Independentng.com homepage - Home of Independent Newspapers Nigeria Limited on the InternetI know those who annulled June 12 and killed Abiola - Mubashiru
Abacha was a better economist than Obasanjo - Asiodu
In the first part of the interview, renowned
administrator, industrialist and politician, Chief Phillip Asiodu, explained
the circumstance that led to his exit as Economic Adviser to President Olusegun
Obasanjo. A former presidential aspirant, the septuagenarian in this concluding
part, divulges what he would have done differently had he been elected
President. He also told our Reporters,
Ntai Bagshaw,
Bamidele Osha and Bola Omilabu, why Obasanjo’s economic policies have
failed to fly and reflects on why he thinks the lateHead of State, General Sani Abacha, was better at managing
the economy. Excerpts:
What
is your take on the debate surrounding government’s decision to save for
future use the nation’s excess oil revenues?
As
far as I’m concerned, we have had an unprecedented period of high oil
prices: four years. Before now, within 15 months it crashes. So, we can’t
expect this forever. But for the American misadventure and high-handedness over
Iraq and all those places, oil prices won’t be where they are today.
But
I must say that it is part of our own weakness that we even admit that oil
prices are high. Even at $45 a barrel today, the price does not compare with
$15 in 1973, once you take the buying power of the dollar and the acceleration
in the price of manufactured goods. If you look at the terms of trade, what you
are having already is not high price compared with that. But even Nigeria is
saying prices are too high. Why? When I bought my first car as a young civil
servant in 1957 - a Peugeot 403 - it was about £600, about the cost of
one tonne of cocoa. Today, you buy a 406, which is about the same car, and
you’re spending $20,000 - 20 tonnes of cocoa. You see what has happened?
If we are primary producers, we have to produce 20 times more; and there isn’t
market for people eating cocoa forever. So, what is happening is that we are
being impoverished.
But
that’s beside the point. We get this misinformation from the West and we
swim with it and start feeling guilty for what is wrong. Coming to the Nigerian
situation, I personally believe that the windfall from crude oil sales should
be saved. But not saved as in the past, when it was just saved and applied and
people didn’t feel its impact. This windfall should be attributed; we
should know that we are keeping it but that so much belongs to this and that,
so that tomorrow nobody takes one state’s money and gives it to another
state.
Let
us use the $22 or the $25 benchmark; anything above that, we save it, but save
it as already apportioned. We know that Delta has so much and Kano has so much,
which will not be released now but it belongs to them. When things are down and
they need it, they know that this is what they have. And the Federal Government
would have its share, but saved not utilised.
I
believe that we have to walk backwards. As I said, why did President Obasanjo
throw away General Abacha’s Vision document? It contained in it the
necessary ingredients for growth and development. But instead we supplanted it
with NEEDS, which at best is grand theorising and unworkable.
Even
having put budget at $25, we should not spend more than 50 per cent of our
budget. Even if it means looking again at salaries of people at the highest
bracket and reducing it, we should, because a situation we just take 50 per
cent of the budget and pay 650,000 civil servants and security men in a country
of 140 million people and there is nothing left for education, health and
agriculture is not necessary. Of course, as the economy begins to grow, income
improves and we shall save.
So,
there are two things: saving of windfalls but without injustice being meted out
or taking one state’s share to another; and even having done that, we
should look again at how we’ve arrived at our recurrent expenditure. And
even if it means a little sacrifice, temporarily, in terms of salaries and all
that, I think we should do that.
I
must say that there is even greater room for control of expenditure on
purchases for ministries - when they purchase stationery, cars and other
expenditure of that type - because there is too much gross inflation of
contracts. The face value of a Local Purchase Order (LPO) may be this much but
you know that one-fourth or three-fourth is the actual cost of delivering the
service. We have become too greedy in our expectations, either as brokers, on
the commissions we want, or as suppliers, on the profit margins we want. These
are too high and are partly because of the entrenched corruption, because these
margins are being shared.
Public
servants must be forced to go back to the ethics of the public service. It is
not your business as a public servant to envy the contractor outside who
becomes rich. Do your work, take your pay; by the time you leave you probably
would have made such good name and impact that there’ll be businesses
inviting you to join them. In any case, you would have helped to create such
general prosperity that your relations and children or otherwise that would
have been dependent on you would have things to do.
The
Niger Delta has occupied the front burner of national discourse. Suddenly,
there’s so much vehemence and violence in the region. Why is this so?
It
isn’t sudden. The deprivation has been going on for more than 40 years.
The juxtaposition of the beautiful colony of oilmen together with neglect -
brackish water to drink, pipelines running across streams and shacks - is
inciting. That sort of contrast is provocative and it’s been on for some
time. At the same time, some of the money paid in the past as compensation did
not go to the people; one or two middlemen or leaders cornered it.
