Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) National Leader Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu yesterday faulted the Federal Government’s economic policies, saying they are incapable of stimulating the real sector growth needed by the country.
He criticised the government’s decision to grow external reserve in a country lacking basic infrastructure and advised that Nigeria depends less on foreign investments and economic policies. It should seek local solution to its economic challenges, he advised.
Tinubu suggested that the government’s policies must ensure that the nation’s wealth is deployed for the development of the real sector to stimulate production and manufacturing and, by extension, help solve insecurity, hunger, unemployment and poverty.
The former Lagos governor spoke in Lagos at an event where five governors, a former Finance Minister, Dr. Kalu Idika Kalu and former Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Chairman Nuhu Ribadu advised the Federal Government to review the nation’s economic policies to ensure the nation’s wealth benefits the people.
Governors Babatunde Fashola (Lagos), Adams Oshiomhole (Edo), Ibikunle Amosun (Ogun) Rochas Okorocha (Imo) and Abiola Ajimobi (Oyo) attended the event, which was the presentation of a book: “Financialism: Water from an empty well”, co-authored by Tinubu and former United States Consul General in Nigeria Mr. Brian Browne.
Tinubu observed that the nation’s economic policy was drifting towards financialism, where emphasis is on amassing financial wealth, as against capitalism that encourages investment, production and employment.
“In Nigeria today, with our lack of vital infrastructure, the absence of a concrete industrial policy and with the paucity of long-term funding to fuel the real sector, we ask the economy to do the impossible. It is like attempting to draw water from an empty well,” the former governor said.
He contended that the Federal Government’s policy of funds accumulation is a misplaced objective. To the ACN leader, the government should be concerned with how to channel idle human and material capacities into productive streams that create jobs and produce tangible goods with a view to improving the conditions of every citizen.
Tinubu, an accountant and former treasurer of Mobil Producing, said: “Just a few weeks or months ago, the Federal Government said we have $46billion in foreign reserve, earning about one or two per-cent in interest. $46 b of Nigerian money is held in foreign reserve, earning two per-cent and they have $42b in domestic debt, which government is paying 16 per cent interest on. These are facts. You have $46 b in foreign reserve, you are earning two per-cent and you borrow from these foreign investors, tagged domestic borrowing and you are paying 16 per cent. This is voodoo economics. They don’t know it. Get rid of them.
“It makes no sense. It is choking the private sector, which wants the same money. You want industrial revolution, you want to create jobs, and you want to create employment. And they are going to be borrowing in the same market. Where your loan is attracting 16 per cent as a government, the manufacturers would be made to pay 20/25 per cent.
“So, if they go bankrupt tomorrow, just get it, you are not helping the economy. We have to change. Get rid of them. We must shun the philosophy that says ‘better to save money and spend the people’. I say better spend the money and save the people.
“I believe in the national government saving money, if saving is for the purpose other than itself. For government that prints its own currency, to save that currency merely for saving’s sake is to accumulate worthless paper. Instead, our money must catalyse development, enriching the broadest spectrum of people. To say we are saving money for a rainy day while everyone is already drenched and wading through flood waters makes little sense to me.
“We must reform our economy. To do this, we must first reform our philosophy of economic development. What I advocate is not starry-eyed socialism. I seek clear-eyed, yet, progressive capitalism.
“Making money, not tangible goods that improves our standard of living has become the overriding economic objective. Funds should be used to fuel industrial production and generate employment, leading to broad shared prosperity.
“Instead, funds are increasingly recycled within the financial sector, creating huge nominal profits for a select few. The great nominal wealth is unconnected to economic fundamentals and has little bearing on the welfare of the average person.
“The more attractive this nominal wealth, the more money flows to and remains within the financial sector which produced this entrapping mirage. The mirage of nominal wealth thus expands and deceives more of us while the real economy staggers about like a starving man who searches for crumbs on the floor of an empty banquet hall.”
Tinubu said the challenge before the government should be how to ensure that most of Nigerians make reasonable return and boost agriculture. He added that “instead of stealing from our children and stealing the pension fund of the retired, this government must answer the moral call of providing one meal per day for our school children up to high school level.”
