagine also that this quantum expenditure is being alleged to have been passed off on the President’s coffee table – just like that!

    Call it what you like – I say it is the ultimate desecration of the exalted office. Again, that is if the account is true!

    But then, tale of the absurd does not even there. There are in fact other legs of the same riveting story. One says that some of the expenditures were charged to the account of the national oil corporation. Knowing how the former administration reduced the NNPC account into a piggy bank to cater for all manners of purposes under the sun, that could not have come to anyone as a surprise. As if that was not terrible enough, the official line given for moving the funds was that it was needed to prosecute the war in the North-east!  And to imagine that this was happening at a time when soldiers at the theatre of the battle openly complained of being starved of weapons and kits – and also a time President Jonathan was seeking approval for a $1 billion loan to prosecute the war!

    The other leg is the role of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). If Nigerians are any familiar with the Jonathan administration’s reduction of the disciplined science of economic management to a free-for-all regime of disparate actors united by greed, the role of the apex bank in fostering the regime’s criminal enterprise is, at least until now, little known. That unfortunately seems to have changed now going by the reports of the involvement of the apex banking institution in extensive money laundering activities and plain economic sabotage. Again, these remains what they are – allegations. Now, if it seems unimaginable that the apex bank will dispense with the extant controls in doing the bidding of hierarchs of the Jonathan administration, more unimaginable is that the officials went would go as far as breaking the nation laws in the process. While the EFCC will hopefully help to unravel these and many other allegations in due course, I must again make this preliminary comment about the myth of autonomy of the apex bank – erroneous but expansive interpretation of the concept to mean independence. Let me explain what I understand by the autonomy of the apex bank. For me it means the absolute discretion of the CBN to deploy monetary policy instruments to address specific challenges in the financial system. It does not and cannot by any stretch of imagination be taken as independence – a licence to murder – as we saw under former CBN Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi where an individual can, with the stroke of the pen authorise N620 billion no matter how good the cause is!  Isn’t the obverse side of the same coin the alleged withdrawal of several millions of dollars by the Jonathan administration from the CBN vault for PDP’s good causes?

    In closing, I must say that we have had a good week of media show of the scandal. But then, this, we all know is hardly enough. Indeed, the real battle is in the court-room. Outside the courts, very little matter really. EFCC has treated us to enough of the entertainment to last several lifetimes. Time to get down to the business of prosecution.

     

  • The Kogi conundrum

    The Kogi conundrum

    Only those unfamiliar with the ways of our political class would be surprised by the twists and turns of events following the death of Prince Abubakar Audu, the All Progressive Congress (APC) candidate in the November 21 Kogi State gubernatorial election. If our politicians have not been literally throwing punches and tearing at each other, such has been the outrageous show of crass opportunism and inventiveness bordering on delinquency that one is left wondering if indeed there is anything of a moral code underlying the supposedly beautiful vocation of politics.

    That lawyers too have been speaking – in tongues – is hardly surprising. Indeed, hearing some of our so-called erudite lawyers pronounce on the situation in Kogi as “constitutional crisis”, one gets the impression that law and commonsense live on opposite sides of the street! We must of course acknowledge the contributions of the handful few who insist that the law needed not be an ass or donkey!

    So much talk about crisis. Crisis? Where? We are nowhere near there, yet! If you ask me, I’ll say that what is currently going on in Kogi State is an opportunistic act by a bunch of over-excited political actors!  Guess what? The characters behind the charade in the Confluence State would have earned nominations for an Oscar if not for the fact that the destiny of an entire state is tied to their folly.

    Of course, what they want forgotten is that the people of Kogi State went to the polls on November 21; indeed, that the exercise returned 240,867 votes to the All Progressives Congress (APC) ticket of Audu and Abiodun Faleke and 199,514 votes for Idris Wada and Yomi Awoniyi, the candidates on the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) joint ticket hardly matters to them. Had they their way, these democrats of convenience will rather have the memories of the clear, indisputable choice made by Kogi electors on November 21 expunged from our heads.

    Here was an election that was practically concluded but which the electoral umpire – INEC and the losing party PDP prefers to see as hung or “inconclusive” on the dubious premise that some 41,300 votes were still outstanding – a situation that would later be compounded by the death of the principal of the APC joint ticket.

    Today, thanks to the political class’ infinite capacity to contrive crisis even when there is no need for one, and, no less, INEC’s inexplicable vacillation if not subterfuge in a matter that leaves no ambiguity, the confluence state is left to flounder under the combined weight of the malevolent opportunism of the PDP and the moral cowardice of the electoral body.

    Presently, we have a situation in which Governor Idris Wada and his PDP now insist that the votes cast for the Audu/Faleke ticket is technically extinguished! Some joke? In the same breathe, both have reportedly insisted that the votes cast for them – that is, the Wada/Awoniyi ticket must be deemed to be alive! In their warped reading of the law, the one half process was deemed abrogated – or to put in another way, the votes recorded for the winners could no longer be sustained because of the demise of one of actors in the joint ticket – and the other invested with life! That is the kind of reasoning to expect in a season suffused by opportunism and delinquency.

    I must say that we have INEC to thank at least for sparing us from what could have been a coup against the constitution. Insisting on the conclusion of the process no doubt represents an important step – a vital one at that – in the so-called imbroglio. I leave out the question of whether INEC acted in good faith – or even right when it halted a process that was as good as completed. Howbeit, it remains an important step at least to the extent that that it accords recognition to the inviolability of the votes already cast by the good people of Kogi.