All
these have fuelled resentment over time. But I believe that the time has come
when restitution should be pursued. We must do something much more drastic than
we are doing to improve the infrastructure. For instance, with roads, even if
it costs 10 times per kilometre to build the road and to build it in the
hinterland, so be it. You don’t say I’ve voted so much so you
can’t do it. This is what always happens. You compare the total votes and
what would build a hundred kilometres of road on good dry land may not build 10
in the swampy Niger Delta region. We have to link those major areas quickly.
Until
recently, petrol was dearer in Bayelsa in the creeks than in Lagos or Kaduna or
Abuja. And it is produced there (in Bayelsa). The biggest refineries are there.
This sort of glaring inequity has fuelled the situation we now have. But we
should address it more courageously. And I believe really that while some money
go through the NDDC (Niger Delta Development Commission), and they are doing
what they are doing, the Federal Government, in terms of strong roads, bridges,
should be a bit more visible and quickly too. There was once an idea we had in
1973 when we approved two LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) schemes - one in
Escravos, the other in Bonny - which was aborted after the coup. We were
going to dredge Escravos to 45 feet, which would enable big vessels and bulk
carriers come in. Because there’s a lot of deep water in Koko, Sapele
- 80 feet of water - you wouldn’t have needed to use billions
building ocean terminals. Big boats cannot navigate those creeks so you’d
have to trim the creeks; of course dredge a lot of the sides. I had entertained
and discussed with people in Elf and Shell, people in the Nigerian Ports
Authority (NPA) under Alhaji Bamanga Tukur. When we are doing that in order to
accommodate big boats, whatever earth you’re bringing out, you could use
to reclaim model villages. So you can now resettle people from villages which
are disappearing under water into model reclaimed villages. And you can now -
because you’ve reclaimed and it’s modeled and planned properly -
have schools, infrastructure and resettle people in communities like that;
protected from the hazards of the environment. And I remember a Dutch expert
saying, in fact, that with a proper system of trimming these creeks and
developing agriculture, the Delta region could supply rice for the whole of the
Niger Delta. You could transform these communities under a period of 20 years
from how they look so derelict to become thriving modern communities.
And
once these sorts of things are on - massive public works, canal
construction, schools, paddy development - then the energies of the youth
would be used up in that. They would not be available to be used for kidnapping
and that sort of thing. I think we need a much bigger programme for the Niger
Delta. At any time, we should create a special fund and challenge the oil
companies, their associates and other groups to come with viable schemes to
invest in producing things. But as I said earlier, oil and gas alone is not
enough. If we had gone into petrochemicals and from petrochemicals into
intermediate; from intermediate into plastics fabrication; from plastics
fabrication to production of man-made fibre and all that, we won’t be in
the mess we are in. There are lots of things in petrochemicals. It produces raw
materials which you can take all over the country, setting up industries. At
the same time, you encourage the state governors of these oil producing states
to save some of the money they are getting and invest through the stock
exchange in viable agro-allied schemes, not just in Delta, but all over the
country; so that they are also drawing income from development in the rest of
the country, because oil is a wasting asset, one day or the other, it will be
exhausted.
But
if already they have stakes in sources of renewable wealth and development
income, they feel secured.
Resource
allocation has ceded 13 per cent of the resources of mineral producing regions
to states. This is quite a significant increase from what obtained. But the
states seem to want everything.
It
is a sad thing that we should be worrying so much about oil and thirteen per
cent. Yes, it could be more. But the 13 per cent, properly applied, could help
to transform the producing states.
But
the point is this, really, it could be 50 per cent, because it is a wasting
asset and ecology is being bombarded and destroyed all the time; but if Nigeria
pursues the right economic policies, over the next 10 years, there would be
stability. Oil revenues would still be important but there would not be more
than 50 per cent.
So,
all this focus on oil revenue is evidence of lack of development…. In
1980-82, Indonesia depended on oil revenue 70 per cent; today, it’s
30 per cent. We could have been 30 per cent if we did what they did. So, we
still have the $20 billion from oil but it would just be 30 per cent. And that
is, we would have $60 billion, $70 billion from agro-allied industry, from
taxation on manufacturing, from selling Value Added Services and all that.
This
is where we should go. And once you are on that route, then for the rest of the
country, whether they left us with 50 per cent or 40 per cent becomes
irrelevant. Even for us in the Delta area, oil revenues would not become a
prominent issue. It is lack of development that gives it this prominence, and
that can be cured.
Is
there anything wrong with the principle through which the 13% was arrived at?
There
is nothing at all principled in 12%, 1% or 20%; it is simply the result of
political negotiation and saying we can do this and get away with it.
When
people talked about 50% in the first constitution, it was 50% of royalties.
Petroleum profit tax was not included, because people didn’t know its
importance then. But if people say 50% since the rights of minerals stays
there, then the people of the Niger Delta should estimate how much land
they’ve lost to dams - Kainji Dam, Shiroro Dam - and that we
should give them 50% of 3,000 mega watts we generate…I don’t know.
