Faced with a fragile economic recovery from a recession that threw millions of Nigerians out of jobs, the 2019 election will be about the economy and which presidential candidate has the most viable strategy of putting Nigeria on a sustainable economic growth path.
Ordinarily, the economy should dominate campaign discourses by aspirants wishing to contest for the presidency in 2019. But as yet, very few candidates have been talking about their economic agenda for the country and what they intend to do to tackle the country’s legendary economic challenges.
BusinessDay takes a cursory look at the campaign rhetoric of the major presidential aspirants and what their proposed economic blueprint for repositioning the Nigerian economy.
Muhammadu Buhari
For president Buhari, who has finally declared his intention to seek another term in office, his economy agenda is contained in the Economic Recovery Growth Plan launched by his administration in 2017.
Beyond just tackling corruption and improving security, the president plans to restore sustainable, accelerated inclusive growth and development; investing in the people and building a globally competitive economy.
It hopes to achieve the target through stabilization of the macroeconomic environment, achieving agriculture and food security, ensuring energy sufficiency in power and petroleum products, improving transport infrastructure, and driving industrialization through local and small business enterprise.
The plan had hoped to grow Nigeria’s GDP by 2.19 percent in 2017 and 7.0 percent by the end of 2020. It also targets reducing inflation rate to single digit by 2020 and increasing federal government’s revenues from N2.7 trillion in 2016 to N4.7 trillion in 2020. It also outlined initiatives to boost oil production to 2.5 million barrels by 2020; privatise selected public enterprises/assets, and revamp local refineries to reduce petroleum product exports by 60 percent by 2018.
But like many things with the Buhari administration, most of the targets set for 2017 have not been met. Against the plan to grow GDP by 2.19 percent in 2017, growth in the same year was just 0.83 percent. As against the content of the plan, the government has refused to privatise State Owned Entreprises that are not performing and have become a drain on the public purse.
Equally, the government has not made any progress in getting the private sector to invest in key national infrastructure projects even when it is obvious the government has no resources to sustain the investments required to reposition the country’s infrastructure and economy.
At the campaign trails in 2015, and especially at meetings with members of the private sector, then candidate Buhari laboured to convince Nigerians that he is a converted liberal democrat and would ensure that the country will continue to operate a free market economy.
However, his actions and body language, since coming to power, have all been anti-business and pro state-led economy approach.
From the retention of subsidy on petrol, the refusal to approve the privatization of the nation’s dilapidated and perpetually non-functional refineries – even as all experts voiced their doubts on the state’s ability to revamp the refineries and get them to operate at a profit, the mopping up of funds from banks and their concentration in the Central Bank even when the economy needs revamping, to the talk about a national carrier, national shipping line and other such relics of the 1970s and 1980s that are no longer fashionable.
In 2016, when challenged on the decision to exclude members of the private sector from the economic management team, he did not mince words in his response: “We are averse to an economic team with private sector members,” because such persons “frequently steer government policy to suit their narrow interests rather than the overall national interest.”
Buttressing the president’s position further, the media adviser to the vice president, Laolu Akande further explained that the presidency considers economic management as purely “a government affair.”
Perhaps, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates better captured the mismatch between the government’s ERGP“The Nigerian government’s economic recovery and growth plan identifies investing in our people as one of three strategic objectives”.
“But the execution priorities don’t fully reflect people’s needs, prioritising physical capital over human capital,” Gates was quoted as saying in an expanded national economic council presided over by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo.
The ERGP looks like a beautiful plan drawn up by bureaucrats but with no input, knowledge and buy-in of the president. At any time the president spoke ex tempore, outside prepared speeches, he only talks about the fight against corruption, insecurity and food sufficiency. Sadly, on the anti-corruption front, the government is yet to record any major conviction. While progress has been made in agriculture, the rising waves of herdsmen attacks and killings in the Northern states have the tendency to derail the government’s agricultural revolution and deepen insecurity in the country.
Atiku Abubakar
Atiku Abubakar, former vice president and now perennial presidential aspirant, has been saying all the right things that sounds good to the ears of Nigerian progressives: restructuring, privatisation, job creation, revamping the education and health sectors and generally growing the economy.
“We must acknowledge that in federal systems that work, federating units cede certain powers to the centre. In our strange federal contraption, it is the centre that is creating federating units, giving them money and monopolising most power and resources. Thus, our state governments are no longer performing as federating units. Rather they currently seem like dependent provinces of the central government in Abuja,” Abubakar said at the presentation of a book titled: “We Are All Biafrans” on May 31 in Abuja.
“I have been shouting myself hoarse, asking why we should have federal roads, federal schools, federal hospitals, etc. I have called for state police, for the states that so desire, to help us provide more effective security. In 2012, I went before ALGON in Enugu and told them that their clamour for local government autonomy from state governments is misguided. I told them that it is wrong for the federal government to be creating local governments and giving them money directly from the Federation Account,” Atiku stated.
