This week, President Bola Tinubu held his maiden meeting with members of his newly constituted Economic Advisory Committee (EAC) at the Presidential Villa in Abuja. In its editorial on this issue, a national newspaper insinuated that the President took too long to constitute the committee since he has been in office for approximately nine months. But there is a scant empirical or logical basis for arriving at such a conclusion.
For one, in constituting the Federal Executive Council (FEC) and appointing heads of other key agencies of government, President Tinubu had already brought in accomplished technocrats to help him chart the course of the ship of state out of current turbulent waters to a safe harbour of peace, prosperity, and stability.
These include the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr Wale Edun Minister for Budget and Economic Planning; Mr Olayemi Cardoso as Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN); and Mr. Zach Adedeji as Head of the Federal Internal Revenue Service. And it should not be forgotten that the Vice President, Mr. Kashim Shettima, statutorily heads the National Economic Council (NEC) which comprises all state governors and the CBN governor and has the constitutional responsibility “to advise the President concerning the economic affairs of the Federation, and in particular on measures necessary for the coordination of the economic planning efforts or economic programmes of the various Governments of the Federation.”
Thus, there has been no vacuum in governance or management of the economy since Tinubu assumed office. However, the composition of the new EAC has the potential to help the administration in achieving its key objectives of diversifying the economy, strengthening the national currency relative to foreign currencies, enhancing agricultural productivity, boosting manufacture, substantially improving power supply, generating jobs for the teeming number of idle youths and translating millions of Nigerians from inexcusable poverty to prosperity.
Indeed, the idea of a tripartite EAC comprising members from the federal government, the sub-national governments, and members from the Organized Private Sector is an innovative one. It reinforces the view that governance in a federal system like ours must necessarily be a collaborative enterprise among different levels and arms of government as well as the private sector.
The heavyweights of the OPS represented on the committee – Aliko Dangote, Abdul Samad Rabiu, Tony Elumelu, Wale Tinubu, Bismarck Rewane, and Segun Ajayi-Kadiri – have considerable clout and could be great assets in the Tinubu administration’s relentless striving for massive foreign and local investment. It could be argued that since they have themselves become stupendously wealthy in this system, they must thoroughly understand its dynamics and can help translate their individual success stories into helping to lay the foundation for a successful, stable, secure, and prosperous Nigeria.
Of course, one is aware of the obverse side to the argument and this is that many of those who have accumulated humongous wealth allegedly did so by manipulating loopholes in the system. Will such people be willing to support requisite changes in the same system that made them who they are today? Time will tell. But we should, in my view, eschew such instinctual cynicism towards our country and our leaders.
One of the governors on the committee, Prince Dapo Abiodun, had a rich entrepreneurial track record investing in diverse spheres of the private sector and achieving tremendous success before opting to go into public life. There is no doubt that his vast private sector experience coupled with his ongoing saga of quiet but systematic implementation of his developmental agenda in Ogun State will make him an invaluable asset on the President’s economic team.
The other governor on the team, Professor Chukwuma Soludo, Anambra State governor, is undoubtedly eminently cerebral. He can be quite charismatic when he passionately expounds his theoretical economic postulations in his charismatic and arresting baritone voice. But there are also those who believe that the former CBN governor’s eloquence in articulating theories has not been matched by a comparable capacity to perform and redeem his campaign promises in Anambra. Only the people of Anambra can declaim authoritatively on this. But his sound academic credentials and his career trajectory over the last two decades, in my view, make Soludo eminently qualified to be on the team.
However, it is this column’s view that President Tinubu’s Economic advisory team should be more diverse, particularly in terms of ideological orientation. If virtually all members of the EAC have the same neoliberal dispositions, then its meetings will most likely be dull, drab, and manifestly unproductive. It is only through intense debates at this kind of Think-thank, which the ECA is, that the best policy decisions can be reached in the interest of the teeming masses of Nigeria.
In addition to the brilliant, largely neoliberal economists on the team of the EAC, it is my view that there is also a need for sound political economists on the economic advisory team. These could come from academia or even from the ranks of intellectuals of the Labour movement. For instance, an economist like Dr. Peter Ozo-Ezon of the Department of Economics, University of Jos, is one of Labour’s intellectual resource persons.
Even though I have never met him but I have seen and heard Dr. Ozo-Ezon dilate on issues affecting the NLC and the economy on television and you cannot be but impressed by his erudition and grasp of the rather obscurantist outlook of contemporary neoliberal economists. A sound progressive economist representing Labour on the EAC, will help to some extent to improve the relationship between the Tinubu administration and Labour.
The title of this piece is not original to me. It is a chapter in a book, ‘Path to Nigerian Development’ edited by Professor Okwudiba Nnoli then of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Nnoli has three enthralling chapters in the book that throw light on the root causes of the country’s protracted economic crisis as well as worsening underdevelopment. His views are still relevant and remain quite pertinent today even though it was published in the late 1970s.
One of Nnoli’s chapters in this book is titled ‘Development/Underdevelopment: Is Nigeria Developing??’ One of his arguments was that, contrary to the claims by mainstream pro-establishment economists that the country is indeed developing, there is a wide gulf between that view and the pathetic situation of substantial numbers of Nigerians living in abject poverty.
He contended that continuing to equate development with growth is wrong and misleading just as the mere accumulation of modern artifacts such as luxury vehicles, imported modern furniture, imported electronics, airports and airplanes, high-heeled shoes, lipsticks, etc, cannot be described as constituting development.
In Nnoli’s words, “In fact, it may not even matter if these artifacts are procured from or created here for us by foreigners. It is considered only practical for them to provide the goods and services since we do not have the capacity for ourselves. And we need these products!“
Given this heavy external dependency and psychological disposition to dysfunctional consumption habits, Nnoli submits that “The inevitable consequence is our powerlessness to use our own resources to transform our internal and external environments in the ways we need and desire.”
He avers that the accumulation of these artifacts of modernity which we often mistake for development, “reflect development only when they are the end-product of the efforts of the population to apply their creative energy to transformation of the local physical, biological and sociology-cultural environments”.
Continuing, the eminent political scientist said “This is the situation in the advanced Western and Eastern countries. They cease to mirror development when they are provided by foreigners. In the latter case, the local population is merely acquiring the products of others’ development. This has been the experience of Nigeria.”
Even as the EAC sets out to work with the requisite Ministries and Agencies to urgently address the hardships being endured by millions of Nigerians as a result of the protracted economic crises, it must not lose sight of the fact that there is a more fundamental and deep-rooted challenge of underdevelopment which must also be addressed. In other words, it is easy to achieve better stability and enhanced value for the Naira in due course, stabilize interest rates, curtail inflation and achieve rapid economic growth while still remaining pathetically underdeveloped.
