ADEDURO FELIX ADESANMI is the managing director/CEO of Banquaires Facilities International Limited and a policy economist and turn -around expert. He served as project director of EMRO, an economic research organization established by former Head of State, Sani Abacha with the task of carrying out a massive socio economic survey of Nigeria with the target of developing a long term economic plan for the country. In this interview with IFEOMA OKEKE, he explains that on-going economic and security challenges are direct consequences of the inability to conceptualise and follow through a long-term economic plan for the country by successive governments.
What is your assessment of the economy in the last six years?
Basically the Nigerian economy has been wobbling. We have been trying to cope, but the situation is actually not getting better. The Federal Government tried to boost the economy by injecting a lot of funds into the States when it came on board, and in some commercial institutions, but we have not really been able to get good results. We have also seen the government trying to work to respond to challenges in different sectors of the economy, but again we have not been able to get much result.
I always tell people that as an economist, I don’t think the problem is from this government; honestly our problem stems from the fact that over the years, we have failed to plan. And when you failed to plan it means you don’t desire a better result. Because in planning, you set goals and targets, but when you don’t plan there are no targets to work with. For instance, the Lagos -Ibadan express road, I guess it’s about 110 /120 km at most. The reconstruction work started with President Olusegun Obasanjo, he did it, handed it over to President Yar’adua who passed it on to President Goodluck Jonathan and now President Buhari is on the same project. This is a typical case of what I mean when I say no plan, no deadline and no target. That’s the problem we have in Nigeria which you hardly find in other developed countries.
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The Lagos-ibadan road depicts a system with no cogent plan that clearly states if the road was to be constructed in three years, what happens if that target is not achieved. What would be the results and benefits to citizens and government if transportation or food cost will go down? The amount of money people spend on car repairs would go down because of a new road and the trend of spending 10 hours on a 1 km road would not be the case.
So we don’t do things like it is done elsewhere when it comes to economic planning and its benefits. The problem didn’t start today, it has always been there. Buhari has come to inherit it, we are in a bad shape, and the problem is too enormous. I served under General Abacha as consultant to the presidential economic committee. Abacha envisaged what the economy was going to be like in 2010 and he put up an economic plan, but immediately after he died those plans were kept in the wardrobe.
Are you linking the ongoing economic crisis to the jettisoning of Abacha’s Vision 2010?
Not only did we jettison it, we killed it. It was a long term plan; there was to be a rolling plan. There were short term and medium term plans. In 2010, we envisaged where we would be and there was a commitment to achieve set targets. Today, those economies that are far ahead of Nigeria run with those types of development plans and we are lagging behind and faced with poverty, unemployment and poor infrastructure.
It is like a family where there is no plan; no one knows the number of children or those that would be in school by five years, and everyone is left to their fate. That’s a disaster; same with Nigeria. No one knows the number of children that come out of the university every year; we don’t know the number of children that gain entry into the universities and what courses they study? No valid data. So we can’t even plan for the jobs that will absorb them when they graduate. So we now get a lot of disgruntled youths since we can’t provide jobs for them nor do we care how many of them come out and what they will do? So we have a huge youthful population indulging in all manner of activities that is detrimental to the economy because we didn’t plan for them years back when we ought to. So we are suffering from lack of planning.
How much harm do you think terrorism, banditry, kidnappings have done to the economy?
First, we have to look at what brought us to this level. I already told you how I was on the team that carried out a total survey of Nigerian economy during the General Abacha government. Then we toured 21 states; we started with Oyo state. What we did was to comb every city, community and town in the states and we came out with results, we were able to know the problem of the people and how to meet up with those problems. Now, if you look at the Nigerian setting, the suburb locations are not developed. Even for a five or 10 kilometers drive from Abuja, you will be shocked at the kind of people living there. Development in Nigeria is mainly centred around urban areas, especially the state capitals. This means we have created a disturbing pattern where once people from the suburbs graduate from school or migrate leaving the farms and petty jobs they do at that suburban locations to the city centre in search of better life; sadly, as they migrate to the cities, these areas become overcrowded and infrastructure becomes overstretched. The greatest danger however is that for those that arrive in the city, and don’t find the jobs to meet up with their needs, they delve into crime. To any jobless man in Nigeria, crime is the only good business for them.
So if while in the city, they hear that someone somewhere kidnapped and is being paid N100 million or in dollars they also plan to set up their own group, this is what we call in economics ‘demonstration effects’ which means, ‘ if these crooks can do it, I can also do it.’ So if they set up a banditry group in the corner and make such money, the same can be done in Lagos, Port Harcourt and anywhere else. This is what’s going on now.
How do we get out of this economic crisis?
The first thing we need to do is to declare a national emergency. Nigeria needs to develop, we must look at the whole sectors that make up the economy, and ask ourselves if we want to develop them. How many years are we giving ourselves? Five, six or seven years to fix these sectors? Then we start taking positive steps to bring positive sums to the economy. Positive sums are those results that add value to the economy. If we want to build a road, market or industry, we must be sure it would add value to the economy and not that we are wasting money on white elephant projects.
Cost of doing business in Nigeria, and epileptic electricity has no doubt made the environment hostile, but when we have an economic plan, we can take cognisance of those factors, and put plans in place to reflect the cost of doing business in Nigeria which is not attractive. We can come up with incentives for private sector investors.
For instance we don’t have textile industries anymore, our textile subsector used to generate over 10 million employment to Nigerians. Former President Yar’adua was ready to revive this sector. I was in a conference where he pledged that commitment, but before things could reach that level, he passed on. The subsequent governments couldn’t adopt it, but if we had had those companies running, they would be generating millions of employment, saving Nigeria foreign exchange. We spend so much on a daily basis bringing in clothes from abroad, we said to the government, allow cloths to come in for two to three years, put a high tariff on whatever you get from imports, and from the tariff, put it back to the industries. Let’s forgo those big textile industries, there are modern textile industries that run on brand new technologies and you don’t need the whole Lagos to build a textile factory. But unfortunately those were jettisoned and those are the things we need to re-plan. The problem we are facing now stems from what had happened in the past.
Local manufacturers say the greatest challenge they face is the regulatory agencies. You set up a factory to manufacture yet you are facing competition from those who import even substandard and cheaper products. We have to discourage importation, we cannot stop importation entirely, we could have small pains, but we have high tariff for those products coming in and ones we have those tariff, you are indirectly creating every opportunity for the local manufacturer who run without tariff and excise duty to be able to compete at the market level, then you can come up with incentives like tax holiday for them for some years because they are the ones creating massive employment for Nigerian people.
I tell you if the government is serious and focused; we should have been producing enough for local and foreign markets. When we produce for foreign market, we bring foreign exchange into Nigeria and when we produce for the local market, we save dollars. So why can’t we do everything possible to help local manufacturers, even if it means giving them subsidies on electricity so that they produce at minimum cost?
We have to make it a national policy to create those factors that would make people comfortable back home and not migrate to cities.
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