No country for Nigerian elites! (1)

“The money was all appropriated for the top in the hope that it will trickle down to the needy. Mr Hoover didn’t know that the money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it would at least have passed […]

“The money was all appropriated for the top in the hope that it will trickle down to the needy. Mr Hoover didn’t know that the money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it would at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands” – Will Rogers (quoted from Zombie Economics. Pg137)
No country for Nigerian elites. It is doubtful if there will be entry passes into heaven as well.  Remember “No Country for Old Men”, the 2005 Hollywood flick featuring Tommy Lee Jones and the psychopath portrayed by Javier Bardem? In that movie, Tommy’s character had come across some heist and sought to appropriate it by crossing over to Mexico, where he was hunted down at every step by the seemingly ubiquitous “Anton Chigurh” (Javier). Nigerian elites should be served notice, that with the way they are playing this game, upheaval of unprecedented proportions is being toyed with. Are Nigerian elites waiting to be hunted like Tommy Lee Jones?
But seriously, are Nigerian elites painfully timid, extremely selfish or pitifully myopic… or they simply don’t understand the concept of enlightened self-interest?
I recall attending the APC Economic Summit sometimes mid-2015. It was APC’s first – and so far – only such summit. In that summit, they invited a lot of professors and eggheads. Many showed up with their best ideas. But all we heard, were a litany of Nigeria’s woes, and not many solutions.  This summit was quite well-attended, and had a coterie of very important people up on the high table. In the crowd were also many important and big names. Getting through an idea of one’s own was a near-impossibility. You had to sit and listen. I recall entering one of the breakout sessions on Education, chaired by Bolaji Abdullahi, an ex-minister for Youth and Sports. There he was, trying to put his ideas across, constantly heckled by many a professor who believed that all Nigeria needed were world-class universities – and not the urgent empowerment of the youth as Abdullahi believed; a position I subscribe to.
It was an experience that tested the patience.  Up came many clichéd ideas and the usual bellyaching. “We should revive Agric” (as if the last Minister wasn’t saying the same thing). “We should revive manufacturing” (as if we understand where the world is presently in terms of manufacturing or appreciate that we can only produce for our own consumption in this brutally globalized world). Nigerians are great at complaining, and exonerating themselves from the existing problems facing the country.
Of note was that in that summit, almost everyone given the chance to speak, complained that the country will not have money to fund its programs because the price of crude oil was already trending down.  Pauper and king, civilian and politician, ruler and ruled. All said the same thing. Crude oil price must have been over $50 by then. Today it is less than $30. It was all about stating the obvious and then embellishing with the lamentations of Jeremiah.

THE WHITE LADY’S QUESTION
Then one white woman was recognized. She stood up and asked a question. She said, “I hear you all complaining about how to fund your budget. Yet Nigeria is the only country I’ve been – and I’ve been to a few – where people don’t get fined for over-speeding. How then do you expect to fund your budget?” Lobatan.
But the comment was lost in translation. Most of the big men to whom the question was directed, failed to understand where the lady was driving at. We had a few rambles from the high table and everything petered out. By then I knew my work was done. I could either go and hug the lady, or just leave the venue in peace. I left in peace. She had asked my question.
You see, I once lived briefly in London, UK. A bitter, dinghy place it could be. They don’t rely on any extractive resource and so don’t bellyache about falling prices of commodities. The UK is the epicenter of prudence. They extract about 1.5million barrels of crude oil in the North Sea up in Scotland and tax the companies who do that. If they share the money among the four regions – Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales – they make little noise about it.
But London where I lived was very aggressive in going after its fines, levies and taxes. Council taxes were there for maintaining the community. TV tax was there to assist the BBC stay alive. Congestion was there to maintain the City and reduce traffic, and you dare not over-speed, or use a phone while driving. Matter of fact, all children below 11 years need to be kept in car seats. Failure to do so, attracts crazy fines. That is how London finances its budgets – which stands at about 12Billion Pounds Sterling this year (an equivalent of N5trillion). That was what the lady was trying to tell us.  Imagine London – the Local Government perhaps – with the same budget as the whole of Nigeria? 8.5million people live there. 170million live here. The N5trillion is almost fully financed from fines and levies. Their duties include the environment, policing and transport. Nigeria’s purview is much more vast.
Between the woman’s comments and today, little if anything has changed structurally. What we’ve seen are the same complaints about falling crude oil prices. Now we have reached a crisis point, with more states owing salaries and hordes of people being laid off from work. Luckily, the Nigerian government has not increased taxes across the board… yet. And it hasn’t also devalued (at least officially). The pains are much. But I believe there are avenues to escape these pains. It is not about reinventing the wheels. We can simply copy what has worked elsewhere. I will share three avenues for raising money in a society, that has worked and keeps working elsewhere.
These ideas actually impact the elites. They are ‘progressive’ in nature. But it is not just about pains for the Nigerian elites. Whatever they give today, they rapidly get back. The crash in the price of crude oil, is a call on Nigeria to finally have governance that makes sense. I’m afraid though, that a lot of the wasteful behaviours of the past are still with us, like the purchase of thousands of SUVs (‘treated’ – or bullet-proof) for politicians.  Yet, I take joy in VP Osinbajo’s call for elite consensus at the recently-concluded Daily Trust Annual Conference. Elite consensus is what it takes to get a nation going. In the countries we admire, the elite have come together and determined that they will give reasonably good standards of living to their people. Not all can be rich, but let most be above poverty and despondency.
That is the reason why they ensure the basics – food, transport, cheap clothing, and reasonable housing – for their own people. They can then live happily in their mansions and fly their private jets, but not before.