The All Progressive Congress APC, National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole on Wednesday took a holistic view of Nigeria’s economic challenges, berated the use of PENCOM fund to tackle budget deficits, calling for a complete overhaul of the President’s economic policies to address inequalities and tackle poverty.
Speaking at the first Presidential Policy Retreat under the current administration, Oshiomhole lamented that poverty has continued to ravaged Nigerians despite efforts by the current administration to address the scourge, urged governments to stop the use of PENCOM funds as stop gap measures to fund budget deficits and infrastructure development by both Federal and State governments
Oshiomhole who stated that the PENCOM fund was originally initiated to provide long term loans for housing development, called on the retreat participants to come up with implementable policies to address Nigeria’s social economic crises.
“The logic behind introducing the pension scheme under PENCOM, was that the workers social capital that they deducted every month which they would not need to draw on until they retire about 30 years or 35 years later, provide a basis for long term fund. Happily, pencom has generated over five to six trillion naira since it commenced operation.
“Unfortunately, the money is borrowed by government both federal and state and unfortunately it is not available to address the social purpose of the working people whose contributions the pension fund evolved.
“I ask our expert to recognize that the primary purpose of the workers social capital is that it would be creatively managed and deployed to workers social needs including housing, education and all the other factors. It wasn’t meant to fund government’s deficit, it wasn’t meant to support federal government deficit it was meant to address the primary social purpose of those who work. So that they are sure that by the time they finished their employment that they are retired, they have a modest home to retire to.
“I think we must visit these issues, address them because this president if he has opposition he is among the rich, if he has supporters he is among the poor. The poor people’s money must be used to addressed the critical challenges of the poor. May God drive our thoughts, our processes and rejig everything so that at the end of the day, those people would say yes sai baba! We elected him, we trusted him and he has delivered.
“Everywhere in the world , people have access to credit. We have to drop a system where unless you have stashed away millions of Naira , you can build a house in Nigeria
The APC Chairman observed that despite the progress made in the economy under the Buhari Administration there are still huge gaps to be filled adding that “there is a room for improvement”
Speaking further on the economy, he stated that there is the challenge of high rate of poverty in spite of all the efforts and in spite the fact that we are out of recession and we are able to talk about economic growth. But unfortunately the rate of growth is still far less than the rate of population growth. If our economic growth rate is still lower than the rate of population growth poverty would remain endemic.
“On the economy, there is the challenge of high rate of poverty, inequality, access to credit and mortgage. Mr President, I know deep in your heart and assessing the basis of our campaign the issue of inequality is primary.
“We don’t just want to grow the economy, we need to create more wealth, we are also interested in who is benefiting from this wealth and what policy instruments are required to ensure that inequality is addressed and that the average Nigerian people particularly the mass that constitutes the electorate benefit from the fruit of growth.
This, he said “will require a review of access to credit and access to mortgage, unemployment, low level of manufacturing and the need for diversification of the economy. In addition, there is the need to increase our revenue, block leakages and ensure that our budget delivers services to the citizens.
Oshiomhole who also lamented the late passage of budgets over the past few years, said it was inconceivable that “even though we had control in terms of membership of the National Assembly, we had our budgets being passed five months into the new year. Even that facts alone by itself explained challenges at the level of execution of budget.
On anti corruption war, he advocated the need to ensure more actions to covers preventive measures by involving Nigerian citizens, the society, and the prosecution of offenders.
There are many who have said that we should not just pursue corruption, we should deal with how to even prevent it.
He also urged participants to review policies that make it difficult to own a house in Nigeria.
“Everywhere in the world, people have access to credit and that credit. We can’t continue with a system where you have to have twenty million, fifty million or even hundred million to be able to build a house.
“The banking system is not delivering to the ordinary people. Access to credit remains a major issue. Let me share my own ignorance, I am unable to understand for example as a worker why in Europe when they are in economic recession they reduce their interest rate, in Nigeria when we are in recession we increase our interest rate.
“How do we price money at such level and expect that the ordinary people can borrow to set up businesses? We do need practical solutions beyond theories. We need to re-examining our condition what we saw different from what we see elsewhere in the world.
“If you want to buy a car Mr President, you must have twenty million to pay cash, to have twenty million to pay cash, if you are not a big businessman it cannot possibly come from a legitimate salary given the known salary structure in the Nigerian public sector and even the disclosed portion of the Nigerian private sector.
“So if people desire to buy a car and the banking system is not open to credit the only way is to steal big in order to purchase. But we have all travelled round the world, ten percent is enough to own a car if you have verifiable job and a banking history and you pay in installment month by month until you deferred the car. As a worker you know the benefit of that if you don’t work and you are fired that car would be recovered by insurance company or whoever is the lender.
“So we do need to review all of these so that in dealing with corruption, we deal with the preventive part.
He stared that only a long term national development plan to replace the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan which is expected to end in the next few years, will help to address these challenges
He also called for mechanism to increase revenue and blocking leakages and ensuring that every revenue agency remits to the federation account what is due in a timely manner.
He urged them to come up with the “ how and a radical change”, adding that So the issue is how? The need for every ministry, departments and agencies to have a strategic plan to review the question of how because to be honest, everybody knows what is wrong.
He called for a radical change in the budget contents, adding that “we need to do everything possible to reduce the recurrent expenditure from the current 70 percent and increase the budgetary allocation to the four sectors that are part of the life of citizens, namely the health sector, education, agriculture, infrastructure.
The more money we spend on recurrent, the less money is available for these critical areas.
It is not acceptable that we spend 80 percent on recurrent and we have some of our children in some states being taught under the tree even during this raining season.
“There is need for radical decisions to change this so that those millions of poor people who we saw across the states who fanatically believe in the person of our president and through the president, connect with our party, we must put appropriate policies in place to ensure that at the end of the day we can measure how all of the things we have done or we are going to do at the end of the four years has impact on their quality of lives.
He also urged participants to come up with policies that will help rejig the security apparatus and operational use of community policing which is already being discussed “but I think we need to go into the specific on the issue of “how.”
“We need programmes that touch in the lives of such as the social housing, social investment programme, access to public healthcare, access to public education and support to small scale industries” he said
Tony Ailemen, Abuja