    Despite the solidity and heroism of Kogi voters, the reality today is that the job which they began with all earnestness is not even nearly half done. While the position of INEC and the PDP would seem understandable even if not entirely excusable in the situation, what would seem unthinkable is that APC would be seen as pushing for a solution that prefers to leave out the clear choice made by the voters on November 21 in favour of a choice anointed by a conclave of party apparatchiks.

    This is where the party’s role not only comes across as stranger than fiction but can only be described as defying logic and commonsense. Here, I refer to the party’s strange inventiveness, when rather than find a running mate to Faleke in the supplementary poll and hence validate the indissolubility of the APC ticket as common sense would ordinarily dictate, opted for Yahaya Bello, Prince Audu’s runner-up in the APC governorship primary to fly the APC ticket –perhaps with or without Faleke! Imagine the choice thunderously made by the electors of Kogi now on the verge of being violently supplanted by the wishes of a conclave of party apparatchiks that promised change!

    The point must be made nonetheless that to the extent that Faleke is alive, he remains the undeniable symbol of the APC ticket. If it seems hard to find the basis for exhuming the primaries which produced Audu as candidate and Bello as runner up – which is now bandied as the basis for the latter’s endorsement as the party’s flag-bearer for Saturday’s supplementary election – it is even more bizarre that anyone would dare to suggest burying the Audu/Faleke joint ticket as APC seems desperate to do. I would argue in the same vein that any arrangement which precludes the erstwhile running mate to Audu playing a principal role ought to be seen as futile. Of course, if the current development says anything about the party’s sense of equity, justice and respect for the people of Kogi, it would seem to speak even more to its abhorrence for the discipline of orderly conduct and to its fidelity to moral principles.

    For both the APC and the nation, the days ahead promises to be interesting. At this time, there is no question about the APC losing the election given the limited number of votes expected on Saturday. Kogi unfortunately has merely provided the theatre for disparate elements in the party to act out fissiparous tendencies currently gnawing away at its soul. You ask if the party would remain the same after Saturday December 5? Now, that is a tough one to take a bet on.

     

  • Subsidy: Time to let go

    Subsidy: Time to let go

    The fuel queues are back – as if you didn’t know that already. The tragedy isn’t just that OPEC’s one-time sixth largest exporter of crude has again suffered another crushing relapse of the familiar plague of dry pumps – no thanks to the feud between fuel importers and the finance ministry – it’s like the nation has come under a spell of some ancestral curses!

    Trust Nigerians for their inventiveness, guess they have since moved on; while we are back to the same old wearisome arguments about whether or not the subsidy exists, our go-go nature appears to have gotten the better of us. Majority – call it the silent ones if you like – it would appear, could no longer be bothered with either the economics or even the semantics of fuel subsidies, they have since swallowed the full pill of deregulation – this time through the back door. Scarcity or not, I know for a fact that you could purchase fuel in some stations in Lagos without as much as breaking a sweat – so long as you are willing to part with N140 for a litre in the deregulated market downtown! Seems one moment when Nigerians wouldn’t mind to cut their noses – even if temporarily – to get going!

    Truly, the subject of fuel subsidy never ceases to fascinate. As in the round leather game of football, it is one subject that every Kasali, Chinedu and Usman would claim, with some air of certainty, some degree of knowledge if not expertise. You know why? Everybody is involved – from the jerry-can clutching vulcanizer to the barber next door; what about the welder or even the ubiquitous taxi driver all of whom the liquid gold has come to mean the difference between life and death?

    Yes, everyone is involved.

    Agreed, subsidy is a touchy subject. I have seen otherwise brilliant minds relapse into some wild, witless garbage when the subject is fuel subsidy. Many would rather be politically correct rather than risk ruffling feathers. And so argument persists that simply because oil is of nature’s finest gift to us, we can continue to dispense with the niceties of economics!

    To be sure, I have looked at the contending arguments; it seems to me that the difference between the most vociferous proponents of fuel subsidy removal and their opponents is actually more shadow than real substance! Forget what the marketers and their hordes of middlemen say; the truth is that they want the subsidy regime to continue; it is their surest route to unearned wealth. What about the bureaucrats, the men and women wielding awesome powers over our lives? It is their surest guarantee of raw, invisible power – without control. As one would imagine, the politicians want it for a different purpose; for them, it is a fascinating subject for politricking any day.

    Did I hear the “ogas at the top” describe the subsidy regime as “unsustainable”? What their lucre-addicted lordships meant to say is that they could do with more of freshly-minted wads in the piggy bank to do as they please.

    The irony of course is that a section of the hoi polloi actually believes the lie that the petrol and kerosene subsidy – together with its impregnable infrastructure of graft that services it – actually comes close to their share of the proverbial national cake! That for me is the most tragic part of the raging debate.

    Is there really a subsidy? I have heard the question over and over again. To the question I say – we wouldn’t be who we are if we are not found debating whether or not the weekend May 14 Platts reference price of $718.49 per metric tonne (that is N105.55 per litre) is real! Note that this is not yet reflective of distribution costs as well as the marketers’ margins!  With petrol price officially pegged at N87 per litre, the above should ordinarily solve the arithmetic.

    Next question – why can’t the federal government build new refineries? Or its variant – why can’t the government compel the International Companies (IOCs) to build refineries in the country? Or still, get the private sector to build new refineries? Good question – all of them!

