Tag: Yemi Osinbajo

It is exactly one year after the signing of the Executive Orders on Ease of Doing Business by the then Acting President Yemi Osinbajo. Ibrahim Apekhade Yusuf in this report attempts a review of the high and low points of the much hyped initiative.

One major activity of the then Acting President Yemi Osinbajo which he performed with aplomb and which naturally became an instant hit, especially with the media was the signing of three executive orders with the potential to significantly change some of the ways government business and operations are conducted in the country.  That was May last year.  However, the received wisdom out there is that one year down the line; the chickens may have literally come to roost.

A recap of the Executive Orders

The three orders signed by Mr. Osinbajo provide specific instructions on a number of policy issues affecting the ease of doing business in the country, support for local content in public procurement by the federal government, and timely submission of annual budgetary estimates by all government agencies, including companies owned by the federal government.

Specifically, on the ease of doing business, the federal government mandated all ministries, agencies and departments to henceforth publish a complete list of all requirements or conditions for obtaining products and services within their scope of their responsibility.

These, it explained, will include permits, licenses, waivers, tax-related processes, filings and approvals.

“The list shall include all fees and timelines required for the processing of applications for the products and services; and be conspicuously pasted on the premises of the relevant MDA and published on its website within 21 days from the date of issuance of this order,” the statement said.

It put the responsibility of verification of the list on the heads of the ministries and departments.

Tourist and business entry visas to Nigeria, the federal government directed will also, henceforth, be issued or rejected with reason by the Consular Office of Nigerian Embassies and High Commissions within 48 hours of receipt of valid application.

The federal government also ordered that all ministries, departments and agencies at airports must, within 30 days, merge their respective departure and arrival interfaces into a single customer interface, while all agencies physically present at the ports must, within 60 days, merge their operations into one single interface station in one location in the port. The directive gave specifics of the roles to be performed by the interface station.

It also ordered the resumption of 24-hour operations at the Apapa Port within 30 days just as the federal government directed the Registrar-General of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) to, within 14 days, ensure that all registration processes at the CAC are fully automated through the CAC website from the start of an application process to completion, including ensuring the availability of an online payment platform.

Reality check

However when our correspondent felt the pulse of stakeholders operating within the different business spectrum to give their scorecard thus far using the policy matrixes of government, their answers which rang loud and clear was that the federal government was yet to achieve the desired ideal.

Speaking with a cross-section of experts, they expressed mixed feelings over the numerous policy pronouncement of the federal government in the last 12 months, especially as it concerns ease of doing business.

In the view of Chief Cyprian Arinze, a haulage contractor, the Executive Order if anything amount to putting the horse before the cart. “If the government takes care of the roads, we can achieve over 95% Ease of Doing Business. Without this, we will just be going round and round the circles.”

Echoing similar sentiments, Chief Remi Ogungbemi, Chairman, Association of Maritime Truck Owners (AMATO) argued matter-of-factly that the Executive Order is far from a reality as basic infrastructure aimed at turning things around at the ports are still missing.

To achieve the much hyped executive orders mandate, he would rather a deliberate measure to build truck terminals. “I want to use this avenue to appeal to the concerned authorities to see what they can do because things are in terribly bad shape right now.”

In his assertion, Austin Okere, the Founder and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Ausso Leadership Academy, an ideas incubation company express worry that the Economic Recovery Growth Plan laudable as it is already suffering from inertia associated with government policies.

“I think the problem we have is that we run election economics. Great men think about the next generation but politicians think about the next election. And insofar as the economy is about amassing enough money  to manoeuvre or win the elections by all means, then another four years, we go back to the same square, then if a new government comes in, it starts exposing saying oh, look at the money that was amassed and they say it was for election and say, ok. The point is insofar as we continue to run election economics; we’ll be where we are. In an election year, a lot of time and resources are wasted. So we only have two productive years and if you’re not lucky, the new government comes and rollback everything that has been achieved, it becomes a problem.”

Government defence

Expectedly, the government on its part seems to be convinced that it has performed commendably well thus far.

Uche Ejesieme Public Relations Officer, Tincan Island Customs Command, Lagos, in an interview with our correspondent recently while speaking on the level of compliance with the Executive Orders at the Tincan Customs Command, said, “Customs has been operating for 24 hours and this is because we believe that at any point in time we need to ensure that officers are on ground to attend to officials issues. So even before this Executive Order came to force, the Nigerian customs service has been operating 24 hours. So what we’re trying to do now is just to ensure a kind of a renewed approach based on the concept, letters and spirit of the Executive Order. And as a way of complementing the Executive Order, the Controller Tincan Island Ports, Yusuf Bashar, has also built a training facility that has 30 connected workstations where we conduct trainings for customs officers across the ranks and for stakeholders like maritime operators and even the media.”

Expatiating, the Customs image-maker said the Command has complied very religiously with the spirit and letter of the Executive Order on Ease of Doing Business. “If you look at the signage on my door you’ll see Help Desk and the same thing has been syndicated in all the places round the port. This is just to create the necessary awareness that at any point of your clearing process, if you anticipate any challenge or you face any problem, once you come to the Help Desk, we’ll call the appropriate officer and make sure that they do the needful particularly when we see that you’ve a very clear case. But if it’s a case of noncompliance with the fiscal policies in terms of trade, it means that we’ve a responsibility to take a second look at that because Ease of Doing Business does not means that we’ll just close our eyes and everything will just go because it takes two to tango. If the operatives are compliant with the fiscal policies, making honest declaration, it’ll be very easy for Ease of Doing Business to thrive.”

In a response to enquiries from our correspondent, Dr. Jumoke Oduwole, Senior Special Assistant to President on Trade and Investment as well as the Secretary of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council /Enabling Business Environment, said the federal government has since developed a national action plan which details the deliverables as well as template to tract development in key sectors of the economy. The report, she said is to be formally released to the public by the end of the month.

However, David Uzosike, the Reform Lead, Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council/Enabling Business Environment Secretariat with the mandate to lead, coordinate, research and identify the constraints to ease of doing business in Nigeria, in an interview said a lot have been achieved.

“If you’ve been following our communication, especially looking at our website, you’ll see all the reforms and impacts we have achieved from the Ease of Doing Business perspective. And when you talk about the Executive Orders specifically, we can say there has also been some traction in that area.”

While acknowledging that infrastructure gaps exists, Uzosike said, a lot has also been done to make documentation process at the port seamless.

“Truth be told, a lot has changed. For instance, where you used to have 14 documents for inspection, it’s now eight and where you used to have all the agencies inside the ports, with each of them coming one after the other to inspect containers; it has changed. Now all the agents operate with one single window. There are no more multiple points of inspection. So these are things that are really in practice.”

Pressed further, he said, “Our aspiration is to get Nigeria into the top 50 economies in the World Bank Ease of Doing Business in 10 years while delivering direct impact of the reforms to Nigerians, especially, the MSMEs.”