Atiku’s key economic agenda are not so different from the ones he espoused in 2015: The long-term goal is wealth generation through infrastructure development and power, education and skill acquisition, security, entrepreneurship and good governance, agriculture and food security and Niger Delta development. Atiku has always maintained that if elected president, he will address habits and practices that currently compromise policy implementation, but also those that would promote the hallmark of good governance through effective policy monitoring, evaluation and implementation.
In taking his campaign for restructuring and state viability further, the former vice president, at a Chatham House lecture in London titled:” The Importance of Strengthening State Economic Management Systems” promised to offer states a matching grant of $250 million each to challenge them to enhance their internally generated revenue.
“Beyond institutional and administrative reforms to improve operational efficiency of the revenue agencies the federating units will be challenged to double their efforts in rebuilding the fiscal-social contract, by enhancing service delivery in key areas such as health, education, water supply and infrastructural development.
“Only this would change the predominant perception that government revenues are diverted to the private bank accounts of politicians and their cronies.
“And it is for the purpose of making states lose their addiction to federal allocation, to make them look inwards, and return to the healthy competition of 1957-1966, when Nigeria practiced her unique brand of true federalism known as regionalism, that I suggest the introduction of matching grants to states, that have succeeded in increasing their internally generated revenue,” Atiku said.
“My idea is for the introduction of Matching Grants to be taken from the revenue accruable to the Federal Government for the purpose of matching the Internally Generated Revenue of each state in order to encourage states to become self-reliant. “If I have my way, the Federal Government will match state’s IGR up to $250 million per state,” he concluded.
But there’s a snag. Atiku has a corruption perception problem and it he will need all to be at his best to persuade Nigerians to give him a chance even after laying out fantastic plans for the economy and the country.
Others
Although other aspirants like former Jigawa state governor, Sule Lamido, former Kaduna state governor, Ahmed Makarfi, former Kano state governor and Senator, Rabiu Kwankwaso and Gombe state governor, Ibrahim Dankwambo, have declared their intentions to contest, they are yet to present their concrete views on the economy.
Among the less fancied candidates though, like former deputy governor of the Central Bank, Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu, Publisher of Sahara Reporters , Omoleye Sowore, and Baba-Ahmed, Pro-chancellor of Baze Unversity, Abuja, ideas on how to turn around the economy are not in short supply.
According to Moghalu, the time had come for technocrats, intellectuals and experienced people to take power from career politicians. “The future of Nigeria rests in technocratic interventions. We need thinking people that will take Nigeria from the politics of stomach infrastructure to politics of mental infrastructure,’’ he said at an event recently. Moghalu hinged his presidential ambition on the need to reposition Nigeria for economic prosperity “by creating an enabling environment for a productive, innovation-led economy, with a better approach to taxation that will reduce dependence oil revenues.”
“My government will establish a productive innovation-led economy that reduces dependence on oil revenues, establish a public-private venture capital fund with a minimum capital of N500 billion (with private sector co-investment to fund could attain a size of N1 trillion) to create jobs by investing in new businesses by unemployed youth, reform the Nigerian Police Force by recruiting, training and equipping a minimum of 1.5 million persons with improved remuneration to create safe and secure communities, empower women with a 50:50 gender parity policy in political appointments, and initiate a constitutional restructuring of Nigeria to restore true federalism for stability and prosperity,” he added.
The erudite professor of International Business had during his declaration lamented that nearly 60 years ago, the vision and hope of Nigeria’s founding fathers such as Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo and Ahmadu Bello, have not materialized following successive years of misrule. He added that military rule, oil boom and bursts and failures of the civilian political class have combined to rob Nigeria of what seemed its destiny at independence in 1960.
“I am standing with the 100 million Nigerians experiencing crushing poverty, living on less than N300 a day.”I am here today because 33 million of our able men and women are unemployed or underemployed, nearly 15 million children are out of school, and only 60% of Nigerians are literate” he said during his declaration.
He said that education will enjoy a prominent place in his government pointing out that he will establish and propagate through the educational system a foundational philosophical worldview for the Nigerian state, around which all Nigerians will unite in a common purpose. “Education will be allocated 20 per cent of the federal government budget, with a progressive increase to 30 per cent over eight years,” he said.
Sowore, on his part laid out a three-pronged policy covering security, power and infrastructure, which he said would lift the country from its present state. He promised to create at least 250,000 new jobs in the agricultural sector, with commercial ranching operations that would cover 20 million cows. For Baba-Ahmed, his main policy thrust would be to stabilize the naira by tackling the current high risk factors, reduce interest rates and “flood the capital market with investible funds.”
But as with many of these promises, the presidential candidates have be shortcoming on the “how” of achieving these promises.
As an analysts put it “It is not enough for these politicians to make all these sweet promises about the economy. They must be able to tell us how they intend to achieve these economic goals they set for themselves. If you say you are going to create three million jobs, you must be able to show us a workable strategy on how you are going to do that. Enough of empty promises.”
There are expectations that more presidential aspirants will be challenged on their economic agenda as the 2019 elections approach.
Christopher Akor and Iniobong Iwok
