Category: Editorial

•Okonjo-Iweala misdiagnoses Nigeria’s economic challenges

FINANCE Minister and coordinating minister for the economy, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, may be forgiven for her never-ending dissection of the nation’s economic predicament; not so however, her latest attribution of the nation’s socio-economic challenges to the phenomenon she described as “resource curse”.

In an interview posted on the website of the Council on Foreign Relations, Washington DC, the minister was reported to have said that the country “appears to be suffering from resource curse, whereby a tiny elite benefit from the oil wealth, whereas the mass of people languish in abject poverty”. For reference, she cited the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) said to have tripled since 2004 due largely to the bumper oil revenue, in the background of rising poverty and inequality, even as she would admit that the promise of diversification is yet to be delivered.

To make appreciable inroads out of poverty like China did, her prescription was that the economy needed to grow at nine to 10 per cent a year – up from the current seven per cent, which, in her view is “pretty good”.

The crux of the matter of course is the growth of the past decade and half that has been most disappointing, both in terms of job creation and poverty reduction – a phenomenon that has spawned a generation of unscrupulous rent seekers and emergency businessmen at a time majority of the population barely exist at the fringes of the economy.

The pertinent question is whether the outcome which the minister did well to highlight can be said to be entirely unforeseeable, given the character of the enclave economy of oil. Another way to put the question is whether the managers of the economy could not have taken a completely different route from the current path now acknowledged as laden with lamentations.

We are referring specifically to the billions of dollars known to have either been stolen by officials or mismanaged outright – an amount which if properly channelled would have gone a long way to turn the infrastructure situation around; the perverse choice in which OPEC’s sixth largest producer would depend on imported fuel; the poor attention to critical industrial enablers like power and road infrastructure; and of course the neglect of agriculture under which a supposedly agrarian economy now relies on food imports to feed her population.

Unlike the honourable minister, we are not able to see any curse – let alone – one of oil. To agree with her is to suffer an acute misdiagnosis of a fundamental problem. True, it is so easy to point at the mind-boggling heist in the sector, the industrial scale theft currently ravaging the sector, including the bizarre rentier activities in the downstream sector of the petroleum industry as signs of a “curse”. These are however merely symptoms of failure of governance; they emblematise the blight of leadership – the astounding myopia and its lack of patriotic instinct, the result of which is the failure to leverage on the huge potentials of the resource to lay the basis for an industrial society.

Our understanding is that the problems are precisely what the coordinating minister and the economic management team were hired to solve. The issues go beyond the ritual of self-assessment, or of the snail-paced growth which hierarchs of the Jonathan administration continue to project to sustain the myth of deft management of the economy.

What Nigerians are interested in is whether or not the economy is now better primed to withstand exogenous shocks in the face of its continuing lack of enhanced capacity to produce basic goods. More than any concerns about curses, they want explanations for the appalling failure by the Jonathan administration to tackle, in a sustainable manner, the fuel supply conundrum currently at the heart of massive distortions in the macro-economy; the flight of capital that has seen the naira come under siege in the past few months and the administration’s answer to the massive corruption that has made nonsense of our public finance system.

•Will the 2nd Niger Bridge jinx be broken this time?

LAST week, President Goodluck Jonathan turned the sod for the construction of the second bridge across the River Niger. It was a grand ceremony which had in attendance, several state governors, ministers, senators and a large crowd of government officials and the people of Ogbaru community in Anambra State. The unsuspecting would think the president was commissioning a newly completed bridge, but it was an elaborate celebration of a mere intention to build.

But as eulogies rent the air during the ceremony, no one dared to mention that they had passed that imaginary road before. About seven years ago, in the early days of his tenure in 2007, former President Olusegun Obasanjo had hurriedly flagged off the purported construction of this same bridge amid so much fanfare. During the 2003 election campaign, Obasanjo had promised the building of that bridge as gambit for winning votes from the people of the Southeast.

It was bad enough that the former president apparently forgot his pledge, the rushed ground-breaking turned out to be an act of grand deception as Nigerians were later to learn that the flagged-off construction of bridge had no plan, no contract and indeed, there was no file of the project in the Federal Ministry of Works. That may sound too fictional to be true, but it happened before our eyes.

President Jonathan’s ceremony last week evokes a sense of de ja vu. This now famous second bridge was part of his key themes in the Southeast during the 2011 election campaign. He promised to build it over four years if he won. He won and like Obasanjo before him, probably forgot all about his promise until the time-table for the next election was released a few weeks ago. Now that the construction of the 1,590-mtre long bridge has been flagged off one more time by the Federal Government, its eventual construction would of course depend on whether the president wins the much sought-after second term bid and more important, whether the people of the southeast vote for him.

