Recently, Pat Utomi, a professor of political economy and management expert, and founder of founder of Centre for Value in Leadership (CVL) spoke with ZEBULON AGOMUO on the state of the nation. The greater part of the interview has been published. Here is the concluding part. Excerpts:
This your third force group, where is it leading to? Are you offering yourself for leadership in 2023?
The approach we are taking is that we want to focus on collegial leadership. It is not about this one is a messiah or that one, by the way, no one is a messiah here; all of us – Usman Bugaje, Attahiru Jega, Muiz Banire, Femi Falana – all of us constitute a collective leadership.
At some point in time, we’ll say to one of us, we’ll put you on the ticket for president. By the way, Kingsley Moghalu and some others are part of it. We would say, you will be president, but all of us together will be collectively responsible to guide where Nigeria goes.
So, depending how much, and what your strength is, you will get the support from the others to achieve what we want to achieve.
There are too many factors responsible for the crashing of the Naira. That has also added to the misery Nigerians are going through. Currently, it is about N600 per one Dollar. If you were given the opportunity to manage the monetary policy of Nigeria and all that, what would you have done differently?
First of all, let us establish that the strength of your currency is not so much just monetary policy, it is production. How do you expect your currency to be strong when you don’t produce? It can’t be strong. That is one. The second is that market has rules. If you misbehave relatively to the rules of market, market will punish you.
General Babangida has his critics, but history has not quite visited the skill with which Nigeria was navigated away from controls to markets. And people seem to have very short memories. Let me remind people of simple thing.
At the time that I went into industry in late 1987; we had what was called PPIB – Productivities, Prices and Income Board. That was price control agency. They sat down in their offices and allocated your price for which you would sell anything. Let me give you one absurdity that’s a result of those kinds of economic management strategies. They told us how much we would sell Santana (a brand of saloon vehicle years ago); if you sold Santana that amount of money, we would be putting money inside the boot and given to anybody who paid for it.
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And so, we just did not sell cars because it did not make sense. So, what do you do? What to do was, you generate as many used cars as possible; why? Because Price Control can issue a price for a new car but it cannot tell what you will sell a used one. This one, maybe one year old; it might be ten years old; so, you don’t have a price for used cars. So, we could generate as many used cars as we could; may be, use a car for two weeks and put it out for used car sale. And on Saturdays, we would say, used cars auction, in front of our open gate and people on their own, walking on the street, would bid two times the price of a brand new car for used ones. You see the kind of absurdity. People don’t remember these things. It is very easy to forget. So, those kinds of policies diminished Nigeria’s possibilities. Until Babangida in his cleverness and whatever gimmicks he played maneuvered us into what was called a Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in which markets began to evolve; the foreign exchange market was one of the hardest to derive; it went through phases; it went through a Second-tier Foreign Exchange Market (SFEM); bankers made a lot of money from selling foreign exchange under the carpet. And along the line we moved to a free market- everybody can go and get it, especially manufacturers were given preferential allocation; trades, tenders and all those arrangements. Things were somehow Ok, until Buhari came, and the Central Bank capped foreign exchange market. That’s why we are here.
From the array of those who have declared for the presidency; is there any of them you think can be a reasonable candidate?
Well, for now, Peter Obi is the only reasonable person as a candidate among those who have declared. Peter is the only one.
There has been a lot of crude oil theft going on which is negatively impacting Nigeria’s revenue. Some people are saying that about 85percent of the oil is being stolen; what is your thought on the issue?
One of the things that pain me the most about my personal idea and experience is that it has converted me into a prophet that I am not and never desired to be. Ninety (90) percent of the problems of Nigeria today, I predicted 25 years ago. I did not do it because I had any prophetic endowment; just simple Trend Analysis. In 1996, I remember very, very precisely, because it jumped at me when I was in Boston; I was visiting some Nigerian chap; and when I came in he became very, very excited and shouted; ‘we just finished reading about you,’ and I said ‘where?’ He brought out The Economist. Richard Dowden, regional editor of The Economist, had interviewed me. On my way to Boston, I had stopped in London and I ran into him and he interviewed me. It appeared in The Economist of that week. One of the questions the Editor had asked me, my response was that you know, I wished we could find a real clever way of bringing together all of Nigeria’s leading military top shots and its top politicians; we could buy an island for them and hand over to them all of Nigeria’s oil with assurance that they would leave Nigeria alone; that Nigeria would be better off.
You known that The Economist doesn’t write anything, it must put comment. Richard Dowden’s report said: “Fair comment.” That was in 1996. Oil could have been a great benefit to Nigeria; but look at the current situation. Oil prices are shooting up and instead of Nigeria rejoicing, we are crying. But I saw all of this; way back them; and I wrote about it. You can go and read them. it is just like this anarchy swallowing us – train cannot go to Kaduna again. Kaduna is the seat of Nigeria’s military industrial complex. That’s where all our military establishments are; but a group of motorcycle- riding people have besieged it and hold it hostage for weeks. They walk into military barracks and kill soldiers like files. Before 2000, an American called Robert D. Kaplan had published a book titled ‘The Coming Anarchy.’ He predicted that given the trends in deepening ethnic cleavages, religious cleavages, economic cleavages – poor infrastructure, no light (the night is very dangerous, there is no power, anything can happen at right) that West Africa is likely to descend into anarchy and that may begin from convergence, in a city in Nigeria called Jos. I was so frightened; so I decided to do something because whenever I am frightened, I try to do something.
I started an NGO called NUTRA (Nigerians United to Resist Anarchy). I brought together a group of my friends. What was our goal? To buy as many copies of the book as possible and distribute them to people in positions of authority. And we did that and sent to the DG of SSS; NSA and all of that, and they did read it; because two or three years later, I got a call from the DG of SSS; he said, who is this Kaplan fellow? I said what happened? He said, I just finished reading that book you gave me this morning, 30 minutes later, my phone rang and that was the first of the Jos riot.
We are still suffering it till today. So, when I tell you about this prophesy business; I am not a prophet, but I saw what is going on in the country today, simply by reading a book written by an American. My expectation was that policy would move in a way to nip this in the bud; that was the point of buying the book and putting in their hands. But like every thing Nigerian, it doesn’t matter.
You made reference to the Kaduna train attack but the minister under whose ministry it happened has since declared to run for the presidency. What does this mean; is it the ‘it doesn’t matter’ attitude you mentioned?
It is because there is no accountability in Nigeria. Infact, he should never have left Abuja; he should be every day briefing the Nigerian people there, four times on the development on that crisis. All of them, including the vice president and other minsters are running for president as if they were innoculated to sensitivity to the pain of the Nigerian people.
