“Let us move forward.” We hear a bit less of that now but for two or three decades, this was the most popular phrase to come out of the mouths of Nigerian leaders. Whenever there was a disturbing issue of a national, regional or even local nature, the common refrain was, let’s move forward, get over it and let’s make progress. Well, not so fast. It was Bishop of Sokoto Mathew Hassan Kukah who said at a conference at Arewa House, Kaduna in the 1990s that it is not from every location that you seek to move forward. He said for a man who is standing on the edge of a cliff, his best course of action is not to move forward. It is better if he retraces his steps, because moving forward from that location would result in falling off the cliff and deep into the precipice.
At the weekend, I was thinking of his counsel with respect to several issues at the forefront of Nigerians’ minds in recent times. The most obvious one is the total deregulation of the downstream petroleum sector, better known as “removal of subsidy.” At first it made a lot of sense, to me at least, that Nigeria should not spend trillions of naira subsidizing fuel consumption, especially when most of the refined fuel was imported, and doubly so when there was a lot of rip-offs when “importers” shuffled papers around the desks of regulatory agencies and subsidy on the same sheaf of papers could get paid several times.
When the Buhari Administration stopped budgeting trillions for fuel subsidy and instead adopted the system of “under recovery,” it turned out to be worse, because the same agency that sold the country’s crude oil abroad, used the money to import refined petrol at a price it claimed, and then sold it for far less inside the country. Ok, but now that government has deregulated the fuel supply market, what have we got? Ever increasing petrol prices, attributed to the naira’s ever falling value against the US dollar. Plus, queues and threats of strikes. We also have endless bickering between NNPC, Dangote Refinery and independent marketers; there is such a welter of claims, counter claims and allegations that we do not know who to believe.
But what has been the gain? With fuel subsidy’s end, hundreds of billions more are gushing into the Federation Account every month. The Federal and state government treasuries are smiling to the banks. Local Government treasuries too are supposed to be awash in money courtesy of a Supreme Court ruling that is however yet to see the light of the day. They are required to democratize first and all the states are rushing to hold local government elections but in every state that held them, the ruling party in the state won every chairmanship and every councilors’ seat.
With all these monies gushing into Federal, state and hopefully soon, LGA treasuries, one would have expected to see the whole country awash in infrastructural and social welfare projects. By now we should be seeing a lot of public schools and hospitals undergoing expansion and renovation, massive investment in key federal projects such as railways and Trunk A roads, many innovative social welfare projects and thoughtful investments in economic sectors that will result in economic growth and job creation, instead of long lines of poverty-stricken people waiting to collect “palliatives.” What we hear, is that most of this extra money instead goes to the forex black market and is stashed in powerful people’s private safes. I am playing the devil’s advocate here. If the end of fuel subsidy is not resulting in massive public sector investment in economic and social sectors and has instead led to a historic increase in cost of living, should we roll it back? I am just asking. Are we to “move forward” from this cliff’s edge or follow Bishop Kukah’s advise and retrace our steps?
Like fuel subsidy withdrawal, I was also an early supporter of naira deregulation against foreign currencies. Sometimes last year, the naira shot to nearly 2,000 to the US dollar, but Central Bank did some magic, rolled it back to around 1,200. A planted online story claimed that the dollar was selling for less than 1,000 at a certain Bureau de Change at Abuja’s Zone 4; I rushed there but did not see it. Commissioned or not, some foreign media houses rushed to declare that the naira was among the world’s best performing currencies.
When the naira began to slip back, we heard different stories, that it is because our economy is not productive, that our economy and society are import dependent, that Diasporans are not sending as many dollars as they should send, that it is the fault of international markets where crude oil price has fallen below what we were hoping, that it is the fault of vandals because they are stealing too much crude and denying the government much needed revenue, and also that top officials and their collaborators are mopping up all the dollars and stashing them away since they themselves have no faith in our national currency. I am not doubting any of those claims. But since we appear to have no control over any of those factors and no hope of reigning any of them in anytime soon, could be kindly consider retracing our steps? I am only playing the devil’s advocate here. If the naira will keep falling in relation to the dollar and cost of living will continue to increase since we are an import dependent nation, then could we kindly consider retracing our steps from the cliff’s edge and de-floating the naira exchange rate once again?
I know CBN will say that if you keep an artificially managed exchange rate, powerful people will get the dollar at official rate and unload it at the black market with spectacular personal profit, but at least that did not lead to a phenomenal increase in cost of living for most citizens. Please, I am just playing the devil’s advocate. Anyone who thinks we should move forward from the edge of this cliff, should kindly proceed.
The tax reform bills that the President sent to the National Assembly and is not willing to recall them even after the National Economic Council asked for more consultation, was that not another case of moving forward from the edge of the cliff? The National Economic Council, headed by the Vice President, includes all the 36 state governors and all the Federal Government’s key economic officials. The latter did not come out publicly and say that they opposed NEC’s decision. It was surprising in the first place that those bills, apparently drafted by the President’s tax reform committee, were sent to the legislature without the buy-in of NEC, when this matter affects all the states and a consensus is sorely needed. The Presidency should not move forward from this cliff’s edge; it should bring the bills back for more consultation, as NEC asked for. With proper explanation, they may go back to the legislature in the same form or with only minor modifications, but with ample moral quantity derived from national consensus.
Yet another matter on which we should tarry awhile and contemplate our next step is the matter of switching our vehicles to use Compressed Natural Gas [CNG], which is much cheaper than petrol. When government first announced it, we were all happy because everyone would love a big reduction in our current petrol bills. Alas, the cost of converting vehicles to CNG is rather prohibitive for most Nigerians. While we were still searching for a way, this story exploded on the wires that Malaysia, which has been using CNG for two decades, is backing away from it because of safety concerns. Here at home too, one vehicle exploded in Edo State due to CNG, but the authorities said it was because the tank was fitted at the roadside, not at a proper workshop. That was cold comfort. In Nigeria here, how many proper workshops are there, compared to roadside mechanics who fix most of our vehicles?
On one cliff-edge matter, it appears we have already retraced our steps. With the change of guard at the headship of the Federal Ministry of Education, the new minister apparently abandoned the obsession of his predecessor to insist that no one under 18 years of age should be admitted into a university. If admitting Under 18s into tertiary institutions had inflicted any kind of damage on Nigeria’s polity, economy or society, the former minister did not sufficiently explain. Nor, apparently, did he offer the reasons in his hand-over notes, otherwise the new minister may not have been in a hurry to walk back from that cliff’s edge.
Then there is the matter of the national electricity grid, whose collapses in recent times are becoming as regular as the weekly depreciation of the naira. We privatized all the Gencos and Discos more than ten years ago. Does the problem lie with them, or with Transmission Company of Nigeria [TCN] that was not privatized, or even with the Power Ministry, a former minister of which is on trial for allegedly siphoning away tens of billions of naira? Maybe we should step back from this power sector cliff and hand the whole sector over to California’s Pacific Gas & Electric, Germany’s E.ON or to China Huaneng Group.
Last but not the least, we should consider stepping back from the local governments’ democratization through elections cliff. The local elections held so far are setting a very bad precedent for the country’s democracy as a whole. State Independent Electoral Commissions [SIECs] acting as lapdogs, ruling parties in the states improbably winning everything on offer, with one local government chairman’s chair “dashed” to the Senate President even after the result had earlier been declared and another party’s candidate won it? This is another charade of dancing on a cliff’s edge. Should we move forward from here [right into the deep ravine of democratic despotism], or should we retrace our steps?