    Let me proceed from the known to the unknown. Again, as if we don’t know, the reality is that OPEC’s leading crude oil exporter refines only a miniscule fraction of its domestic fuel needs. Daily requirement for petrol is said to range from 40-45 million litres daily of which the four refineries combined is said to deliver a miserable 10-15 percent. To bridge the gap, we rely on imports at deleterious costs to our foreign reserves and the larger national economy. From an ordinarily hefty subsidy bill of barely N250 billion in 2011; the nation has since the literally broken the banks – spending close to a trillion on kerosene and petrol alone annually!

    So why can’t the government build new refineries? The answer: the same reason the government is unable to bring back the national carrier; it’s the same argument about government’s inability to fix the multiplicity of our roads; the reason the power sector is considered as jinxed! I daresay here that the old cliché about the government not being good at business is true only to the extent that our government lacks both the means and the discipline to run a modern enterprise! The tiny Island country of Singapore is a living exception to that rule!

    As for getting the IOCs to build new refineries, it seems rather too easy to overlook the terrible effects of government’s meddlesomeness on the downstream sector. Does anyone still remember that the first refinery in the country was actually built not by government but by Shell? It seems aeons ago when the motorist in Lagos bought fuel at a different price from his compatriot in Maiduguri! That was when market ruled – long before our leaders pronounced that money was not our problem but how to spend it!

    To my main point. There comes a time in the life of a nation when citizens just have to make hard choices. The current season would appear such a time. The simple truth is that the nation cannot afford, even if it wants, to sustain the current regime of price support called subsidy. Something simply has to give. Moreover, I have stated elsewhere that the subsidy regime is unfair to the extent that the burden is regressive. In short, it is time to let go! Agreed, it is not the end; it’s one sure step on the path to dismantling the infrastructure of fraud currently sapping the nation’s vital juices. That done, with supporting policies, the goal of local refining might actually be closer than many would dare to imagine. I rise!

    The above was first published on May 19 this year.

    Kogi: The law can’t be an ass!

    Yours sincerely joins the rest of the good people of Kogi to mourn the unfortunate demise of Prince Abubakar Audu, the flamboyant All Progressives Congress candidate in weekend’s gubernatorial election. It seems one of the cruel ironies of life that the good people of Kogi are now left to rue over the possibilities in his planned return to the Lugard House complex 12 years after.

    I am not entirely surprised at the myths being spawned in the aftermath of his death. Since when have we stopped being superstitious?

    Or the permutations and the frenzy of varied interpretations as to what should be the way forward. It is not entirely surprising that emergency lawyers and road-side activists appear to have hijacked the debate in the full blown laissez-faire season of unreason! Reminds me of the African saying that all manners of knives are to be seen at the death of an elephant!

    In Kogi, the issue of the limits of the law comes to the fore. So is the majesty of public policy. Now, it seems so easy to forget that 21 parties contested in all with 42 candidates and their running mates – on the ballot. We are talking of an election that was practically concluded except in some odd 91 polling units spread accross 18 local government areas in which the entire number of registered voters is a mere 49,953 and which the voters had left no one in doubt about their choice! Yes, the All Progressives Congress of Prince Audu Abubakar scored 240,867 as against the Peoples Democratic Party of Idris Wada with 199,514 votes.

    And now because INEC deems fit to fulfil all righteousness in given that the difference between the leading candidate and the runner up is some 41,000 votes, some people have gone as far as to suggest that the exercise be aborted because the candidate of the leading party died mid-stream! Did the law not envisage this possibility when it made provision for running mates? And would anyone have dared to make the same argument if it was another candidate but the leading one that died?

    We have not reached the point where the law is deemed stupid – or have we?

     

     

  • Hell’s own highway

    Hell’s own highway

    If you suffered the harrowing experience of a 40 minutes drive that turned into nearly seven hours of sheer nightmare, it seems highly unlikely that you’ll be taken in by the extravagant photo-op session staged by Governor Ibikunle Amosun at the Warewa end of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway in the wee hours of Wednesday last week. Yes, I can report that the journey which began around 9 pm  – somewhere in Mushin and which at the very worst would take an hour and half to make, ended at 3.15 am the next day! And the reason? Canyon-sized craters that have taken residence at the Warewa end of the long bridge on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway!

    To the hordes of motorists – including yours truly – pinned down by the forces that spoke more to our pervasive institutional failure (certainly not some acts of nature or citizens’ famed indiscipline), puzzling would be an understatement to describe the ‘sympathy visit’ by the governor and a team which included his wife to that failed portion of the highway at the ungodly hour as widely reported.

    So much for the well-publicised visit, I can testify that the giant craters said to be the chief cause of the problem have not disappeared, nearly a week after. As for the heavy equipment deployed, they may have remained visible at the site, they are actively on the ‘sleep mode’ right up till the time of writing this as many a passers-by will readily testify. Yes, a giant, on-site billboard proclaims the ‘mercy intervention’ by the Ogun State Ministry of Works and Infrastructure, but then, there is really nothing to show for any activity. And to imagine that the entire paraphernalia of administration in Ogun State had only last week relocated to that very spot supposedly to ‘facilitate’ a routine task that a more public service-minded councillor in charge of works in Obafemi-Owode Local Government would have undertaken without the accompanying fuss!

