To err on the part of caution is forgivable but to progress on that path could be tragic. President Mohammadu Buhari in a recent function said succinctly that he does not need to include the private sector in his economic management team because of “selfish tendencies” to influence economic policies to their favour as against national interest. The begging questions becomes, what is this national interest? Can private employers toiling daily to give impetus the economy be accused of working against national interest? How safe is it to allow darting politicians to determine what constitutes our national interest in the first place?
Mr. Buhari’s bystander policy on the economy is rueful and it appears that he is playing Herbert Hoover with the economy-“O economy, heal thyself”.
In all successful economies, the private sector has remained the primary engine of growth. The public sector is the ignition of that engine while the private sector is the actual engine and both must collaborate at all levels to drive a successful economy especially one that is in recession. If the incidence of a bad, prostrate economy in recession is bad enough, the failure of this administration to engineer transformation expected for economic recovery is despairing. This administration is doing to hunger and poverty what the last administration did to corruption.
In their second quarter publication on the state of the economy, the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released scary stats of the economy with all economic indices in the red. In response to a question drawn from that Report, the Vice-President, Yemi Osibajo, was evasive blaming the previous administrations for the fate that has befallen the nation today but he assured that the government is “doing all it could” to reposition the economy. Nigerians need to know the components of this “almighty formula”. Curiously, a sideline popular politician was dismissive of NBS as a relic of our corrupt past that is due for overhauling and should not be taken seriously. In saner climes, such Report would engage the top echelons of government, the academia, the media and the think-tanks for weeks and months until appropriate policy responses are confected. Even the mainstream media appears to have been compromised as sinister silence pervades critical national questions in their reportage. A perfectly corrupt-free, poverty-stricken economy holds no prospects for anyone. This administration should emerge from the shell of corruption and face the economy. Like President Obama said, the choice between corruption and the economy is “false”. This view certainly, needs deeper introspection because if this administration wins the fight against corruption and lose that of the economy, it would have lost the war flatly. This writer is not holding brief for corruption but we should not sacrifice the economy on the altar of corruption. The fight against corruption must continue whether selective or witch-hunting as there is nowhere in the worlds were criminals can be pooled in just one net. Let the next administration do its own “selection” and fight in so far as the suspects are culpable. Come to think of it, corruption is within the purview of EFCC and ICPC and maybe CCB while the economy is the wholesome responsibility of the president. Mr. Buhari should leave the agencies to do their work while he takes full charge of the economy because only then will he appreciate the enormous task of shepherding the economy and the vital role of the private sector in that process.
In the United States of America, the powerhouse of free enterprise, no administration takes any decision affecting the economy without consulting and incorporating the views of the private sector and their think-tanks. The last time it was tried by the then President Thomas Jefferson in the infamous Ship Embargo Law of 1807, the economy could not take in the consequences and it was repealed before its first anniversary. Communist China, a champion of state capitalism, has followed suit such that China, the twentieth country by global ranking on GDP in the 80’s emerge two decades later as the second largest economy in the world still piling enormous pressure on the first with a GDP dwarfing that of the entire continent of sub-Saharan Africa. That growth was led, and still being sustained by the private sector. The greatest delusion of our time is the popular mantra: government has no business in business. Governments certainly have business in business and that business must be business and not nepotism and cronyism. Singapore proved it, China confirmed it, and America creeds on it and their global economic ranking tell it all.
The role of the organized private sector in the building of a sustainable economy cannot be overemphasized. For instance, the recent mass loss of jobs in the economy is a direct consequence of the calculated neglect of the private sector by the Buhari Administration. For the records, the TSA was conceived by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in the last administration. Being schooled in the American tradition, she broached the concept to professional policy analysts who diagnosed seventeen defects of the policy as presented and recommended several options including “multiple-operated, single treasury accounts (MOSTA)” to reinforce basic economic fundamentals yet achieve its laudable objectives of enhanced revenue and to mitigate corruption. This administration stumbled on the original instrument as defective as it was and began implementation without consulting the private sector and the result is worse than the analysts had predicted. Like the USA, the private sector is kicking but unlike the US, that policy subsists.
Again, in a recent lengthy and complicated report by PHC, an American think-tank on the Nigerian economy, it was found that at its full economic potentials, the naira should exchange for fifty naira to a dollar. Therefore, the difference or the percentage point between the efficiency rate and the actual rate depicts the quality of management behind the Nigerian economy. This efficiency ratio ought to be guiding our policy makers if we must make the grades. This study was financed and executed by the private sector.
Mr. Buhari’s infantry focus on corruption has made him to develop distaste for anyone or anything that he could not understand. This is curious but he should liberate himself from that “mental slavery” that he inducted himself into. To build a virile economy, we need a vibrant private sector and the economic management team must include them. The vacant office of the Special Adviser on the economy must come from this tribe as well. The convulsing economy needs the input of thorough bred professionals in the private sector now. In the war against insecurity, the president did not enlist the members of the Boys Scout Movement, he involved trained soldiers. Likewise, he should engage the professionals to combat the challenges of the economy. Their exclusion in one year has raked the economy. Do we need a soothsayer to foretell the next three years? We cannot continue to beat the calabash and expect to hear the sound of a drum. There is epidemic hunger in the land and the people want solutions, not excuses and intentions anymore. The time has come for corruption to recede for the economy to take full centre stage in the focus of this administration if we must avert full blown depression in the economy. Should Mr. President choose to remain lukewarm to the economy, he will realize, to his chagrin, that the economy may become the ultimate tragedy of his presidency. We hope not.
CHIMA NGADI
