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Henry Boyo - Crusading to avert the strike
By Banji Ojewale,
Head,
Covers & Investigation
With another nationwide industrial strike
on the horizon, the attention of most Nigerians is again turning to Henry
Olujimi Boyo, the economist and industrialist who says he has a simple antidote
to the plague of strikes. On the eve of the last national work stoppage, Boyo
hopped from one media house to another brandishing the theme: save the naira,
save Nigeria.
Half in protest in the fashion of
irrepressible late Tai Solarin, Boyo hung a badge on his chest that proclaimed
that message and declared on a widely publicised cable TV programme Executive
Rendezvous hosted by veteran journalist Olu Obafemi. “But it is
clear, abundantly clear, that if they can save the value of the naira, we would
save Nigeria. I would repeat this; save the naira, save Nigeria. I am hoping
that a lot of people will understand what this means. We are in distress,
economically, because we have this situation where government policies and
intentions are not being met by the reality of the results. So we have a
situation where because of the value of the naira, people are poorer than they
need be, industries have collapsed, interest rates have risen to over 25, 30
per cent, and we have a situation where the real sector is in fact dying, while
the financial and services sectors, particularly the banking sector, is
bloating rather than expanding. So, the reason I am wearing this badge is
because I believe that if the attention of Nigerians is brought to bear on this
little slogan “Save the naira, save Nigeria”, they will start to
wonder, what is this man saying, and why are people not listening to him?
His position is that the starting point of
his prescription is to stop the Dutch Auction System DAS. He says the system is
the recipe for the chaos in which the naira is trapped. According to him, DAS
creates the situation whereby it always looks as if there is so much naira in
the system. Boyo explains that the Central Bank issues so much naira in
exchange for the dollar the country’s crude oil brings in and in the
process, the apex bank “realises the damage this does to the financial
system. (It) then starts withdrawing the naira back and that itself is
disruptive to industry and the real sector but supports the banking
sector”.
How does this relate to the seasonal
industrial actions that come in the wake of the equally periodic hike in fuel
prices? Boyo takes the poser majestically in its stride and returns a riposte
that works out like this: if you do away with DAS, which makes the CBN to
arbitrarily determine the naira equivalent for the dollar and you issue dollar
certificates to the state governors to the value of their constitutional
allocation, you can build a strong naira to the point of N10 to a dollar!
By a logical progression Boyo argues that
this will bring down the price of petrol, landed with profit and, it will not
be more than N18 per litre. He concludes: “The government can even charge
a petroleum tax of N10, and the whole thing will still not be more than N28 per
litre! …..Labour will not go on strike over N28 per litre fuel price; the
government will be happy, and there will be no need for proscribing the NLC,
for you would have removed that acrimony from the polity”.
Soft-spoken and unassuming, Boyo packs
passion into his arsenal of warfare as he takes on critics. It is a virtue he
has learned to deploy over the years as an avid observer and commentator on
national economic issues. This shows in a number of publications he has
authored, among which is the paper, A liberalized foreign exchange market, a
proposal for a liberalized foreign exchange market in Nigeria and its economic
benefits.
Boyo, BSc (Econ London), MSc (Admin
Science) City University, London, has championed Niger Delta rights. He has
lately come out with Niger Delta News magazine.
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