    By the way – if it came to any real relief, the very next day after the highly publicized visit, it took yours truly more three hours to cover the same barely five kilometres stretch of the long bridge stretching from Berger to the journalists’ estate at Arepo! This time, the problem was a minor accident involving two trailers. With little space left for other motorists to manoeuvre, it soon became a familiar return to bedlam – no thanks to the legendary impotence of the men of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) – who could only ‘stand and stare’ in the absence of tools to work with! This time however, I was relatively luckier to have made it home in one piece at 1.30 am the next day! I know a lady who was stabbed in the arm after her handbag was seized by hoodlums who feigned to be helpers when her car broke down!

    The story of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway obviously mirrors the dysfunctions at the heart of the nation’s crisis of development. It explains why the job meant for everybody never gets done by anybody. That was the moral behind the suggestion last week by Governor Amosun that the state government was moved out of pity than duty to act! Of course, the governor is right!

    It explains why the country would expend billions on projects without as much as a thought to keeping it running. In the days of yore, we had the Public Works Department with their ubiquitous gangs that fixed manholes before they develop into killer-craters. I recall the road camps where those men congregated before the day’s job only to converge after a hard day’s job.  Today, what do we have? An Abuja headquartered Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA)  that rather than fix roads –would rather be found recruiting militias for politicians to rig elections – an agency that has lost its rationale!

    No less can be said of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) – that ubiquitous agency that has become a nuisance on the road than anything else. Today, not only is the FRSC ineffective as a road safety agency in any true sense, it is operationally incapacitated to undertake the most routine of safety maintenance on the highways. For lack of the basic equipment in search and rescue, our own one-time elite paramilitary commission now finds itself veering into non-operational issues ranging from checking vehicle particulars to drivers’ licensing to manufacture of licence plates – occasionally spending time on the chaotic highways to while away time!

    Are we not in trouble? At this time, the question that should bother everyone –is why a country so vast and so endowed and which aspires to move men into space cannot even begin the elementary task of taking care of little things? Everywhere you go across the federation, the story of our roads is the same. It is the story of neglect and abandonment. The other day, it was Senator Barnabas Gemade and his committee lamenting the state of the roads in the South-east. Yours truly on a visit to Jos, the Plateau State capital last week  could not imagine the state of the road from the airport to town! At a point, I thought I was in Mogadishu or some far-flung country in a state of war! It was, to put it mildly, terrible. The same adjectives, I guess, would describe the Jos-Abuja highway! I once wrote about the death corridor called Ilorin- Kabba highway where bands of Fulani marauders operate at will simply because the roads have become impassable.

    What we have at the moment is a national emergency. The challenge is as simple as finding a sustainable framework for road maintenance. Without that, all our efforts to transform the economy would come to naught. That is why other nations take road maintenance seriously! This is one thing that the Buhari administration would need to take seriously. And if I may suggest, there is no use pretending that the current framework which has failed would ever work. New thinking is what is required.

    As a final point, what would it take FERMA to work effectively? Is it that the nation is lacking in manpower? What special skills are needed to fix a broken road? Or is it that the nation does not have sufficient bitumen to fix the roads? Isn’t bitumen one of the derivatives of oil?  Or funds? What about the billions annually voted for that? Does anyone know? And does anyone care?

  • NCC versus MTN

    NCC versus MTN

    I know a few Nigerians who would declare that the regulatory hammer which fell on MTN was overkill. That would be perfectly understandable in an environment where regulators are permanently on sleep mode and where those who are paid to protect us from the routine infractions by service providers have just about enough reasons to look the other way while we are being mugged. That would also partly explain the shock – and perhaps the bewilderment –expressed by many at what they considered as an “impossible” fine slammed by the telecoms regulator on the telecommunications firm last week.

    Coming in the wake of a similar punitive fine on two of the nation’s leading banks – First Bank and UBA – both of which were slammed with N4.6 billion by the apex bank for running foul of the directive on the Treasury Single Account (TSA) – a new dawn for regulation may well be here already.

    By the standards of our much abused and devalued naira, the N1.04 trillion $5.2bn) involved is certainly a lot of money. Even if the environment were to be less inclement, a punitive fine of nearly a quarter of the entire federal budget would come close to the proverbial pound of flesh. I therefore appreciate some of the feelings being expressed on the matter – particularly the context in a clime where regulations have come to mean nothing. After all, MTN isn’t a small fry, but a prolific goose that not only spins off revenue into the national treasury by way of taxes by the second, a major source of livelihood to hundreds of thousands of Nigerians.  And so Nigeria, a country sorely in dire need of cash – particularly from Foreign Direct Investment cannot be seen to adopt such measures that would be perceived as “disincentive”!

    The saga reminds of the old African folklore about the tortoise and his in-law. You know the story of the tortoise’s in-law who tied him to a tree by the market square on the discovery that he stole a family ornament? Passers-by who saw him tied to the stake early in the morning gleefully chanted that it served him right. By evening, the same passers-by on their homeward journey – on seeing the tortoise still tied up – were no longer persuaded that the punishment was fair.  An in-law, they later reasoned, deserved better!

    The lesson here is that nothing – more so in our shifting terrain of morality – is given; today’s much maligned sinner – can in different set of circumstances – become the sinned against – all things being permanently unequal!

    In the case under reference, the hefty fine is supposed to be the big thing. Several questions – most of them merely variants of the same question – have done nothing else than to decry the regulatory action: ‘Where in the world is the telecom giant expected to raise that kind of money at this time?’ ‘Instead of the crippling fine, would it not better serve the public cause to ask them to deploy the fund to upgrade services?’

