Helping PMB with new ideas

President Muhammadu Buhari is a lucky man. That was my feeling as I listened last week to two former governors of the Central Bank ventilate their thoughts on governance and the economy. First, it was the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Muhammadu Sanusi II (who has established a solid reputation of speaking truth to power), who […]

President Muhammadu Buhari is a lucky man. That was my feeling as I listened last week to two former governors of the Central Bank ventilate their thoughts on governance and the economy. First, it was the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Muhammadu Sanusi II (who has established a solid reputation of speaking truth to power), who counselled the president on the need to change gear in managing the economy. The emir spoke at the 15th Joint Planning Board (JPB) and National Council on Development Planning organised by the Federal Ministry of Budget and National Planning in collaboration with Kano State government.
Sanusi had done a similar thing as CBN governor during the Jonathan administration. It earned him a sack. Many myopic beneficiaries of the of the criminal bazar going on at that time imputed ethnic motives to Sanusi’s interventions. They said he was against the government because the president was not from the North. But what would they say now that Emir Sanusi has offered similar advise to his ‘kinsman’, President Muhammadu Buhari?
I am not one of those who say the Emir ought to have gone behind closed doors to whisper his views to the president. One of the gains of having highly educated princes ascend the throne of their forefathers is the qualitative interventions they can make in the public space and the result such interventions can engender in enhancing the welfare of the people.
Having carefully analysed his speech under reference, the only way I can describe Emir Sanusi is that he is a patriot who is desirous of ensuring that the hope we invested in Buhari is not wasted. Only a true friend would counsel you to change direction when he thinks you’re headed the wrong way. “They must retrace their steps”, said the emir. “We should not fall into the same trap we fell the last time when the government was always right. The bottom line is that if your policy is wrong, it means you must change it and nothing will make it right as it has to be changed.
There are ingrained weaknesses in the present system which the former CBN governor identified as overdue for change. The government, he warned, needed to free itself from voodoo economists at the corridors of power. On the changes he would like to see, the emir suggested the following:
The elimination of wasteful and abuse-prone subsidies; fixing of the failures in the power sector value chain, starting with discos; digitisation of state land registries and streamlining of relevant legislations; re-prioritisation of public spending in favour of investment in human capital; encouragement of private sector investment in capital expenditure; and setting of foreign exchange rate to incentivise capital inflows and catalyse foreign direct investments. Finally, he warned that whereas foreign investment was desirable, the government must protect infant local industries from being out-muscled by Chinese firms.
He challenged government officials to brainstorm and come up with ways to attract investments: “The country has not been able to attract investment. We need to move from our present mode of investment. Lagos is the story of what Nigeria can do with itself. The country should not be obsessed with oil.”
Reeling out statistics, he declared: “As it stands today, Lagos’ role on the economic future of Nigeria is more critical than what people think of the Niger Delta region. We are spending 30 to 40 percent of every Naira we earn servicing debts…. The new borrowings were simply recycled into much higher recurrent expenditure…. The GDP was growing largely due to consumers items.”
He described as unwholesome a situation where somebody with the right connections could literally rake in billions of Naira without lifting a finger: “When the CBN was selling dollar at N197 and people were buying at N300, if I sit down in my garden and pick up my phone I would have enough people to call in the industry to get 10 million dollars at officials rate and sell at N300 and make a profit of over N1billion – and if I do that four times in a year, for doing nothing I would have earned N4 billion”.
We should all be worried that while leakages in the system are being plugged and corruption being stemmed, new avenues for unearned wealth are being created thereby stultifying efforts to revive the economy.
Something tells me that President Buhari will carefully consider the emir’s suggestions away from the unnecessary dust being kicked up by some people who equate citizens’ courage to speak truth to power with disloyalty.
I can also see that the president will similarly consider Sanusi’s predecessor, Chukwuma Soludo’s thesis on how to get Nigeria out of the economic woods. Soludo, propounded a cocktail of economic policies which he said could deal with desperate socio-economic issues in a sustainable manner. He recommended the restructuring of the economy from consumption-driven to production-based and consistency in micro economic policies. He also advocated “encouraging fiscal federalism in ways that allow states to have greater control of their resources and evolution of a master plan for mass export-oriented industrialisation that answers the economic questions and realities of today”.
He challenged the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to “develop a peer review mechanism to track, measure and share knowledge and experience in order to achieve shared values that will distinguish APC states from non-APC states’. About time!
As a PR practitioner, I can’t agree more with Soludo’s recommendation that, “There is need for communication strategy that effectively communicates change in a forward looking and inspiring manner for the citizenry”.
If I were the president, I would, if I had to, gladly pay for these quality pieces of advise; more so as we are literally in a state of economic emergency. To have these ideas laid on a platter free of charge by well meaning citizens is to be blessed indeed – and I don’t see the president shunning that blessing.