What I want CBN Governor, Sanusi to do for Nigeria – Prof. Aluko

Can you tell us exactly what is happening to the Nigerian economy?   Frankly, I think the Nigerian economy is on the downhill just like many other economies of the world. At times, you see, Nigeria is lucky in the sense that we have the natural resource, oil ,which very few countries have. We have […]

Can you tell us exactly what is happening to the Nigerian economy?

 

Frankly, I think the Nigerian economy is on the downhill just like many other economies of the world. At times, you see, Nigeria is lucky in the sense that we have the natural resource, oil ,which very few countries have. We have no reason to be where we are today. We have the resources, we have the intelligence, we have the manpower but we are not accessing our resources well.

Even during our research in 1999, which was on the 2000 budget; we saw no reason that 70 percent of our population should be living below poverty level. .

Today, it is more than 70 percent. There is no reason for it. We have stopped planning. And anybody who fails to plan, plans to fail.

In the 1950s, 60s, 70s and early 80s, we had development plans. That was the five-year development plans. We gave it up. We started depending on market. And market forces brought about private greed. We have no reason being there. I am happy now that the federal government, alongside states, is beginning to come up with development plans. I hope they would do. But if we continue’ like this, in 10 years time, we will be worse than what we are now.

From your explanation, are you saying that the Nigerian economy is currently being run on an auto pilot since there are no development plans upon which the country is guided?

Auto piloting is even better because it has some mechanisms that continue to guide it. We have abandoned the economy to private greed. Look at these rich people in the country now. Where are their industries? Their agriculture, their enterprises? The government is their enterprise.

And we know that if any rich Nigerian will die today, in the next five years, the entire business empire will disappear. How do we depend on such people? A private enterprise is not institutionalised here. It is not like Europe and America where you can find a private enterprise that can be richer than the whole of Nigeria. But here, we don’t have such private institutions. We only have private people. So, we are personalising the economy while they are privatising it. So, I think government should do more for the economy than before. Until they do that, we won’t go anywhere.

Are you therefore picking faults in the private sector -driven economy advocated for the country by former President Olusegun Obasanjo and the World Bank- IMF technocrats since 1999?

There is nothing like economy driven by anything. The private sector itself is complaining that they are depressing. The private sector said that its performance is now 30 percent instead of 40 percent as it was before. The private sector depends on government. So, how could government depend on those who depend on it? Take a look at what is happening in the banks. In other countries, the government develops the private sector, up to a point before it can take-off. But here, the government has even abandoned the private sector and yet, it keeps on saying that it has to develop. I always give the example of Egypt where the government is even compelling the private sector to build houses for their workers. But is the government doing that here? We can’t depend on a sector that is not even viable. The private sector in Nigeria is not viable. Simple!

The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, is reversing this concept of universal banking, saying that it was responsible for much of the chaos that bedevilled the financial sector.

Yes, I agree with him. This is because when they started talking about this consolidation exercise, I wrote the then governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo, who was a friend of mind, that the exercise was wrong.

They said that they wanted to have large, medium and small banks. Also, they wanted to have merchant banks, agricultural banks, industrial banks and mortgage banks not just one bank doing all these things.

We found out that at the end of the day, the banks abandoned, their responsibilities and started trading. That is why we had some bank managing directors having shops in Dubai, houses in America and enterprises outside Nigeria because they had abandoned the real function of lending for trading.

I’m happy if (Sanusi) will do three things. One, let there be difference between merchant banks and commercial banks. Two, let there be small, medium and large banks. Three, he should try and make our naira convertible so that we won’t depend on the dollar. All countries depend on their own currencies except Nigeria. You can’t go to America and pay them in pounds sterling or go to Britain and pay them in United States dollar. It is only in Nigeria that even the market woman holds the dollar rather than our own currency. We got it all wrong.

The federal government is embarking on a campaign .to make Nigerians patronise made-in-Nigeria goods…

That is good, but where are the made-in-Nigeria goods? You have to make the goods before you patronise them. Where are the Nigerian goods? Even our own oil, do you produce it? Our oil minister said we need to deregulate so that people can import more oil. It is criminal. We have to produce before we patronise.

What can I patronise now? Is it the Nigerian car? There is no Nigerian car. Even food. We import more food today than ever before. We have to produce what we can patronise. So, first of all, we have to canvass that we should produce more in Nigeria before canvassing the patronage of what we produce.

Talking about globalisation, Nigeria is almost a signatory to all the treaties of WTO, FAO among other global bodies. But the impact of all these treaties is making life uncomfortable for the country’s citizens.

I am one of those opposed to globalisation. You have to internalise before you can globalise. Globalisation is an avenue to keeing us back. You can’t compete with Europe and America. It is like the cat globalising with the rat. The rat will end up in the stomach of the cat.

This is the last interview the late Professor Sam Aluko granted Sunday Trust. It was first published on April 11, 2010