    Even otherwise highly informed commentators have recommended punishments considered less disruptive – or more bearable – this ostensibly flowing from the assumption that the regulatory action was arbitrary – a case of killing an ant with a sledge-hammer!

    It was as if no infractions took place! Or was it a case of witch-hunt?

    Let me confess that yours truly was also alarmed when I first heard the amount involved. The challenge for me however, was not so much about the sum involved, but whether NCC was acting in a manner as to suggest arbitrariness. The inability to give the regulator the benefit of the doubt seems to me the point where most of the commentators missed it. A quick check by yours truly would reveal the premises of the regulatory action: It is located in Section 19 of the SIM Registration Regulations 2011. That section, to be clear, specifies a fine of N200,000 per unregistered SIM; and with 5.2million MTN SIM found to be in breach of the regulation, it was simply a question of doing the tally! Yes, the sentencing not only fitted snugly with the violation, it was at sync with the regulation!

    So where is the ground for the so-called heavy-handedness?

    The heavy regulatory action, we are told by the NCC did not even come out of the blues.  On September 4, the chief of staff to the President reportedly hosted a high level meeting of telecom chief executives, the heads of the main security agencies – Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), the Department of State Security (DSS), Directorate of Military Intelligence, (DMI) and the NCC where the issue was exhaustively discussed. The context was the current security challenges particularly the issues of terrorism and kidnapping. There, the operators were duly informed that continued non-compliance with the directive to deactivate unregistered SIM cards would lead to the imposition of penalties or possible revocation of licences. They were to immediately reconcile the records of their deactivations against the list of invalid registrations earlier shared with operators by the NCC by September 7.

    Question therefore is – would MTN disagree that it was in breach of the regulation? More worrisome however is that the NCC insists that the latest incident, rather than being an isolated case, is merely one out of a generalised “pattern of non-compliance with regulatory directives”.

    I understand the temptation to bring extraneous issues into what is ordinarily a regulatory issue – particularly at this time when established law-breakers have been known to take shelter behind technicalities to escape the sanctions prescribed by law. We certainly know of the penchant by smart operators to mock our institutions given their traditionally tepid, weak-kneed approaches to enforcing regulations.

    If I may be clear: my problem is finding accommodation for an out-of-control operator without risking irreparable damage to our national interest. For while the finding of guilt may or may not matter to MTN, the issues, to the extent that they touch on the business of our national security is hardly one can be trifled with.

    So what to do? Ask MTN to go and sin no more? Would this not smack of an endorsement of blatant outlawry simply because big business is involved? How about procuring a lesser penalty to keep the golden goose alive as suggested by some? Would that not also be tantamount to arbitrariness?

    Whichever the matter is resolved – it seems clear to me that the telecoms sector will never remain the same again.

     

     

     

  • Sweet poison called devaluation

    Sweet poison called devaluation

    I perfectly understand where Emir Muhammad Sanusi 11 was coming from when, at the All Africa Business Leaders Award West Africa in Lagos last week, he not only added his weighty voice to the strident calls for the removal of the subsidy payments on fuel, but went as far as calling for the devaluation of the naira. If his exasperation with the Buhari administration’s fixation with the past – which I also share – was palpable, even more frustrating is the current situation in which Nigeria “in the first two quarters of this year… spent over 500 billion naira on debt servicing”, a figure expected to climb over the N1trillion mark by the end of the year. His summary that the sum involved is “more than the amount of money budgeted for health, education and defence combined” obviously calls for sober reflection.

    Certainly difficult to fault is his prescription that the federal government “shut down, especially those expense lines that have been known historically to be the sights of those seeking rent” of which fuel subsidy stands out; so also is his call for the expansion of the tax base and an increase in Value Added Tax (VAT) borne of sound realism.

    I would even argue that the momentum for changing the status quo may have been lost by the federal government’s vacillation.

    Again, I couldn’t agree more with His eminence when he says: “We can’t continue having an economy where we collect tax from oil companies, collect tax, maybe, from the telecoms companies, and then 60, 70 per cent of the GDP does not pay taxes.” Clearly, an overhaul of our entire tax system is long overdue.

    Just as relevant is his historicity: “In 2009, we had a huge crisis. Oil prices crashed from 140 dollars to less than 40 dollars….But at that time, the government had a number of advantages. The previous administration had saved a lot. There were physical buffers”.

    “The situation today is different. We spent years deceiving ourselves, calling ourselves the 21st biggest economy in the world based on something called rebasing. We said our debt to GDP ratio was 11 per cent and that the ratio looked very good. Yes we had a debt to GDP ratio of 11 per cent, but we were spending 33 per cent of government revenue servicing debts.”

    His prescription of devaluation is however a different kettle of fish: “Let’s stop being in denial, we cannot artificially hold up the currency…If we have to make a choice between economic growth and devaluation, my recommendation is that we protect growth.”

    His argument, though wearisome, is somewhat familiar: We should be easing monetary restrictions at this time, to allow the naira to find its true value (whatever that means), to stem the run on the foreign reserves, and ostensibly to halt the flight by portfolio investors said to be leaving in droves.

    Such line of reasoning, I would argue, is not only specious but clearly disingenuous. That these are the kind of arguments you hear from boardroom gurus, our elite club of financial analysts, the so-called players and dealers in the financial markets sometimes leaves one to wonder about the interest(s) they represent.

