SAP not put together, implemented the way I conceived it – Idika Kalu

Well, in our clime, there’s a tendency to take diametrically opposite positions and then the arguments sounds very literate and informative; but the fact is that when you are talking about the field of Social Science, it is not always painted in black and white. So, it is not just a matter of statistics. The statistics are a convenient way of measuring what you can measure, but whoever is doing a measurement, particularly, as I said in our clime, has to be fully aware that there are so many things you cannot measure. But we are not even in that rare area of what you can or cannot measure- the stark realities of the Nigerian condition you don’t need to measure it, you can smell it, you can feel it, even if you were deaf or blind, you could even get a sense of that fact. Yes, by the sheer size of our population, by the sheer breadth of our land, we are adjudged the number one economy in Africa in terms of the number of GDP- which means the output of goods and services measured in whatever base. We are almost like 20 percent at the minimum ahead of South Africa. Having said that, anybody who has been to South Africa and who has been to other countries in North Africa or to even other countries in Central Africa would know that we have a long way to go.  First of all, the statistics already suggest that by just picking the GDP and the population on a per capita basis, we are way, way down the line; we are coming from behind really, and that’s even masking a whole lot of things you cannot measure, but which you can see. Well, you can measure them, but you have to be really quite careful in identifying all the caveats in transmitting your statistics into tangible living standards. There’s virtually no area in which we can say we are ahead of South Africa, for example, and that goes for quite a few other countries in Africa. When you start talking about quality of infrastructure, health facilities, nutrition, life expectancy as a result, prevalence of diseases that should have been extinct by now, the overall quality of life- in terms of basic needs, such as water, shelter, food, health, transport etc, we are way behind. A lot of resources have been mis-allocated, misappropriated, wasted etc; it is so massive that there is no way it should have enormous impact with the results we have in agriculture, mining essentially. We can see that in manufacturing we have barely improved even though at 7 percent we are way down our peers in what manufacturing contributes to GDP in other climes. You can see that in manufacturing, we have rarely improved from the last base, maybe from 3^1/2 percent to 7 percent. And at 7 percent, we are among the lowest in terms of the contribution of manufacturing to the GDP.  We are launching the industrial revolution; well, when you are launching, you are not launching a boat, or launching a car; there’s a whole lot of work to be done- training, resource exploitation, power supply to manufacturing, managing levels, supervision, and of course, the whole pervasive thing about lack of transparency, corruption, legal framework and the rest of them.

We made basic mistakes from 30 years back; nothing is wrong with that, what is bizarre is the fact that 30 years later we have not learnt anything. If you look from 1984 to now, you are talking about 30 years. When I hear people make remarks, I know they have not even learnt from or understood what went wrong. What we should be talking about is getting our priorities right. We imposed on ourselves self-strangulation, and that’s why we have the massive depreciation; you’ll be surprised when people come and say it is the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), never mind that the programme was not put together the way I conceived it, and was also not implemented the way I conceived it, and I never called it that name anyway. I knew there are smarter legs out there, who don’t know, but they don’t want to listen and they come out with this smart and quick generalisation. Thirty years later we haven’t really understood the needless mistakes we imposed on ourselves. A needless severe constraint on resources that was available in the face of viable projects which could have brought in resources to amplify what we have, put our people to work, produce goods and services that are quite exportable so that we could have maintained supply and demand of resources to an appreciative level; that means that the exchange rate would have never, ever have dropped the way it is. Well, I have explained this over and over, and they say ‘Oh he said we made mistake by not accessing IMF loan’. That’s not the real issue. It is not about taking IMF loan. But there’s nothing really wrong accessing $4 to $5billion a year in addition to what we have; that means that all the unutilised capacities would have been put to use; that also would mean that all the new entrants into the labour market would have had access to employment, and put resources to infrastructure such as power, modern rail (not the one that is colliding and breaking down before we can even get anywhere). We deserve a modern rail. A whole nation like Nigeria, number one economy should move out there and appraise the modern railway and find the resources that could match the gestation period of that investment to fund it. That’s the way things work in Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan. They do not have much but they are disciplined, and as a result they apply their resources to good use, and we should stop saying that we are different. We are not, but just that we are determined not to change. In those days like you asked the question, there was a point when industry was going at 15 percent in this country before we got it into our head- debt, debt, debt… The resources we should have used to apply to these things, we carted it to people outside and said we were having a heavy debt. People say those things; they don’t pay attention to advice. They don’t even ask question. The other day, I heard that we are raising all forms of funds from various places. Those were the mistakes we made of our own volition. We don’t have anybody whatsoever to blame. We just thought we knew everything.

