Tinubu is not showing us path out of current hardship- Anthony Kila

Anthony Kila, a professor of Strategy and Development and Centre Director, Commonwealth Institute of Advanced and Professional Studies (CIAPS), Lagos, in this interview, advised President Bola Tinubu to revive domestic refineries to reduce fuel prices.

He also called for Nigeria to embrace food importation temporarily as a measure to ease the burden on citizens, given the current economic challenge.

He offers direction on calls for change on the 1999 constitution and agitations for parliamentary system of government. Iniobong Iwok brings excerpts:

What is your assessment of the economic policies of the federal government with the removal of fuel subsidy, and floating of Naira?

If they say better days are ahead, it’s a good thing because they realised that today is not good for many people.

The dramatic increase in the cost of living and prices of goods and services, cost of transportation and the low availability of these things make life difficult for many people. When they say better days are ahead, it shows that they know what is happening.

But, the question is that; what are they doing to make things happen, that is my concern. There are two questions, how did we get here and what are we doing to get out of it. That is where my concern is. In terms of good intention, they have it.

They are high on good intentions, but low on results and policies. I score them low on policies and results, but high on intention. We got to the current situation by the removal of fuel subsidy and floating of naira. We stopped defending the naira by the unification of the forex window.

On the removal of fuel subsidy, there is a predominant views in the country over the belief of some people that the removal of fuel subsidy is right, some people have even applauded it.

But I disagree, I disagreed with the removal of fuel subsidy under former president Goodluck Jonathan and I still disagree now.

My disagreement with former president Goodluck Jonathan then was not personal contrary to the views of some people. It’s not that I hated the president, it’s not partisan, but as at the time they wanted to remove fuel subsidy about 12 years ago, as trained economists, some of us were able to predict that if they did that people would suffer as prices of goods would go up.

Those things that we predicted are now happening. Some people who were with us then made a career out of the issue of no fuel subsidy removal, now they are for fuel subsidy removal.

I leave everybody to his or her conscience. I can understand that the country is broke and so it might be difficult to maintain that fuel subsidy regime, which is why we are here today.

There is no money, they squandered it. If I had my way, I would have looked for those who looted the money. It is not a very difficult thing to do because the people involved are less than 10,000. I think with a bit of determination, we can look for those who looted the money.

The other problem we have is the unification of the forex window. I always tell my colleagues and those around them that it looks good on paper as you get rid of round tripping and stuffs like that, but the fundamental flaw is that the policy works in countries that export less items.

It works where you produce a lot of things, you attract a lot of forex and people buy from you. In Nigeria, we consume more than we produce, we import more than we export.

So, having a weak naira creates pressure and increases the prices of goods and services, I think we need to reverse that.

But based on macroeconomics, the main problems in the country is hunger, high cost of living, increase in transportation, lack of employment and others.

These are basic things. So, on what can be done, if I were in the villa or if I were to advise the President, I would say that there are three things that we need to do right now.

Number one is to reduce the prices of products and services by producing more; you need to increase the supply. Number two is to reduce the cost of goods and services by varying the demand. Number three is to find a way to intervene directly, which is a radical thing to do.

This is by reintroducing fuel subsidy. If you can crash the price of energy; petrol, diesel and electricity, then you would reduce the price of every other thing.

I don’t know how possible that would be because we are broke. But if we suspend some of the things we are doing now, we will be able to do that.

The other thing is to vary the demand, which will reduce the prices of goods and services. The way to do that is to have more public services, the government should provide more public transport.

If people that go to work in their private cars should stop using their cars it would reduce the demand for fuel.

People can go on public transport, train or on water and that would reduce the number of people buying petrol and the cost of energy. We all need to change our lifestyle. If you are eating fresh fish, you can go for frozen fish. People should do less of manicure and pedicure. If they do it every week, may be they should now make it monthly. People can go for low cut rather than going to the barbers every week.

The third one is to increase our production. It is easy to target producers, manufacturers and farmers by direct intervention. We can provide security for the farmers in the farm, subsidise energy for producers, we really need to produce and get things to the market.

There is also a radical approach that I have, which is that we should start importing foods, we should import ships of foods that would cover for the next three to six months, why we are producing our own so that we crash the prices.

But will that not affect the value of the Naira, which was what the government tried to do by stopping the importation of staple food?

It’s about importing food to help our agriculture, it’s not going to kill our agriculture, it would help it. That way, we are only trying to nurture our agriculture, but we should import food so that we don’t die in the process of nurturing our own. My position on that is that we should take a different approach.

Why?

Yes, because the government does not want them to bring too much of the items into the market or else it would crash the price and people would stop producing it.

So, the government subsidises agriculture so that the people can keep producing. We can tell them to give us those items and we will buy it at a better rate.

We could make arrangements to buy them without affecting our naira by doing exchange with them. We can even give them our oil in exchange for the items, so there are ways to do this.

We just need to think out of the box. Also, we can take them as loans, it doesn’t have to be direct, and it doesn’t have to be crude oil, it can be other materials. For instance, we can buy rice and pay for it with rubber. My major problem with the government is that when they say that better days are coming, they are not showing us the path.

I think that before now, like a year ago, the president should have told the people that ‘there is trouble, we are going to do certain things for the next one year and this would be the results of what we are doing.

If everybody sees the sacrifice they are making, and this is what they would use it for, it would give them a sense of understanding. The pain would be there, but it would be less because it would be a justified reason. I hope better days are ahead, but as an economist, I would say that better days are not ahead.

People thought that with Dangote Refinery and if our refineries are working, then it should be better and if the government is honest with what they get from crude oil, then fuel should not be expensive. What is your take?

I think the fact that our refineries are not working is a painful indictment of the leadership of this country. It shows how terrible people have been.

Those who say that if we have more refineries and that if we have more petroleum in the market it would make the price of petroleum go down are right. We should also be able to reap the benefits of the by-products of petroleum.

Would you say our problem is the system we are operating, such as our constitution and the call that we should go back to parliamentary system of government?

I think our constitution affects us a lot. We need to change our constitution. If we change our constitution, it would go a long way. Everybody is a product of the system under which he operates. Man is a product of the system in which he operates. Specifically, the first key words in the Nigerian constitution is wrong, it says; ‘we the people of Nigeria.’ If the first thing that brings people together is a lie, how can we expect something good to come out of it?

I am the Chairman of the Constitution Review Committee of the Patriots and we met the President recently. I believe that the constitution of the future should be based on devolution of power, and decentralisation of processes. It should be such that the people should be aware of it and be involved.

What we have now, even if you put a saint there he might turn out to be a devil because the system is not built for the people.

The government and the president are too powerful. Those who said we should go back to the regional system are right. At least, they should decentralise it anyway they can.