    Agreed, the current monetary policy restriction is bad business for many. For the trader whose sole merchandise is trade in tooth-picks; or the importer of rice who suddenly finds that he can no longer access the official foreign exchange window, and the importer of 39-odd assorted items effectively barred from making transfers from the local domiciliary account; these are hardly the best of times. It is understandable that the weeping have been quite strident among the members. These are however the minor players in the rot that have defined the Nigerian condition.

    There is however another club for which the current restrictions have come to spell BIG TROUBLE. I refer to the elite club that have long perfected the art of preying on the financial system through illicit financial outflows. Because members of the class have the voice and money to buy spaces in the media, they are best placed to push their toxic agenda on the unsuspecting public. Their tools which could range from outright plunder through direct over-invoicing to illicit transfers packaged through such institutions as National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion (NOTAP) are only coming into focus because our store of foreign exchange once considered inexhaustible is drying up.

    By the way, Nigerians would be seeing more wailing and gnashing of teeth in the coming days.  The best we can do at this time is strip their pretence, their cleverly-disguised but less-than altruistic motives bare for the world to see.

    I must make the point: Nothing can be said to be wrong with self-interest. Self interest is perhaps as old as Homo erectus; as a matter of fact, classical economic thinkers have long recognised it as one of the drivers of economic action. Modern nations do more than merely draw a line between special interests – particularly of an injurious kind– and the collective interest – going as far as aligning the former with the latter. In Nigeria, the reverse – or worse – is the case. In our case, our hordes of ruthless players exist merely to take advantage of our weak institutions to plunder and rape.

    Clearly, these are what the current restrictions are expected to correct. Perfect resistance is therefore expected.

    Back to the issue of the sweet-poison of devaluation being prescribed. Question is – what will it achieve? Pretty little that I can see. For a nation that produces next to nothing, it can only inflict more hardship and suffering – a situation of double jeopardy on the people. As for our volume of crude, it is set by OPEC quota which means that we cannot produce more even if we wanted to. As one would imagine, prices of goods are guaranteed to rise astronomically. For our hordes of ailing industries, input costs will certainly rise. For the many already in the throes of death, it would sound their death knell.  By the way, where are the factories in the event of the devaluation to earn foreign exchange into the nation’s coffers?

    For those vilifying the tight monetary policy measures, the question must be – what options are left for the monetary authorities in an environment where the economy is awash with slush funds but not enough to plough into the real sector? Allow the naira to continue to ‘find value’ until we have the Zimbabwe scenario in our hands?

    Left to me, prodding the federal government to go after our big time actors involved in illicit capital transfers should deliver far more benefits to everyone that the hues and cries over nothing. Or what do you think?

     

  • Customs and our rice headache

    Customs and our rice headache

    Rice, the Nigerian staple was thrice in the news last week. First was the report that the federal government is working towards the banning of importation of the product by 2018. That was supposed to be the outcome of the meeting of frontline governors of rice-producing states of Sokoto, Kano, Adamawa and Zamfara with the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo. At the meeting were the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Sunday Echono and officials of the National Planning Commission (NPC).

    Zamfara State governor, Abdulaziz Yari, summed up the outcome of the meeting thus: “We discussed how we could boost rice production in Nigeria and start thinking about how we are going to put policy in place on how rice importation will be banned in the country. We have the potential; we have the human resources; we have the arable land to grow rice. In the next two years, we will not need to bring rice from outside Nigeria. We are going to ban it”.

    That same week, newspapers reported Comptroller-General of Customs, Col. Hameed Ali (rtd), as ordering immediate removal of rice from import restriction list and the re-introduction of import duty payment at land borders. Wale Adeniyi the Customs PRO, explained the rationale for the new measure thus: “Over the years importation has been restricted to the seaports because border authorities have found it difficult to effectively monitor and control importation of rice…When the decision to ban it (rice) was taken, it was not an effective measure because smuggling of the product thrives with people using different means of conveyance including small trucks, bicycles and even animals – putting them on donkeys and some actually carry it on their heads”.

    Finally, there was yet another report credited to the same Customs CGS to the effect that there was no going back on the recovery of the   N23.6 billion tariff debts owed the federal government by rice importers.

    On the latter, perhaps a recap of the long-running story will obviously put the issues in clear perspective: The quartet of OLAM, Stallion/Popular Foods/Masco Agro, Ebony Agro and Conti Agro (Milan) were alleged to have imported 750,253,03 metric tons over and above their approved rice import quota. There was supposed to be a gentleman agreement with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and the Customs that could bring in their consignment on the understanding that anything above the allotted quota would attract non-preferential tariff of 10 per cent import duty and additional with 60 per cent levy – against the preferential rate of 10 per cent and 20 per cent levy.

    Now, the story is that the four firms reneged on the agreement on receipt of the invoice(s) for the sum of N26.3 billion representing the total duty/levy value on the excess on their individual quotas. As a result, the customs in July sealed their warehouses. Now, to underscore the no nonsense mission of the new sheriff, the Customs boss last week told his men he wants the debts paid in full!

    Meanwhile, the rice importers – not used to taking prisoners – have literally declared war with the Customs whom they accuse of imposing retroactive taxes on them and using unorthodox, strong-arm tactics to collect them!