I think, let’s face it; ours was more command economy, it was a military era. But I don’t think that should be fair to the military. They actually gave civilians leeway, and I tend to blame the civilians who were in charge of certain things in those days. They were not commanded to do things in certain ways, but some were too eager to please the ‘Ogas at the top’. And later we said it was the military. No. It wasn’t the military really. But much of what we see today is the boisterousness of democracy, never mind we are not really pressing deep down to have real democracy. I am not bothered by disputations, but I think the second thing one has to say is that things have changed (so many years down the line) in terms of population, more needs- things we should have done we didn’t do them-, the resources (even though they are now larger in real terms, even though they are larger in nominal terms, may be insufficient to meet the needs. So, the struggling for resources and the leakages are far more now than before, they are horrendous, reaching an absolute term. So, that’s why there’s so much trouble, but as I said earlier, let’s face the fact- the actors are not as organised as they ought to be, never mind this high-sounding words and phrases they use such as “robust”, “it is happening for the first time”, “Oh, those who came before never thought about it” and all that. I am not quite sure that those claims are correct. So, about what is happening with the budgeting these days- one, democracy allows you to jaw-jaw more and argue more on issues; two, we abandoned the problems for so long. They didn’t leave the job for those who have the exposure to do it; they needed to talk to the people who have the training and experience and what it takes but they were going behind and using all kinds of connections to put the country in a very bad situation, needlessly. Now that we have rebased, we have about 7 percent of GDP per capita, there are countries that are 125, look at the difference! The leakages are enormous. The fact that in June, we are still talking about this year’s budget being approved, of course, they are still carrying on because they always make provision and whenever the budget is eventually approved, they adjust for all the preemptions that had been made.

I think, by the time you define the functions of the CBN, they are the primary custodians of monetary policy. So, as I said earlier, at our level of development, independence of CBN is not absolute; it is not, however, to weaken the CBN, but to make sure that all the policies (fiscal and monetary) of the CBN are in tandem, or must synchronise with what all other institutions can provide. So, synchronisation of policy is the thing that will give him special recognition.

Issue of a stable monetary policy has to be geared in a way that it strengthens growth- growth of employment- leading to production of goods and services that will now stabilise the price in the near and medium term, not tightening just to maintain the exchange rate. At times, you may need to let that capacity be utilised, even if it will mean some temporary gyrations of inflation as long as you know that in the medium term everything will come back in place. So, it should really be a very adroit management, not orthodoxy, not sticking to…, I hear some people say the exchange rate must not be adjusted because Nigeria is import-dependent.  There’s nowhere in the Bible where it is said that Nigeria is import-dependent. It is the policies that we put in place that will enlarge domestic production and at the right prices they become export and import-substitution. That’s how you expand your basket. No country comes on board as export-led or forever import-dependent. It is a function of exchange rate, interest rate and monetary policy.

The most obvious one, to my mind, which everybody should acknowledge is that the Chinese wanted to assist us financially to build three refineries.  Our refineries, all of them were viable to different degrees. Some were far more viable than the others. At that time, I was very keen on accessing those resources; but to my surprise and that of the Chinese, we are still moving around building capacity, still import-dependent. We said we should take this oil production to cheap empty refineries in Europe, virolise them and bring them back because there’s so much excess capacity there. The costs are very low for doing that. In the meantime, you speed up privatization of the existing ones (refineries), let those who know the business, not what we keep doing with privatisation, let those who know the business, who have the deep pockets, who understand the technology and business of managing refineries, and who know what to do immediately they acquire the refineries- privatise that to them, and in the meantime, you are building new refineries. The resources are there, the frameworks are there, but as long as people are thinking what’s in there for them and then not just for the national interest, and that’s what I cannot deal with, that’s the major mistake we made.

That was 2002/2003. You know am very keen on public service, am still interested in the Nigerian politics, am very involved in the discussion of issues, but I won’t say am very enamored of political processes, divisions and ideologies etc. It is a very personal thing. If I ran for presidency 12 years ago, why would I be interested in doing so 12 years later? Times have past and I may not have the inclination to start running around doing the things I used to do. But I still have a lot of my supporters out there, any time I raise my hand that I want to go there, they will still support me. They are all over the country- from Kaduna to Ibadan, to Onitsha, to Ohafia to everywhere. And that is the truth. You will be shocked when you see the enthusiasm in the North and Lagos area, etc. If you are coming to be president, you are coming to be the president of everybody, know what it is all about. It is not about the office, it is about solving problems, mobilising, and managing transparently to solve yawning problems in the polity. So, I think am still vibrant in discussing the issues. I don’t know about being nimble enough to be trotting around the country now for that purpose. But if providence says it will come about, who am I? Am available.

Well, if there’s any one thing that riled me, it is the way we have treated this matter. You see two wrongs cannot make a right. You must take every issue on its own terms. There are few things that define humanity and civilised culture. I don’t care where the girls come from; I don’t care what the issues are, but put yourself in their position or in the position of their parents and guardians. If one girl is kidnapped in America, it will be the news the whole day until they get the person out. How we could have allowed this is beyond me. It is a wake up call for our leadership, for our security, for our legislature and for our whole society.