I
think we should now try to grow the wealth of this country and make sure that
within 10 to 15 years oil revenues reduce. They are important, but in terms of
pure oil revenue, that is, rent from crude oil sales and all that, we could
reduce it to about 30% and the rest of the revenue should come from taxes being
paid by thriving industries, thriving agriculture and thriving services.
Is
your link with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) still as strong as it was in
1999, and had you the mandate, what would you have done different from what is
being done?
It
was clear from my manifesto what I would have done. Within the first year, I
would have gotten this buyer of last resort in agriculture and funding for
agriculture and agro-allied industries going.
I
didn’t think really of creating something like NDDC in Delta. What I said
at the time was, we would leave the Oil Minerals Producing Areas Development
Commission (OMPADEC) with 3% but take 10% and have it in a fund to be managed
by a consortium of banks; from where we would say there is so much to support
infrastructure, there is so much to support the productive sector and there is
this amount left to invest in activities elsewhere, so that we get future
streams of income.
On
the debt front, I would have insisted that we restructure the London Club debt
immediately on the threat that we might denounce it.
Having
restructured that, created credit rating for Nigeria, I would have
pragmatically accepted the initial rescheduling of the Paris Club debt, but
made sure that we signed off all the bilaterals as agreed by May 2001, so that
all the international guarantee agencies - Corpers, Hermes - would
have come into Nigeria; they are not here yet, only the American NEIM Bank. If
these guarantee agencies come, they guarantee private investments in their
countries, it helps.
And
then, as an old civil servant, I would have begged the civil service to
reinvent itself; change its image. I would have visited them with sanctions,
more severe if they don’t. They have good rules on the book about
investment. When you try to get those promised incentives, you still run across
illiterate, incompetent, dilatory bureaucracy, and nothing can be more damaging
to the country than to continue with this type of arrangement.
Thirdly,
I would have probably been more forceful in trying to force the PDP to become a
party in the sense I’ve been describing to you - vision, principle,
discipline - PDP in the legislature cannot be different from PDP in the executive.
And I would have encouraged the other parties too to become parties. The
stronger the opposition, the better for everybody.
And
I would initiate dialogue to change this constitution. The President has been
working on this, but we could accelerate it; have a constitution which really
is less contradictory in parts; and a constitution which allows more variety in
our federation. To begin with, I don’t see the sense in 774 local
governments. They are so many and so atomized that they cannot deliver services.
None of your children would agree to go and become medical officer in Eti-Osa
or Kaura Namoda. There’s no career there, but you are challenging them to
deliver health. When we were young, the medical officer of health in Lagos was
equivalent to deputy chief medical adviser of the federation. So, there was a
career; people went; Kano Native Authority, Benin Provincial Authority, these
were viable means of living.
These
local governments are too small to deliver and must be reformulated. I would
have pushed, not for their abolishment but in order to deliver proper
education, for established educational inspectorate and established good
standards; at least 30 or 40 local governments have to merge and have an
educational authority. Then you pay on per capita basis and you have a
professional body of teaching personnel select teachers who disciplines them;
have an inspectorate whose responsibility would be to make sure that the
syllabus is religiously executed.
On
states and federal government, we must downsize the structure. There is no
American state I know which has more than five commissioners; but there is a
state in Nigeria with 23 commissioners. The American Federal Government has 11
secretaries of state. There is nothing presidential about the Nigerian system,
which says we must have this number of ministers and other state officials. We
must look at the issue critically.
Going
into politics does not mean that is the way to go and eat. We must redefine
these things. The politicians should be happy to help create a growing economy
from which they will benefit; it shouldn’t be the purpose to go to
benefit from treasuries’ direct allocation to you as chairman this,
chairman that, adviser this, minister that. We must look into this, and these
are areas which one would have pushed for some reforms.
And
then, I would push for a language policy, because I had this idea before in the
70’s but it wasn’t listened to. In Switzerland, they have three
languages, mainly German, French and Italian, and of course they speak English.
No two Swiss will meet and they wouldn’t have one language in common.
So,
what would I do? I would say every student in secondary schools in the North
should choose one southern language which they must learn. Chances are that he
would choose either Igbo or Yoruba or whichever he wants to choose. And I would
say to everybody in the South, ‘You must choose one northern
language,’ I won’t specify; chances are they would choose Hausa;
they won’t choose fulfude or Gwari.
That
means that within 15 or 20 years, because we would then have had full
enrolment, people would all have gone through secondary school - you
won’t meet two Nigerians who would not have one Nigerian language that
they can speak together.
What
is your relationship with the PDP?
I’ve told you that I would like to see parties
re-engineered. I’m not in mainstream politics; I’m 70. You people
have said we are recycled and I’m not quarrelling with that. But the
point is that I would like to see Nigerian political parties re-invented on the
basis of vision, principle, discipline and industry. Then it becomes a valid
question to ask what relationship one has with a party.
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