Akin Ogunbiyi, businessman turned politician, and a governorship candidate on the platform of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Osun State is concerned about how states are run, what true federalism means, restructuring and how the country can become productive. Ogunbiyi, who is also the chairman of Mutual Benefits Assurance Plc in this interview with select journalist, shares his vision for leadership in Osun State and Nigeria. Modestus Anaesoronye brings the excerpt:
Many states have very low internally generated revenue and are depending on the Federal Account Allocation Committee to meet their expenditures. How can this be addressed?
One thing affects the other. How many states are viable the way they are run now? That is why I support the idea of regionalisation. A lot of our states are not viable. If we run federalism the way it should be, the states should have control over any resources that are in their domain. The power in the centre should be decentralised to the states. For example, Osun State can provide resources that oil is providing. We have stock of mineral resources in Osun State, but what is the state getting out of the mining business that the Chinese are doing in the state? If the Federal Government allows Osun to take over the resources and ensure the management of it, you will see the development. That is how it is happening in many other states. The way we operate our federalism is the issue. We first contribute resources to the centre and the centre now looks at it. Look at the recent agitation on Value Added Tax, a state that contributes little is getting more. Some states are challenging the Federal Government. They are right. They do not have to do any out of court settlement. They should challenge this federalism. That is the beginning of restructuring. The states should allow the Supreme Court to make a pronouncement because they are right. When you do not have control over the resources, you generate.
Again, in terms of IGR, many people cut corners. How many businesses are registered in the states, and how many businesses are paying taxes? Tax evasion is criminal. If you are a petty trader, there must be a registration.
Who is implementing the laws? The laws are there. I wish and I pray that the right leadership will emerge for this country and for each state. It takes boldness on the part of a state governor to challenge the Federal Government. If all of them can wake up, get SANs to interpret the law, let them go and challenge and get the right thing done.
In the days when we were doing regionalization, every region had its own economic power. Tafawa Balewa was a brilliant leader. Did he not go to school, how come they are now suppressing others from going to school?. Give somebody education, you have freed him for life. Let us look beyond rhetoric, this is time for practical action.
Doctors and lecturers are always going on strike, which is not good for the country. In fact, many of our medical doctors leaving for greener pastures abroad, whereas our healthcare is going down. What is the way to solve all these incessant strike actions?
The implication is capital flight, brain drain. It is because of the insensitivity of our leadership. Tell me one hospital that you can walk into and get the services that you need. Is it teaching hospital? They are glorified hospitals and we have many people working there who would not even go to work. All the doctors there have their own private practice. It is because of continuous neglect of these facilities. So, you will continue to have strike upon strike. Imagine when you do not even have funds to provide basic equipment, all you pay is salaries, and that is what you find not only in the health sector but also in education. Do you know that private universities are more than the public universities? What is the budget assigned to education and health, and do the monies go to such projects?. When you select people who are incompetent, they value the wrong thing. Somebody talked about knowledge, power and wealth, it is only a fool that will go for wealth in place of knowledge. If you have the knowledge, that knowledge will give you power, and that power you will use to create wealth. We know that in civil service when you retire, you get your pensions. The funds under the contributory pension scheme is about N13 trillion. The government has borrowed almost 80 percent of the funds. How will they payback? The way they will payback is to print naira. However, in this economy, who cares about pensioners? If you retire today, you do not even talk about pension for the next five years for which you may have even dropped dead. It is unfortunate. There has been neglect over the years, but there has to be somebody who is competent to handle this. Look at what happened in Ghana, the president went to a hospital and everything was empty. No equipment was working, and he said, I want this, if you don’t fix it in two weeks, everybody is fired. He got there, everything was renovated, equipment working, everything. Why, corruption.
A country that neglects its best and goes for medicals abroad, what do you expect. As long as we do not go the convention way of seeking knowledge, to give us power and to create wealth, instead of just spending and spending.
