Reform: Sanusi needs to do more as N800bn bailout can’t tackle the mess – Uba Ahmed

You were a major player in the Second Republic –a senator and at the same time the national secretary of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN). You were later National Secretary of the NRC, but unlike some of your contemporaries, you appear to be playing at the fringes today. Are you disenchanted with the system? […]

You were a major player in the Second Republic –a senator and at the same time the national secretary of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN). You were later National Secretary of the NRC, but unlike some of your contemporaries, you appear to be playing at the fringes today. Are you disenchanted with the system?

To every event there is high tide and low tide. I think our politics today is hitting the low tide because the entire structure of our political system, whether it is party or parliament, or other institutions of government, are replete with people who are totally inexperienced in politics and governance. Also, the way politics is being run today is such that if you are the type that cannot steal a ballot box because you think it is morally wrong or whatever, you cannot succeed in the prevailing dispensation. So rather than make foolish of myself, I feel I can still play politics from my sitting room, and I do still play very active politics even though not on the pages of newspapers or on the television screen.

You talked about certain lapses of the political system today and luckily there is an effort to review the country’s electoral laws to achieve credible elections and improve the political system. Don’t you think we’ll soon to get it right?

I believe, just like many informed people do, that the world is going through traumatic socio-political difficulties. And these traumas are the consequence of the universal pursuit of globalisation, which has been responsible for the collapse of most of the major economies of the world. To confront these socio-economic disasters, all known major economies of the world that are so negatively affected have taken certain steps that could never have been dreamt of before. For example, the so called deregulated economies, especially countries of the western world have brought laws and economic measures which are meant to enable them nationalise most of their major economic institution, especially the banks and so on.

Others that have never adopted deregulation as an economic policy have taken the unusual step to secure their economic borders by fencing their nations away from the infectious economic consequences of the affected economies.  Therefore considering this global infection, one would have thought that the proposed constitution amendment would be directed towards reviewing and reappraising our current economic policies, which rely on monetary and deregulation polices. But disappointingly, and unfortunately, this rare opportunity is being squandered away by our legislators. Instead, they have embarked upon a constitutional amendment which seeks to shield them away from their legal, judicial and moral obligations.

You would see that the amendments they are proposing seem to want to narrow the base of political participation western oriented ideas and curriculum in our country. Now they have jerked up the education qualification for aspirants, the minimum of which is proposed to be a diploma, and that evidence of certificate has to be produced. This is clearly saying that other educational systems such as the eastern education system are being negated and put aside. Someone is trying to tell me at the national assembly that Dahiru Bauchi [Islamic Scholar] is unelectable because he does not have certificate even though he is educated in a different way. What they are saying is that such a person cannot run a government; cannot organise a society. You and I know that it’s untrue. And when you bring in the issue of certificate equivalence, there are lots of people educated elements in eastern way, particularly Arabic and Islamic education and others. We also have a lot of Nigerians that are today practicing Hinduism; they may not be educated in the western way or the eastern way, but they may have their own type of education.

We are now saying that because they don’t have certificate designed and recommended by western influences and orientation, they are no more electable or they don’t have the wisdom to run a society. This is ridiculous.

Now, we are Nigerians, how do you expect us to abandon some of our values and begin to pursue a western orientation before we can be relevant in our country. This is short sighted. This is a move to sharply divide this country on a negative sectarian basis. If any of the states accept this kind of amendments, let them know that they will be contributing to the destruction of this country.

Moreover, how do you talk of diploma at a time the cost of education is rising and income is falling; unemployment is becoming pervasive? Where do you expect the common man to get money to pay school fees in secondary school and even sponsor his child to a polytechnic or any tertiary school? We all know the kind of difficulties that parents and children go through just to get admission into any tertiary institution. We that have not yet found our feet in economic terms but we expect parents to get money from nowhere to send their children to school to get certificate. That means that the children of the unfortunate amongst us cannot be voted into political office. The day we start implementing this would be the day we will succeed in destroying the society and indeed ourselves. And I fear that day. The amendments being pursued are not talking about the economy, the farming system or other productive sector. It is only talking about election of members; they should not be harassed even if they are indicted of fraud. That is not right. It means bad conduct is acceptable.  

What do you suggest as a way out of the things you have pointed out?

We have seen how other countries are getting out of it. Everybody is abandoning deregulation and privatisation which are the major components of globalisation. Everybody is now trying to shield its economy from the influences of globalisation. Even countries like China that are not affected by globalisation have voted large sums of money to distribute to its people in order to generate internal consumption. But we are still importing heavily and paying heavily while our revenue in oil, both in production and sales are declining. We have seen Japan taking the same measures. Thailand has also done the same thing. Therefore we must retrace our foot steps from the influences of globalisation. After that, we now focus on structures of development, Agriculture in particular and industrialisation in order to generate wealth creation activities.

Also, Section 2(2) of the constitution should be amended because the section defines Nigeria as consisting of 36 states and the federal capital territory. As much as that is true, there is more than that because it does not mention our territorial waters. And there are lots of economic activities in our territorial waters and economic exclusive zone. In the territorial waters we have a lot of oil drilling activities. I support the issue of derivation. In fact I introduced that issue in parliament in 1982. It was my motion that was adopted to create derivation and subsequently other leaders expanded it to reach as high as 13%. I believe that wherever wealth is generated should be rewarded.

Some sections of the country have been calling for fiscal federation. How do you look at the call in the context of the county’s political and economic standing?

