By Daniel Kanu
Prof Anthony Kila is a policy analyst, strategy and development expert at the Commonwealth Institute of Advanced and Professional Studies.
In this exclusive chat with Sunday Sun, he took a critical look at the President Tinubu administration, scoring it low on delivery, while listing the pathway to economic recovery.
He also spoke on other vital political issues also. Excerpt:
There seems to be so much hardship in the country today and critics are attributing it to lots of errors by the government in its policy formulation and implementation. Given your background, what can you decipher as the cause?
I think it’s a bit on both policy formulation and policy implementation. There is a premise that the past administration, the one that left almost a year ago, left the country in disaster economically and in terms of reforms as well. So, we were already in trouble. In terms of policy, the first policy that was embraced by this government was the removal of fuel subsidy. There is a general consensus in the country that the fuel subsidy had to go, that it is not sustainable, that is the general view. And it was argued that the president of the new administration, removing subsidy was a courageous act that will lead to reform. I am one of those people that never agreed on the removal of the fuel subsidy. I did not agree for the removal of fuel subsidy for two reasons: Number one is because I believe that subsidy is needed in this country because it is one thing that the people of the country benefits from. The people themselves subsidize almost everything; they do their water, security, electricity etc, even the schools are bad, so the poorest people are going to private schools, too many people are going to private healthcare etc. All the duty of government, the government is absent in it, they are not living up to their responsibility. So, subsidy is one thing that could have been maintained because it is one thing everybody was benefitting from or at least the majority were benefitting from it. There were two major reasons they gave for the removal of subsidy. The first one is that there is no money to fund it, the second reason is that it was funding corruption of a few people. Now, my take is that, if a few people are making most people suffer, it is better to focus on those few and stop them from looting the money, so that many can benefit. In this case, we have sacrificed the majority and we are not even chasing the few that were looting the money, that is the problem. I was also against it because I knew that the removal of fuel subsidy would cost what in economics is called cost-push inflation and that is what we are having now. When you take two major things that are linked, the cost of energy i.e. subsidy, the cost of transport, that is the first immediate thing you will see. It will cause hardship, that was why people like us are always saying don’t remove subsidy, and we have been proved right because if the reason for removing it is to stop some people from looting it, it now means we were better off when they were looting it. At least the cost of petrol was not this high. So, is it not better to welcome back the looters because the current non-looter status is not helping Nigerians. To compound the matter was the unification of the Forex window, the floating of the forex in a country that is largely dependent on imports, be it for consumption, be it for production, we have to pay special attention on the cost of foreign exchange. The fact that we have allowed it to float hoping that somehow mechanisms of the market will adjust it is what is causing this problem because everything we buy; from spare parts to machineries to telephones that we use, to repair of things they have doubled the price because the cost of forex has gone up, especially the dollar. These for me are the origins of our trouble, so it is not just how it was implemented, but also how it was conceived. I have argued that the policies conceived themselves were bad and the implementation was also bad. If I were in-charge of the economy in this country, I would have delayed the removal of subsidy; I would have delayed the unification of the window to make sure that people are not being hit from two different directions at the same time. The argument for doing it by some people is that it is better to do this hard reform and then we suffer a bit and we get out of it, but as you can see, businesses are folding up, people are losing their jobs, then some people might not survive it, that is the problem. And on top of that we have been having more taxes, more demolitions. We have been having things that do not show that those in-charge of our affairs understand how had things are for people. To make it worse, this cyber levy that came up, I just found it counter intuitive, in terms of what to expect, I find it clumsy in terms of the way it has been expressed, and I find it debilitating in terms of prospect because if our focus is prosperity and growth, taxing people, levying people is not the way to prosperity and growth. You have to leave money in people’s hands if you want prosperity and growth. What you can do is perhaps, to guide the kind of money that goes into people’s hands, to make sure money is going into production. It is production that will generate wealth and jobs. When you tax consumers, when you tax everybody you are making people suffer more and making them poorer.
So, what should the government be focusing on now towards getting some of these things right?
