Between lawyers and economists, there is a certain swagger.
The lawyer quips, not unlike the tortoise in the Yoruba folktale, he had stuffed all learnedness inside a gourd, leaving only himself “learned”; and others merely “educated” — sweet delusion, to be sure.
The public economist is well-nigh the unquestionable policy czar; because he bristles with arcane theories. Still the economy is trite: when two or three are gathered, an economy dawns. To survive, one needs the services of the other.
Nevertheless, this economic oracle’s word must be law. At the mention of his name, all plebs must kneel and bow!
The New Testament may claim the ripping of the tabernacle’s holy-of-holies; and the gospel exposed to all, since Christ had paid the price.
Not here! The severe temple stands; its holy-of-holies holds, its immaculate creed, which only the sacred economic theory-priests understand, reigns!
So, if not a few swoon and bow, at the advent of a new Buhari Economic Advisory Council (EAC), to replace the administration’s Economic Management Team (EMT) that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo chairs, you should know where the votaries are coming from.
For one, the EAC is not so-called. It boasts, in its ranks, among the most alluring minds in the land: Chair, Prof. Doyin Salami, of the Lagos Business School (LBS); Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, Obasanjo’s national economic adviser and Yar’Adua/Jonathan era Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor; and Bismarck Rewane, boss at Financial Derivatives Company Ltd, a Lagos-based financial consultancy firm.
The others in the team: Dr. Mohammed Sagagi (vice chairman), Prof. Ode Ojowu, Dr. Shehu Yahaya, Dr. Iyabo Masha and Dr. Mohammed Adaya Salisu, the senior special assistant to the president on development policy, who will serve as secretary.
Unlike the VP-chaired EMT which cuts across disciplines, the EAC is an all-economist redoubt, with members boasting expertise in varied areas in that field.
Salami, EAC chairman but a member of the old EMT, is clearly the link between the old and the new; and therefore offers some continuity.
A PhD graduate from Queen Mary College, University of London, his research areas include characteristics of small and medium enterprises, macroeconomic policy and the economic management of business, his forte at LBS. He has also served as member of the CBN Monetary Policy Committee.
Rewane struts his stuff at Financial Derivatives, a regnant Lagos financial analysis company, with more than 30 years’ experience as a banker, economist and financial analyst.
Prof. Ode Ojowu, though little media-driven, is a veteran in the economic advisory corridor. He was Obasanjo’s chief economic adviser (2004 and 2005), before the Soludo-Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala era, aside from being former boss at the National Planning Commission.
Dr. Iyabo Masha, immediate past IMF country representative in Sierra Leone, had a stint in the CBN research department (1998-2003). From there, she has bloomed as an international economist, with a rich career in central banking, specializing in financial markets, economic management, international lending, finance and development and microeconomic stabilization policy, research and implementation. She also boasts a strong Breton Woods culture, having worked for both the World Bank and the IMF.
The triad of Sheu Yahaya, Mohammed Sagagi and Salisu Mohammed, from their CVs, could well be described as still waters running deep — all boasting PhDs; with Sagagi and Mohammed also earning a B.Sc. first class in Economics.
Yahaya, current chairman of the Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) board, was a one- time executive director at the African Development Bank (AfDB).
Sagagi, aside from his PhD and other rich career strides, holds a certificate on how to make the market work for the poor, from the Springfield Centre, Durham University, UK.
Mohammed’s thesis, en route to earning a PhD from Lancaster University, UK, was “Oil Exports and the Nigerian Economy: An Econometric Study.”
Clearly, among the EAC members, Soludo most epitomizes the Obasanjo-era economic thinking (1999 to 2015). But all that, with its surfeit of theories, crashed with the recession of 2015, prompting the Buhari-era new pitch: grow what you eat and eat what you grow.
That pitch signalled new activism in agriculture, now resulting in increasing local rice mills, away from the old days of near-wholesale rice imports. But the new spirit would appear more of praxis than theory.
Indeed, it was a radical shift, in economic philosophy, from the Okonjo-Iweala ethos of rebasing of numbers, to signify economic growth, to tilling the land and firing the local furnace to enlarge and deepen the Nigerian real sector.
As Obasanjo’s chief economic adviser, Soludo theorized on NEEDS — the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS), with its SEEDS (states) and LEEDS (local governments) coordinates.
It was a brilliant and comprehensive charter. But it was shackled by over-centralized, trickle-down thinking; when what Nigeria needs is federalized, bottom-up thinking.
As Yar’Adua’s CBN governor, Soludo also theorized with what he called the Strategic Agenda for the Naira, a re-decimalization strategy, which he had hoped would make the Naira lean but strong, at least in parity with the American dollar.
That strategy was ingenious, for by switching decimals — and not strengthening the local real economy — it had hoped to strengthen the flabby Naira against the dollar!
That created quite a public uproar; and elicited a turf war between the CBN governor (Soludo) and attorney-general and minister of Justice (Michael Kaase Aondoakaa) who belched fire and threatened a legal Armageddon, should Soludo not eat crow and retract his fancy Naira policy.
That was how the decimalization policy collapsed.
Earlier, Soludo had implemented a banking recapitalization, if controversial, policy; which ensured banks with poor capital bases merged, to avoid the collapse of the banking system.
Some hailed it. Others rammed it. It did what it had to do. But it didn’t prevent the Sanusi Lamido Sanusi CBN era from bailing out some banks with public money.
It is unclear how Soludo’s theory activism would fit into the new structure.
Still, it is good the EAC is a conclave of minds that can grapple with the latest economic theories, and show the way forward for the economy.
But all that would be naught, if it can’t increase the stock of local rice; birth policies that ensure the full firing of local factories; without abandoning the key pro-poor programmes of the last four years, viz: the school feeding scheme; and access to cheap credit by the most humble of Nigerian ventures, epitomized by the Tradermoni loans.
If their efforts bolster these schemes, then the Nigerian economy would have been on the way to genuine deepening, starting with food security; and agro-allied processing to feed local factories and provide jobs. That would be the making of true legacy.
But if it alters that course, it would be back to the old days of rich theorizing but arid concrete results.
Nigeria is not bereft of theories. What it lacks is the political will to make those theories work for its people.
Nigeria must build an economy that works for Nigerians; not the structured outpost of some foreign metropole, which must continue to grow, even as Nigeria eternally shrinks.