Now the second bridge on the River Niger (the largest body of water in West Africa) is a major national project. The first bridge built in 1965 is of course obsolete and no longer viable as a key thoroughfare between the southeast/south-south and the rest of Nigeria. The bridge is the major link to the huge commercial centres of Onitsha, Nnewi and Aba, as well as all the major capitals in the south of Nigeria. It is arguably, Nigeria’s busiest interstate bridge today. It is unimaginable that for nearly 50 years, only one two-lane steel bridge crosses the Niger at Onitsha with the attendant bottleneck and unyielding traffic logjam on it. Consider the heavy toll this has had on commerce, business and commuter movement.

It is therefore a wonder that a facility like this is being propositioned as a political favour; a quid pro quo for election votes. The second Niger Bridge just like the upgrade of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and the Oyo-Okene highway, to name but a few, should have been prosecuted and completed over a decade ago if we consider their importance to overall national development. But they remain a metaphor for the quality of leadership Nigeria has had in recent times, their conception of national development and their vision for the country. Gone are those days when leaders envision and designate certain facilities as strategic assets of utmost national importance; such facilities that catalyse the overall growth and development of the country.

Now that the bridge has been commissioned a second time, we hope that government is sincere this time and everything necessary will be put in place to realise this milestone.

IT’S BEEN nearly a week since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared over — well, no one is quite sure where. Malaysian officials over the past several days expanded their search area to a mind-boggling 27,000 square miles, on both air and land, spanning both sides of the Malay Peninsula. Even with an international fleet of more than 42 ships and 39 aircraft on the scene, the case of this missing plane “is rapidly becoming one of the great mysteries of all time,” David Gallo, an experienced hunter of plane wreckage with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, told us.

This was an avoidable mystery. There are eminently feasible ways to keep track of commercial aircraft, and it’s inexcusable that they are not being used. In fact, they aren’t operating even in the United States. This country’s air traffic control system still relies largely on decades-old radar networks, which have a variety of limitations. The Malaysia Airlines case shows one problem: It’s hard to track aircraft in remote areas, land or sea. A satellite-based tracking system U.S. authorities are installing will help, but it won’t be finished until at least 2020. The United States should at least stick to its timeline.

International aviation authorities, meanwhile, should insist on the deployment of aircraft technology that transmits information in an emergency. That could require new beacons to cover remote areas of land and sea and satellite broadcasting technology on planes. This is reasonable: There’s no excuse for lost iPhones to be more findable than downed planes. There would be a cost to the upgrade. But there is a huge cost, financially and psychically, in launching an armada on a highly speculative hunt when a jetliner is suspected of crashing into an ocean.

This isn’t a new lesson. In a feat of undersea exploration, Mr. Gallo led a team that recovered the black boxes from a downed Air France jet in 2011 — two years after the plane had crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on its way from Brazil to France. Now, three years later, the world is again at a loss. There’s simply no reason, given the available technology, that it should be just as possible for an airliner to vanish today over the Pacific as it was for Amelia Earhart nearly 80 years ago.

– Washington Post

To time to play? That’s what Brigid Schulte thought. Ina new book, Overwhelmed, she considers the problem of juggling the demands of family and professional life. It turns out she is wrong. Consulting an expert on time management, she finds something surprising: there is a lot of space in her diary. It’s just that she chooses to pack it with activity. That is the busy professional’s choice; yet sheer indolence is also a choice, and a fine one.

There is a long and ancient tradition of condemning frenetic, frivolous activity. In De Tranquillitate Animi, Seneca notes those who are “out of breath for no purpose, always busy about nothing”. Among the purposeless activities he lists are, with extraordinary prescience, sunbathing on the beach, being groomed at the hairdresser’s and flocking to popular spectacles (wrestling, in the Roman’s case).

In his essay Of Idleness, Montaigne warned that slothful minds might “run into a thousand extravangaces… in which wild agitation there is no folly, nor idle fancy they do not light upon”. Napoleon, worried at the tedium of exile on St. Helena, reflected that “work is the scythe of time” – and wished to have it.

These sages are wrong. They conflict with another ancient source of wisdom: Aristotle’s belief that leisure is the first principle of action. The opportunity to choose trivially in leisure is a blessing of an affluent society. Still more is the opportunity to choose idleness.

The spiritually minded refer to a bout of determined inactivity as contemplation, but the truly dedicated flaneur will recoil at the suggestion of mental activity. Doing nothing is a noble calling. It was not through an aversion to work but to a fascination with it that Jerome K. Jerome remarked, in Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, that he could sit and look at it for hours. That’s more like it.

–The London Times

•The president should differentiate between abuse and criticism

President Goodluck Jonathan betrayed his lack of proper understanding of federalism while receiving a delegation of Anambra State indigenes. The delegation went to the Presidential Villa, Abuja, to thank him for the support he purportedly gave out-going Governor Peter Obi. The governor will hand over to Chief Willie Obiano, the governor-elect in last year’s highly contentious election, on March 17.