Tinubu urged the Federal Government to formulate an industrial policy that focuses on the development of labour intensive industries and the urgent restructuring of the education sector to arm the youths with the capacity to confront the country’s challenges.
The ACN leaders also suggested an overhaul of the agricultural sector to be complemented with a price support mechanism “so that those who toil the land and who feed us do not go continuously poorer the more they toil”.
Tinubu, who said the book is intended to help the nation avert an impending economic doom, argued that the solution to Nigeria’s underdevelopment resides with its populace. He said though foreign investment is welcome, it is incapable of leading the country to prosperity.
“We cannot blindly follow the advice of others. In thoughtless adherence to their own economic myths, the developed economies have led themselves astray in some instances.
“Their present counsel can do no better for us than it has done for them. Should we continue to listen to their false counsel, we will gain nothing of it, because it would yield nothing more than attempting to draw water from the empty well.
“We have the ability and knowledge to forge our own way. We must base our approach on empirical fact, not subjective theory,” he said.
Also at the event were businessman Aliko Dangote, former Managing Director, Zenith Bank, Jim Ovia (who was the book’s chief launcher), former governors of Lagos and Kaduna states, Alhaji Lateef Jakande and Balarabe Musa; the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi and former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) National Chairman Audu Ogbeh.There was also the ACN National Chairman Chief Bisi Akande, Senators Gbenga
Kaka (ACN, Ogun State), Gbenga Ashafa (ACN, Lagos), Ganiyu Solomon (ACN, Lagos) and Annie Okonkwo (APGA, Imo State) and Prof. Pat Utomi of the Pan African University, Lagos.
Others include members of the Hoouse of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila and Abike Dabiri-Erewa. Alhaji Kashim Imam (who represented governors of Borno, Yobe, Zamfara and Nasarawa states), Funminiyi Afuye (who represented Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State, Speaker, Lagos State House of Assembly Adeyemi Ikuforiji, rights activist, Femi Falana (SAN), former Minister of State for Defence, Demola Seriki and Prof. Adebayo Williams.
Kalu noted that Nigeria, having in the past wasted its growth opportunity, its leaders and the people must now resolve to work out ways of ensuring that its potentials are effectively harnessed for development.He praised the book’s authors and argued that what the country requires for growth include hard work, proper leadership and leaders who are law abiding.
Aregbesola argued that the country remains poor because no government has helped to articulate policies that could aid the nation’s growth.
He warned that the nation was doomed, should it continue with “the stupid culture of amassing wealth without putting them into productive uses”.
Oshiomhole argued that the pervasive poverty in the country was a result of bad leadership and the inability to use its resources well. He observed that the country was replete with contradictions, noting that while government’s statisticians proclaim growth in the economic and bandy around figures, the nation’s population is becoming poorer in the real sense.Okorocha sought change in the attitude of the nation’s leaders, arguing that the country was not poor, but lacks good managers.
Ribadu praised Tinubu’s leadership qualities and his passion for the nation’s growth. He noted that the development being recorded in Lagos today were initiated by him.
Fashola observed that the major problem with the country today was realizing appropriate application of the nation’s funds and devising a workable economic policy capable of propelling the nation to development.
Ajimobi said the book challenges the unorthodox economic views of the world, adding that it recommends a paradigm shift to focus on long-term planning to create wealth for the people.
“The book is a great paradigm shift from the way the world used to think about the economy and governance. Like every revolutionary and unorthodox view, it will attract reactions from scholars.”
Amosun said the book provokes a new thinking of changing the strategy to respond to the yearnings of the masses.
“Financialism, more than in any other nation, is still very pronounced in Nigeria because unlike other nations where a movement of one or two basic points will create problems, but here we see double digit increase in interest and nobody says anything,” the governor said.
Browne argued that the policy of a central government was imperative for the growth of any nation’s economy, noting that a national government’s monetary sovereignty and fiscal authority are prime catalysts to moving a flagging economy towards robust growth. The former diplomat, who lamented the plight of the Nigerian poor, said growth in any economy should not be in the abstract sense, but must be real and impact on the people. He also faulted overreliance on foreign concepts in modeling the nation’s economy.”Let our people walk in the light of a dynamic political economy that allows them to write the story of their own destiny instead of us always following the dictates of others,” Browne said.