What do we produce? Is it not shameful that we do not have a refinery that is functional?. Most of the monies being taken abroad are going to be lost when the owners dies. And Nigerian will not disclose what they have to their children and wives. Even when they disclose, it becomes a major problem because if you have huge monies and you want to reclaim them, lawyers will feed fat and if you do not have the money to pay the lawyers, what will now become of the monies? A whole lot of resources are lost.
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With good leadership, does it mean all these challenges will stop?
There are many corporate gurus that have done very well in their chosen fields, and they have gone out there to go and take leadership courses to add value to their country, Nigeria. But the way and manner in which leaders are selected in this country is a challenge. By the grace of God, I started out with Mutual Benefits and now we employ over 5,000 Nigerians. You can imagine, the federal and state government that is the largest employer of labour, what do they give?. There are many civil servants that are totally unproductive, there are those that are corrupt. It is not as if they do not have something to offer, but because the system does not encourage them. We need good leadership in this country. When you have these good qualities, you put them into use to make this country to grow.
Nigeria’s inflation rate rose for many months but has been declining in recent months, according to the latest figures from the National Bureau of Statistics. Do you think the NBS figures reflect the market price?
When COVID-19 came, economic activities were not the way they used to be. But now we are having a bit of stability, and I think that is impacting positively on economic development and inflation rate. What was published by the NBS is close to reality when you look at how economic activities in the country have improved. It is not just government spending that is making the impact, but when you look at individuals and various companies, economic activities have actually picked up and that will definitely impact the economy. Look at real estate, trade and commerce; even major towns and cities in Nigeria, economic activities have picked up, except in the North where we have security issues. The level at which we were bringing things to the South was badly affected when COVID-19 started.
Many people who require travelling to do their businesses are scared of going by road because of insecurity, and travelling by air is expensive. How in your view is insecurity affecting the business environment?
I am happy with the aviation industry each time I travel and see the activities at the airport, and the response index with the level of traffic; it is phenomenal. The airlines are buying new aircraft. It is not that they are too comfortable, but they are managing themselves and they are responding. Why will people abandon the roads and go for aircraft? It is at a great inconvenience, I must say. What is the cost of a flight from Lagos to Abuja? It is so high. But can you blame them?, insecurity in this country has affected trade and commerce, even the few people travelling by road and carrying their goods are being disturbed on the road by Customs agents. Customs are to secure the borders, but if the goods have passed the borders, somebody is travelling within, and he has to pass through several checkpoints by Customs, and for every point, he has to drop something, it will only add to the cost of the goods, apart from the insecurity on the roads. You have to organise your security if you are going by road. Thank God for IT, services can be rendered online now. But no matter what, some services have to be done physically. We do not have good roads also, aside from the security challenge.
Nigeria is spending a substantial part of its revenue on debt servicing and is still borrowing. How sustainable is Nigeria’s mounting debt?
Let the government do an analysis of the debt profile and tell us what they used each debt they have taken for to do. The National Assembly will not ask questions. There is nothing wrong with taking debt. America borrows but it is still the wealthiest country. They are taking debt to satisfy their needs. If you are going to borrow money, attach it to a particular project. Let the project have its life, cash flow generation, then, the project will payback. If it is a social project like education and health, let us see exactly what you used the money to do. I do not subscribe to Nigeria taking any further credit because they took this money to satisfy the few. How can you be taking debt to satisfy your recurrent expenditure, is that how it is done? How sustainable is that? It is unfortunate that you pass debts to other governments after you. I will say Nigeria should stop borrowing to fund recurrent expenditure. The projects awarded in the country most times are exaggerated.
If you are borrowing money, give it to people that will deliver the projects, but do not overload the cost of the projects. How many billions have they spent? They are too complacent; nobody asks questions, and when our youths rose up, they killed them. I just pray that in the next elections, Nigerians should vote rightly. How can you sell your conscience because of money? The youths have the power to change the leadership in this country.
Let them come together and form a party. They have the population. I am challenging our youths to rise up. We do not have another country. Our country is one that we should be proud of. I am challenging the youths; do not just go and protest. There are better ways to do it. The election is in 2023; they can organise themselves now. Let them register online now. There will be sanctity in the unity of Nigeria; we should not compromise it. We can do it better.