    The different strands of the rice story obviously strike a familiar chord. The developments – although disparate – merely parody the multiple afflictions of a nation perpetually in a flux; the main elements such as the mortal failure of national will, the criminal impunity fostered in the environment of wilting institutions and the endemic corruption that has now assumed the way of life are merely its derivatives. The result is the bewildering statistics of rice imports put at some $800 million annually and the huge unsold stock of the local paddy rice at a time many integrated rice mills are said to be looking for rice to process.

    Now, let’s take the issues one by one.

    I start with the governors. In seeking a new initiative on rice, the governors obviously mean well. But then, if good intentions are all that is required to turn the tide, we would not be sitting pretty as the second largest importer of rice in the universe today.  As a matter of fact, recent initiatives such as the Presidential Initiative on increased Rice Production (2002-2007), the Nigerian National Rice Development Strategy (2009 -2018) not to talk of the boundless activism of the Jonathan Transformation years ought to have guaranteed us pre-eminent producer status!

    The point here is that the governors have neither said anything new nor done anything different from what obtained in the past. The quest towards self-sufficiency whether in rice or any commodity for that matter, would not come by wishing it to happen. It will only materialise through meticulous planning and hard work which, unfortunately, is not yet in place!

    We may have done well to highlight the problems; our ability to carry the farmers along remains a big problem. For all years of high drama couched as transformation agenda, the farmers still can’t access cheap credit and improved seedlings just as processing mills remains palpably inadequate. Overall, it appears that the investors counted upon by the immediate past administration to deliver on its rice agenda couldn’t make up their minds on whether to remain in the rice import trade or venture into production and processing. Or, isn’t that what the tango over quotas and duty/differentials all about?

    That takes us to the next issue – the removal of rice from import restriction list and the re-introduction of import duty payment at land borders – a measure I’ll simply describe as contradictory. Rice, if you may recall, was one of the items named in the CBN prohibition list – for which access to foreign exchange through the official window was banned. That measure, together with the existing discriminatory levy and tariff was supposed to be a lethal blow to rice importation. At this time, only the customs can explain how the measure fits into the nation’s drive to ramp up domestic rice production.

    For while it may be true that the extant measures have proved to be insufficient deterrent to the smuggling of the commodity through the land borders, the issue is that the very idea that the problem can be cured by throwing the borders open is not only defeatist, it is perhaps mitigated only by the possibility of more revenue. The issue, therefore isn’t so much about ramping up domestic production but rather an attempt to pass off an intractable problem.

    At the moment, it would certainly suit the customs top brass to seek “to reorganise their anti-smuggling operations in the border areas and ensure that all those importers through the borders bring their rice through approved routes and pay their extant duty”; only in due course will they find that a new theatre of corruption has been opened for corrupt elements in their midst to operate!

  • Now that the list is here

    Now that the list is here

    For a list that that took four long months in coming, it was perhaps expected that Nigerians would swing into the overdrive as soon as it was released. That was exactly what happened penultimate week when President Muhammadu Buhari finally released the first batch of his would-be ministers. As one might imagine, not only are Nigerians are still somewhat divided on the question of whether the wait for it has been worth it, there is also the more pertinent question of whether the nominees can be said to exemplify the change that the administration promised. All of this, I suspect, flow not just from the weight of expectations from the ordinary and the not-so-ordinary folk on the administration’s promise of a new direction, but also from the image of the no-nonsense, perhaps saintly President that Nigerians have come to know – one not only expected to do things very differently and more importantly, one sworn to set a new moral tone for the polity.

    To be fair to the President, I cannot exactly recall him – or any of his aides – promising Nigerians angels as ministers. In any case, the whole idea that the administration would require angels to get the job done can only be arrant nonsense. However, much as I would agree that the judgment of who best to work with the President to deliver must necessarily be his, the issue of whether the President needed nearly the whole of four months to come up with the same faces that have dominated the space in the last 16 years and more has suddenly become legitimate in the increasingly shifting perceptions of this Presidency as a tardy one. And while the charge of gerontocracy might sound somewhat exaggerated, the fact that the average age of cabinet nominees is 61  in a nation where some of the biggest corporations are run by 30-something to 40-something year olds would again tend to speak volumes about the president’s understanding and judgment of the complexities of current time.

    More importantly for an administration that has been accused of lacking direction, the cabinet list did very little to assuage such concerns. At the individual level, there is no question that some of the nominees having proven their mettles in different theatres of our national life can be counted among the very best perhaps anywhere in the world. I could even go as far as to describe the team as star-studded as far as pooling a team goes. But then, like the story of our national soccer team – the Super Eagles, having the greatest players does not always translate to the deliver of great outcomes!

    At this time, the question must be – what does the team represent? In other words, where is the country headed? Yes, I am willing to recognise and celebrate the individual brilliance of say – Babatunde Raji Fashola, the famed technocratic pedigree of an Ibe Kachikwu or a Chris Ngige; question is how does these square with the gut instinct of a team leader stuck to ancient paradigms?

    Let me illustrate. Few weeks ago, in a moment of rare candour, the Group Managing Director of NNPC told us that any expectations of optimal  performance of the refineries coming after the latest cycle of Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) was at best misplaced. Those were the same refineries said to have falling under the Buhari Effect and over which some Nigerians were already popping champagne.  Save for the President who apparently wanted the refineries working at all costs – he told Nigerians that the refineries would have long been auctioned off to save the nation the pretence of having working refineries! Did I hear someone say that President looks forward to the return of Nigeria Airways and perhaps the Nigerian National Shipping Line?