The president, in an un-presidential statement declared: “Peter Obi worked very hard as a governor and very friendly to the government. A number of politicians feel that the best thing to do is to be abusing Mr. President, abusing the Federal Government and so on. You are elected to develop your state, I think the best thing is to have good relationship with the centre, whether you have a pin or you don’t have, but one day it will come. Wearing boxing gloves, jumping into the boxing ring to face Mr. President does not help the development of any state.”

We abhor any abuse targeted at the president or even any principal officer of state. This is absolutely not right as such is unfair to those concerned. However, there should be a clear distinction between an abuse and criticism. Perhaps what the president sees as abuses were critical questions and scrutiny that arose out of his or government’s actions and utterances, by some governors.

For instance, should the president feel abused by queries raised by some governors over delays and outright illegal deductions from their states’ monthly allocations? Is it an abuse for governors to criticise the president’s un-dignifying silence over the criminality by some centre-supported politicians that nearly consumed Rivers State? Is it an insult for governors to critique the inept approach of the Federal Government in its handling of the invidious Boko Haram? Is it an abuse to ask the president to compel an audit into the $20billion oil money that is yet to be remitted into the federation account by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC)? We can go on reeling out other shortcomings of the president.

While we deprecate abuse under whatever guise, we state without equivocation that constructive criticisms as depicted above are necessary ingredients for guaranteeing progress, especially in any democratic country. Notwithstanding President Jonathan’s grandstanding through haughty arrogation to himself of unnecessary power to develop states, we make bold to submit that the laws are very clear over the powers of the Federal Government and those of the component states.

If indeed, the president truly believes in the rule of law, he should freely give what the law says belong to the component units rather than be playing imperial politics with the growth and development of those constitutional creations. For example, the law creates ecological fund to be administered by the centre government, but, should the president wait for the governor of any state where disaster happens to come and grovel before him before releasing such funds?

We can only enjoin the president, in the interest of constitutionalism, to always endeavour to deal with the governors in official and lawful, not personal, capacity.

•Foreign interests must allow the people’s will to prevail

History is replete with extant lessons, but only if anyone cares to give heed. The crisis now playing out in the east European country of Ukraine may end up like the current calamity in Syria if the contending parties do not back-track and rethink their interest. Although Ukraine and Syria’s fundamentals are different, the crises are almost sure to track the same trajectory if Ukraine is allowed to fester. The turmoil which started three months ago when demonstrators took over the Independence Square in Kiev, capital of Ukraine, was sustained by the people until President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted.

The protesters are not only aggrieved that the Yanukovych regime was corrupt, the fallen president, in alliance with Moscow (Russia) was blocking the people’s wish for a free trade with the European Union. However, Ukraine, which is one of the splinter nations of the old Soviet Union remains a Russian outpost. Sharing a wide expanse of border with Russia, and sharing a historical relationship that spans over a thousand years, it can be said that Ukraine is to Russia what Canada is to the United States of America.

This explains why Russia has waded into the crisis, almost annexing the southern Ukrainian region of Crimea, threatening a shooting war. Russia, which has a large naval base in Crimea rides on the pretext that she is protecting the predominantly Russian-speaking population on the expansive peninsula that is largely contiguous with her boundaries. By last Sunday, Russian soldiers had forcibly seized 11 border posts in Crimea, meeting very feeble resistance from the Ukrainian army but pro and anti-Russian protests have broken out in the Crimean capital of Sevastopol, further increasing tension in the country that is increasingly caught between two divides.

The situation in Ukraine is not unlike a replay of the cold war era between the superpowers of the West and East and their allies. While Russia under President Vladimir Putin contemplates the agglomeration of East European countries into a loose economic bloc to counter the EU, it is obviously uncomfortable with the increasing incursion of the European Union and a total western domination of its sphere of influence. Russia is Ukraine’s major protégé and handmaiden. To lose her grip on Ukraine is to lose her essence in the current international power equilibrium. Russia has also played the big brother role to Ukraine, granting huge cash aids as well as cheaper gas, not to mention the cover of its naval might in Crimea.

The Western world – US and the European Union – have stoutly come to the defence of Ukraine, suggesting that Russia is provocative, if not sabre-rattling by mobilising soldiers to Crimea. The United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary has warned that Russia has made a “big miscalculation” by entering Crimea, hinting that Western countries could impose far-reaching economic sanctions if no diplomatic solution was reached between Russia and Ukraine. The US, through her National Security Adviser Susan Rice also warned that it “would be a grave mistake” for Russia to intervene militarily in Ukraine.

Die-hard Russians insist the protesters are sponsored by the West and fear a civil war as rages in Syria today. Although there is an interim government in place and election has been slated for May 27, minds are set and the environment is soiled already. The election may change nothing if it does not suit one bloc or the other. We urge that only the people’s will prevail. The powers at play will only do well to allow an electoral process that would be free, fair and representative of the will of the generality of the people of Ukraine. This is the noble solution that will avert another Syria situation in Ukraine. Russia and the West owe the world this sacred duty.