Ex-Nigeria’s finance minister, Kalu Idika Kalu, spoke to our correspondent, Sunny Nwankwo, on his membership of the APC, assessment of Ngozi Okonjo Iweala’s term in office as Nigeria’s Finance Minister, amongst other issues. Excerpts
Why have you been out of the political radar?
Well, the radar is a matter of your range but actually the reason why one continues to be relevant is precisely because I have not actually been out of the radar as you might suppose, unless you imply by radar running for office but I have been involved with politics. To just buttress that I was a foundation member of PDP, APGA, Justice Party, I ran on the plat form of the NNPP as President and I have been involved with all the CNPP, all of these party formations. Outside of running for office, I am more really like a developmental economist, so I am not really your day to day politician. Nonetheless, I have been involved with just about every government since that time. The Economic Summit started in my sitting room in Lagos; it has become a big thing now. Outside of that, I have headed several government studies, the Niger Delta study for instance and the refinery study and I have been in most of the committees that usually get appointed to look at aspects of the economy. I wish that frequency was synonymous with the seriousness with which one’s proposals and advice were taken. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. But the impression I get now is that those who are now taking over the rings of power, even where we are after doodling for so many years, they will feel compelled to take advantage of one’s background and experience and we are very hopeful that it will be a major aspect of the change that we have been talking about.
Your membership of the APC has become a subject of controversy; the party leadership in the state doubts if you are one of them, what’s your response?
I suppose it was an understandable mix up. I was very much involved in encouraging and I am still very involved in encouraging the evolution of strong two-party system in this country. So, when I say that this (my membership) predates APC, we are really talking about even at the merger stage and once the merger was consummated, I live in Lagos; I spend a lot of time in Abuja. I don’t live here; I come in here ever so often. I think it is that part of my placement in terms of perspective that gave the impression that I had just come in. I was actually very much involved at those early stages of the formation.
Before the merger, where were you?
Well, before the merger you can say I was in the PDP sort of, yes.
So, you are one of the members of the new PDP that joined APC?
Sort of, although I was not so actively involved in the politics so I was never listed as such. But as I said, I am really focused on the development of the country rather than development of political parties as such. I think like the message that we are now sending to our young people particularly in our area here is that it is not as negative as people think it is but it is important that people get involved, young ones should be involved with political mobilization and it should not be limited to pre-election; all the noise and thunder that go with the elections. It should be something that people are actively seeking to be involved because this is how you solve the problem of the community- water, housing, jobs, access, power and the rest of it and management of local finances and so on and so forth.
It’s like you are trying to formalize your membership with APC?
No, this was formalized a long time ago. But I hadn’t been home.
What persuaded you to join the APC?
Well, if there is anything you can say about politics, it’s a very dynamic situation, so it incorporates the whole idea of the leadership quality, the performance of that leadership, the compelling needs of the economy and the agenda that the party sets forth whether it is in its manifesto and so on and so forth. So, I can go through all these various aspects to see how one of them was never registered, in fact, I remember prevailing on them to at least register APGA at the time the Justice Party for one reason or the other, you know all this restrictions about how many offices you had to have and so on. But at the time, there are two of us that co-founded Justice Party at that time and we felt very strongly about what is now very important in Nigerian politics, the inclusiveness of the generality of population in the growth that is taking place rather than having income so skewed and the masses are not properly taken care of in terms of their basic needs. So, there are ideological issues, leadership issues and they are particularly enamoured by compelling need to change. I’ve got some of these things written out, change in the type of governance we should have, emphasis on transparent administration, emphasis on very focused budgeting and supervision of designated projects and follow through to conclusion, you know all this talk of abandoned project and so on. All these reflect a loose form of stewardship. So, I think this is what the new group represents and this is what as a participant, is my duty to keep us focused on those special areas that mark out the party from what we have heard in the past.
Is there anything novel you are going to bring to your new party?
We have to bring in lasting solutions to the major problems of the economy; we’ve talked too loosely about diversification, all these must proceed from fundamental change in policy not just diversification because people must be saying how come we’ve been talking about diversification and we haven’t heard it. We can say it gets very technical when we start talking about how to make sure that you are providing funds at the appropriate rates, providing training, providing above all infrastructure the whole concept of privatization. When I was a commissioner in Imo State, I wrote the paper on privatization, macro-economic adjustments, taking the economy to the global stage and we’ve not really followed this things the way they should have, that’s why we privatise power and it’s not working, we can discuss what is the problem, we’ve privatised other things and we’ve not done them quite the way the orthodox will require, namely set up a four stage criteria to make sure that when you privatise, things move forward. First, you have to have people who can pay; you can’t sell a government entity to people who cannot pay. Secondly, those you sell to, either a refinery or power plant, must understand the technology of the process, not people who are learning the job. Thirdly, you sell to people who obviously you can certify from their prospectus that they have experience in the sector. Fourthly, the people have to state clearly what they want to do after privatization.
What is your assessment of Ngozi Okonjo Iwela as the Finance Minister?
I don’t think I should be criticizing anybody, I mean I left the World Bank in 1980, Ngozi came in after. Naturally, it was expected that we will be consulting when she was actively involved but she was always busy. The over emphasis on debt hangover has been publicized and I strongly oppose and still oppose the fact that rather than leveraging on our resources we could have done so many things we are lacking now. The issue of transparency goes beyond just publishing numbers on papers; it has to go to actual supervision from the mobilization of resources to the budget process to the appraisal of projects to the implementation of projects.
You were accused of folding your arms while things went wrong during the past administration in Abia State, what’s your reaction?
You know I never fold my arms (laughter).
Were you consulted by the past administration for advice and were they taken?
Like I said, there was a desired level of consultation that we established in old Imo State. I took that same pattern to Lagos whereby you really involve the private sector. Every administration went into different degrees of consultation.
Do you think Nigeria is broke as President Buhari announced recently?
Well, the GDP of Nigeria is presently higher than South Africa. But in a relative term, we are not really above them. In terms of quality of development, we still have a long way to go but potentially we can surpass them. If your prices are right, you can be able to adjust your exchange rate. Having said that, there was nothing wrong in what the president said because it is always good for one to say the way things are; both morally and otherwise, it is good.