    We know where we are today: the country is in a mess today because of the corruption and maladministration of the past. Our public service is in shambles. Major infrastructures have over the years suffered neglect hence the nation is currently ranked among the least competitive in the world. Today, our price of our principal commodity – oil has dipped to a point that we now struggle to meet recurrent bills.

    Yes, corruption is a major problem. That was why I couldn’t agree more with the President when he said that we either kill the menace or it would kill us. Our President has no doubt rightly placed a lot of stock on killing corruption. It bears stating however that killing corruption does not in itself guarantee the good life! The pathway to the good life is new paradigms, bold ideas and lots of discipline and hard work. Yes, money answereth all problems but ideas – and well conceived paradigms – rule the universe! Problem is – Nigerians haven’t begun to see the kind of ideas on which the future optimism can be anchored.

    So, what do we expect in the coming months? An economy in which the state remains the dominant player as the President’s instinct for the nostalgia would appear to prefer, or one which the private sector is given the muscle to do what it does best while the state strengthens its regulatory arm? If it settles for the former, where would the funds come from? That is the simple question that the organised private sector has long sought answers for. And that is what Nigerians expect answers for even before the ministers take their seats.

     

  • New wine in old wineskins

    Even the club of die-hards sworn to give the Buhari administration the benefit of the doubt in perpetuity must by now be exasperated at its apparent inability to articulate a clear, coherent direction for the economy exactly four months after taking charge. For while nearly everyone swears that the Buhari body language is working magic with proofs cited as the fight against corruption, the on-going process of streamlining and revamping the machineries/finances of government, the much improved electricity and fuel supply situation, and of course the renewed onslaught against the insurgents in the North-east, there is the temptation to luxuriate in the illusion that the future is somehow here and that we can afford to dither on important decisions that ought be made even NOW.

    I came to this conclusion after reading a report credited to new Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Ibe Kachikwu as published by The Cable – an online publication last week. The meat of the report is that the refineries are currently working at 30 percent capacity as against the minimum 60 percent required to generate profit. That for me was a revelation. I have actually seen some people swear that the refineries are already working 100 percent – thanks to the Buhari effect!

    The other part – just as interesting is what he said about the refineries: “Personally, I will have chosen to sell the refineries; but President Buhari has instructed that they should be fixed. After they are fixed, if they still operate below 60 percent, we will know what to do”!

    By the way, the ultimatum given by President Muhammadu Buhari and re-echoed by Kachikwu to fix the refineries expires in December! Now, if his information is any correct, only the Port Harcourt refinery stands a reasonable chance of meeting the deadline! Which goes to show that there some things the chant of “change” cannot simply decree into being!

    To be sure, President Muhammadu Buhari cannot be faulted on the ground of good intentions. As one-time petroleum minister, the President should ordinarily be in good stead to proffer the way forward for the refineries. More than that, only a cold-hearted leader can fail to be moved by the racket of fuel importation and the irreparable damage it has done to the economy. Today, the economy continues to the bled by the twin rackets of huge import bills and its associated subsidy. But then, the greater problem is what the President has prescribed as solution – the magic placebo called the Buhari effect – the magic which cures all ailments!

    Part of the current illusions is that there are no costs to pay for the choices we have made. Presently, if fuel importers are not complaining, it is not because they are not being owed huge subsidy bills. The NNPC is being asked to carry the burden of fuel importation apparently because it has a huge pool it can draw upon. Soon enough, the current whispers will transform to loud murmuring across the board; by then everyone will realise that all is not exactly well.

    Secondly, that somehow the same individuals under whose watch the refineries went down would somehow supply the magic. Or that the nation’s work habits have transformed overnight. Pure illusions.

    If you ask me – while I’ll not be so uncharitable as to describe the President as out of date – he seems to have stuck to the old manual written in the sixties and seventies – which sees the state as the ultimate provider of the public good! The real problem as I can see it that the President thinks that he can put his new wine in the old wineskins while expecting nothing to give.

    To return to the refineries – the world has simply moved. Today, even at their optimal levels, the four refineries combined cannot deliver anything near the 40 million litres said to be our daily consumption of petrol. The choice we face is therefore clear: to aggressively pursue the licensing of more refineries to boost capacity by getting more private sector players on board.

    If the truth must be told – the four refineries are no hoppers! They are in terrible states owing to years of neglect of their Turn Around Maintenance. To the extent that every cycle of TAM has since turned out to be avenues to siphon scarce public revenue, Nigeria will do better to let them go. President Obasanjo knew enough to sell two of them to the Bluestar consortium for a record $700 million. Now, it is doubtful that anyone would offer anything near that tidy sum despite the billions sunk into them since. In the circumstance, what the nation can hope for is the prospect of enhanced performance in the event of a future sale. That should be the primary concern of the Buhari administration.

    Here is what I think the President should do – and urgently: Let the refineries go. Good thing that the GMD-NNPC thinks they should be let go. Next, take out whatever elements remain in the pricing template and let Nigerians bear the full cost of the fuel at the pump. This is what the current wisdom dictates.

    ‘To the extent that every cycle of TAM has since turned out to be avenues to siphon scarce public revenue, Nigeria will do better to let them go. President Obasanjo knew enough to sell two of them to the Bluestar consortium for a record $700 million. Now, it is doubtful that anyone would offer anything near that tidy sum despite the billions sunk into them since’