Those who talk of fiscal federation seem to display total ignorance of the meaning or the direction of that system. We have operated fiscal federation during the colonial state and soon after the colonial state when we had no oil. And the federal government was destitute. Fiscal federalism was introduced for the federal government to sustain itself and other weaker parts of the geopolitical area. We had regional government then and agriculture was the main source of funding government activities. So the regional governments were buying farm products, whether cocoa, groundnut or palm karnel from farmers and in the case of mining, tin etc through an agency called Marketing Board and then they sell them in the world market.

When they get profits, that profit was divided into two, 50 per cent was given to the federal and 50 per cent was retained by the regional governments to run their affairs. But you must understand the difference. Then, the farmer had his own farm either by inheritance from his parents or through purchase. He bought his fertilizer and his seeds. It was a personal investment and he was making his money out of it, and the regional governments also made money from it.  Whatever he gave to the region is more or less like taxation and profit scooped out of his own production, half of which was given to the federal government.

After the Henry Willington’s commission, it was recommended that the regions that are producing oil today, the Niger Delta in particular, was suffering and it recommended that a Niger Delta Development Commission should be established, and federal government should provide funds for the running and development of the Delta area. I remember in 1963, the federal government passed an act for the purposes of the development of the Niger Delta area. The first chairman of the commission was Alhaji Shehu Shagari.  The secretary of the commission was my very good friend, Senator Amari  Zofa of Bayelsa today. Even though they had started producing oil, the price of oil was insignificant to take care of the oil producing areas.

But one issue is that oil prospecting then was an investment of the federal government.

By March 1953, the total foreign reserve of this country was far bigger than the total foreign reserve of the entire African continent. Our foreign reserve was far bigger than that of Japan. At that time in 1953, if federal government had chosen to invest in industries, only God knows where we would have been today. But the government then chose to invest this foreign reserve into oil prospective and God blessed our decision and gave us oil by 1956. We determined the commercial value of the oil deposit in 1958 and every investment in the prospecting of oil, the exploration, production and all the other processes that went into it were done as investment of the federal government.  So if the federal government invested in all the processes of producing oil, it means the 36 states of the federations are shareholders of the oil industry. But the onshore areas where people live should be given rent for their ground and that is what was given to them as royalty. But when I was in parliament, I realized that this royalty wouldn’t be sufficient enough to develop the oil producing areas. That is why I brought the derivation bill and today it has became a constitutional matter. Thank God it has reached 13 per cent.

Now if you talk about fiscal federalism, you are saying that all the shareholders of every investment which we do through federal government are owners of whatever the federal government invested in. Could anybody talk of resource control and think it is profitable proposition? It is difficult. It will create more crisis than we can foresee now. And I think a lot of thought is not given to this background information and the intricacies that are involve in the production of oil.

When we operated fiscal federalism, it was meant to carry Nigeria and you could see how it operated. But how do you work out fiscal federalism today when the entire investment of this country in the major areas is in the hands of the federal government on behalf of the 36 states? It is difficult if not impossible.

How do you look at the reforms in the banking sector as an area that contributes to the economy of the country?

The reform is haphazard; it not far reaching enough. In order to gets its economy going, America is investing $1.5 trillion. When you times that by 50, you will get something around N158 trillion. We are not as big and complex as America, but still investing as much as N800 billion is nothing, and the banks are still being abused by their managements and so called directors.

They have shown the classical thing that greed can bring upon the economy of any society. So like I said that America and British have nationalized some of their major banks, I believe we should do that quickly. We must take over the banks from these greedy individuals and collective elites and return them to the tax payers and get good hands to manage them. In any case, when you privatize a company, is it not Nigerians that manage it. If it is Nigerians that manage it, why do they manage very well, unlike the government owned? The reason is that the government managers are not well trained. So what we require is not privatization but effective and in-depth training of all our management personnel in order to produce the best that can turn around of the economy.

One of the criticisms against nationalisation is that companies are not well managed under government?

Is the PHCN of today better than the NEPA of ten years ago? Not at all! Are the banks of today better than the bank dos yesterday? Not at all! The NEPA of yesterday; the banks of yesterday; the Ports Authority of yesterday; the NTITEL of yesterday and the Maritime Authority of yesterday are far more efficient and effective than what we have today under the privatised thing. Through privatisation, we entrusted our resources in the hands of greedy lords and that is why our economic institutions are collapsing.

There is serious debate about the zoning arrangement which was adopted by PDP since 1999 and now some people are saying that it should be discarded.  How do you look at the situation?

I think we seem to have forgotten that all this zoning arrangement that has become the topical issue today is an affair of the PDP. It is not Nigeria’s affair. Why should we think PDP arrangement can affect none members of PDP? Other political parties have their own internal arrangements. So why are we worried about PDP’s internal arrangement. If PDP wants to zone any office to any zone, I have no quarrel with that. I don’t mind to be ruled by anybody who is good to rule me. Merit is more important to me than any zoning. We were ruled by Obasanjo during military era. Then, his rule was quite alright but he turned out to be a disaster in his second coming under democracy. We have been ruled by Ironsi and Shonekan before and both men were from the south. Our military boys installed some of them, so why didn’t we have problem with that? We are suffering from the after effect and the xenophobia of our experience of the Obasanjo regime. We tend to think that another southerner is another Obasanjo or a continuity of Obasanjo experience. Therefore as a result of this hangover of Obasanjo experience we tend to get scared and think it is Nigeria’s policy. It is not; it is not the law; it is not constitutional provision. Therefore if PDP can carry out their plan, good luck to them; if they cannot, it is not our concern.