• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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The police and ease of doing business

Police

It is good news that Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, improved its ranking on the latest World Bank ease of doing business index. The country now ranks 131 on the World Bank’s Doing Business 2020 index. It has moved up 15 places from its 2019 spot and has been tagged as one of the most improved economies in the world for running a business.

Nigeria made a 15-place rise on the World Bank’s 2020 Doing Business Index. It ranked 131st, from 146th last year; and up 39 places since 2016, when it established the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC). Its goal is a Top 70 position by 2023, we are told. The index is a yearly ranking that assesses the business environment in 190 countries using various indicators including paying taxes, trading across borders, starting a business and protecting minority investors.

Good thinking; good hope.
But when you juxtapose this with certain happenings in the country’s business space, you will find out that some unprogressive elements in the business space are clogs in the wheel of progress. Such elements are unworthy personnel of government institutions, the police as a case study here.

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Well dressed for work on Monday October 28, 2019, I set out for a Paint Manufacturers Association Coating Show 2019 appointment in Ikeja. Like other commuters on wheels, heading for Ikeja, in pains with the traditional Lagos arduous traffic. Suddenly, along Charity/Oshodi axis, about 10 am, a fellow in mufti, jumped into my lane, in front of three other vehicles that were ahead of me, used them to slow me down, passed them on and directed me to park along the corridor between the express way and the service lane.  I parked wondering what was amiss. And within seconds, in a gangster manner, he jumped into the front seat beside me and asked for my vehicle particulars. With full confidence, I made for my papers,   and as I was doing this, he opened the automatic door lock and let in his two uniformed colleagues.

Can you imagine this kind of intimidation, this kind of distraction, early in the morning when my brain was engaged in building up a robust engagement I was going to have with chieftains of the nation’s industry?
It turned that he was not interested in my papers. Said he:  ‘They are not interested in your papers. They are contravening you for doo traffic offence’.  ‘Which traffic offence? ‘I asked. He couldn’t offer an answer. I wondered why he was referring to his colleagues as ’they’.

Perhaps he was one of these touts police at check point hire to do dirty jobs for them, a crude decoy strategy. None of the two policemen was an Inspector of Police which I believe the law demands or a check point to be legal. I gave them a good fight. If they knew they were dealing with a student of communication and strategy, they would have deployed a better strategy. He made for my ignition key; I resisted and told him he had no grounds whosoever to so. How could I allow a stranger who threw at me trumped charges and one whose identity was questionable to take over my car, a duly registered car with up-to-date papers? In fact, one of the two armed policemen in uniform asked him to allow me drive my car. He continued: ‘You are proving stubborn.  I will tow this car to the station if you don’t cooperate.’  ‘You will do no such thing,’ I told him firmly and to let him know that I knew my rights as newspaper editor and pastor.

That did the magic. He abruptly told his colleagues “Let us let him go”. They let me go after succeeding in making me go late for my appointment.  You have this type of scenarios across the country every day. They constitute obstacles to business operations. You will recall a number of commercial bus conductors and drivers have lost their lives for not parting with N20/N50 ‘regular due’ which the police use touts to collect. This is of public knowledge.  Do we care?
It is of public knowledge that the security personnel detailed to help make truck drivers solve the traffic lock-jam in Lagos connive with truck driver to break the rules. Truck driver spoken to confirm they pay them to break the rules. Truck owners have special budgets for this. With this arrangement, the truck drivers smile home with more money as they have the discretion of disbursing such monies.

Tie this to congestion at the ports, demurrage,  current border closure, dearth of raw materials at the factories, and inventories that cannot be moved to consumers in other West African countries and beyond, and see what it does to ease of doing business.
We must close the gaps raised here if we must not reverse our ease of doing business gains that we are currently celebrating.