The government needs to do three things in my view. No one is that the government needs to come out in a very clear and direct way to say, fellow Nigerians, we are bankrupt, or fellow Nigerians, the coffers are very low, we need to sacrifice, but to do that the government needs a moral authority. When you tell everybody that the reality is that we need to sacrifice, you need to follow that statement to say because of that, we are going to reduce the money people in government are taking, we won’t buy cars and because of that we are going to make sure that we don’t waste money anyhow. You will now focus on reforms that will make life easier. For example, you will freeze tax, I understand the government needs money, then you have to think outside the box on how to raise money. You go into private partnerships, you have to go into privatization, this is the time to sell or lease a lot of our assets so that money, especially forex, can come into the country. If I am in-charge of the economy, I will take, for instance, assets of the NNPC and I will go and put them on the stock exchange in London or in New York, so that people will buy the shares and we will generate a lot of forex straight away. Another thing the government can do is to make very clear direct policy aimed at increasing production and productivity. Agriculture is a major sector to be given serious attention, people are hungry, and so you need to make food available, it will decrease a lot of the tension. I would advise for the policy that will really direct at boosting agriculture, man power development. At my institute, the Commonwealth Institute, we are working on a programme to boost Agric business managers. You want to do that kind of thing when you decide, for example, to train about 5,000 new Agric managers. This is more than five managers per local government in Nigeria. These managers will really go to bring each one of them 50 persons to agric. You have to imagine a vision where agric is competing with other sectors of the industry as a point of attraction, so you train them and give them all the support that they need. Of course, you need to fight insecurity as well. Then in terms of consumption, you can also manage our expenses. This is a time, across the country, for instance, to make a law to say, landlords should freeze increase in rent for now. It is time to make a law against agents charging 20 per cent plus 20 per cent getting an apartment for a client. I went online to chat with some people and to discover that in some places agents are charging even 30 per cent. There needs to be an intervention to say, not at this moment. Even where people are being paid monthly salary, it doesn’t make sense to be charging people yearly rent. Those are the kind of reforms they should be pushing for. We need to turn the government to a job creating, work generation centre. But you do not do it by government doing it itself, you empower people to do it with true fiscal policy. Now, get people to be doing it so that it will be in a way where the people are rich. What we have now is a situation where the government is rich, people are poor. That is not the path to prosperity. At the moment, we need reforms with human face. For now, we have a situation where the government is rich and the people are poor. It should be the other way round, where the people are rich and the government poor. That is the pathway to go.
You mentioned insecurity as part of the issues to be tackled if the agriculture sector is to get a boost. So far, do you think the government is winning the war on security challenge?
Not at all. We have not won the war on insecurity. Nuhu Ribadu has argued that there are improvements, yes improvement is the way to success, but when it comes to the issue of security, it is either the place is secured or is not secured. The proof of the pudding is security, it is a situation where the people can go back to their farms. That is what we really want to see. We want the farms to be secured, where there will be no IDPs . I think we need to deploy more foot soldiers on the ground, but more importantly, we need to deploy technology. So that the same way they used in detecting the person who abused Aisha Buhari, they should now use it to detect terrorists across the country. We also need to have a wholistic approach to fighting insecurity. Nigeria does not produce ammunition, they are imported into the country that means that the Customs must be fully involved, fully integrated in the fight against terrorism. The financial security must be up and doing to trace, monitor the monies of the terrorists, monitor what people are doing with money etc, but above all, we need to declare emergency on insecurity. Get a new plan and jettison the one that is not working. Try something new.
What is your take concerning the commotion in Rivers State?
What is happening in Rivers State is a show of shame. It is an insult in the face of the modern state because what is going on in Rivers State are petty people fighting for themselves. The people of the state should know that the people fighting, both the executive and the legislature, are spending time and the resources of Rivers State and good governance will be compromised. Legislators should not be loyal to a man, but to be dedicated to their constituents and guided by the law. All of us need to be very careful because bad things always spread faster. It is Rivers today; it might be the rest of us tomorrow. I think that the National Assembly needs to step in. We need to see the Rivers State issue as a national issue, not a state issue.
Briefly assess the President Tinubu-led APC government as it clocks one year in office this month?
They have spent 25 per cent of their time in power, a quarter of four years. So far, so bad because the poetry was very high when they were coming to power, but we have not seen the result. The expression, hit the ground running they said it, it was the campaign of Asiwaju Tinubu that they will hit the ground running, but clearly, they have not hit the ground running or if they are running they seem to be running in the wrong direction. They are high on intension, but low on delivery. They have not shown themselves to be very prepared. They announced Ministers late than they should have for a dynamic government led by a president whose presidency is a lifetime ambition; they should have come with the ministers quicker than they did. There were some low hanging fruits, they should have come with ministers with portfolio attached to their names, they didn’t do that. Those were the signs that things were not going to be as expected. The reforms that they are doing, do not seem to be very well thought through. But the good thing is that they are able to change their mind when the people talk or see the error. Ideally, they should have thought it through before doing it. But the fact that they listen, it could be said that the president is a listening president, because when some of us wail, he listens, although some will want to insult me when I give my candid view on an issue. They are even saying that I am a chief wailer of Nigeria. But my concern is for them to do the right things. So, when some of us wail, at least they listen to it and adjust. Unlike the previous president who promised so much on fighting corruption and failing in the fight, the current president, interestingly, didn’t promise much there, but he has suspended some people even close to him, a minister and he has not intervened in the battle with some governor’s charges. I think somehow that is a plus although we have not seen major result. In terms of the clear expectations of the people, it is very difficult to grade the administration unless a miracle happens before it clocks one in less than two weeks from now. What people have in mind is the cost of the dollar, the price of bread, the price of rice and garri etc, that is not looking good for the masses so we have to rate the president low. So far, so bad. Maybe they will do better, but for now the performance is low. This quarter is a bad quarter. They need to have a re-think and come out with something better if they have any left in their bag.