Professor of Political Economy,Pat Utomi, in this interview withMARCEL MBAMALU, highlights the socio-political issues that have restrained economic growth in 52 years of Nigeria's independenceFIFTY TWO years of independence and the economy appears to be creping still; could you share your thoughts on that'The challenge with statistics is that you can say almost anything you want to say. There are people who will challenge you and say the economy is growing at 6 or 7 percent; and they will be correct also. So, the problem is not about figures or numbers; it is about the quality of life of citizens. I don't think that there are many people who are in doubt that the quality of life in Nigeria today is sort of worse than the quality of life in Nigeria in 1964.With all the revenue inflows, why are we where we are today' If you go back to 1964 when Dr. Michael Okpara, for example, was running the Easter Nigeria, which, if disaggregated from the Nigerian economy would be the fastest growing economy in the world, the total emphasis of the government of Eastern Nigeria, as was the government of Western Nigeria under Chief Obafemi Awolowo, and in many ways the government of Northern Nigeria under the Saduana, was focused on what's best for the ordinary person ' how do you build a greater quality of life for the people.You mean commensurate attention should be paid to the micro economy'Yes, all of that. The bottom line is that the political elite is disconnected from the Nigerian people. So, once they can find some theorists who can give them numbers that sound good it doesn't matter how the people live. They simply pick up the numbers and run, arguing that they have done well. That is because they don't have a pulse to feel the pains of the people.When Michael Okpara embarked on his economic programme for the Eastern Nigeria, the idea was that you would have an egg for a penny so that everybody will be able to eat an egg. Can you imagine any policy framed in that realm today' It doesn't happen.So, in pushing for the Agric settlements, there was an objective driving it and it was driven by compassion and commitment to service for the common good.If you look at the society today, where we are registering more private jets on a per capita income basis than any other country in the world, and you find the fundamental damage to quality of life (the percentage of Nigerians who live below the poverty line), people like us want to go back to look at the elite theory and what is fundamentally fractured about the Nigerian elite.If you look at the elite theory, political parties seem to have oligarchic tendencies. But because the spirit of the political party is based on a certain 'of the world, even the oligarchy that drives a political party invariably is driven by a certain understanding that 'nobility has duty; privilege has obligation; and obligation is the care for the people.'Unfortunately, it seems to me that what has happened to us in Nigeria is that we don't have people of priviledge who have become privileged because of contributions and efforts. Rather, we have people of privilege who have arrived at positions of privilege through short-cuts, scamming or forcible grabbing of political power and using political power to make themselves economically well of.So, they don't have those things that come out of people of traditional ascendancy in politics, who are connected to the people, and because of it they are doing general policy environment that is disconnected from the people.This is why Nigerian economy is a recursive economy. Our challenge, therefore, is to make the economy work for the people by making the politics more responsive to the people. When you have a political scenario, where jobs are not centrally the discussion of where we are (I don't know many Nigerian politicians who have serious game plan on how to make the environment create jobs for people), you find out that energies will be concentrated on how to share something that is coming from an enclave sector like oil.Let me show you some examples of how terrible things are: Some of the oil companies, like Shell, that are tired of the troubles of the environment just want to focus on offshore activity; so, they are closing down many of their operations onshore. They are closing down the estates they were running in many places onshore. Shell says it wants to go.In many parts of the world, this will set up a huge national debate and all kinds of incentives to stop them from moving. But in this part of the world, you see governments rushing to buy the estates. It is just lack of heart for the people; there is no sense for the fact that this will mean less job for their people. So, you cannothave an economy that is working for the people until you have people who make policy have that kind of heart and be driven by those kinds of policies.Now that you talked about possible relocation of the oil companies due to environment factors, in what ways do you think the new Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) should have been framed to address some of these issues'We need to be driven by much more than momentary power gain. From the very beginning, we need to seriously say: let's have the metrics: What is very important to all the stakeholders' What did the oil companies need to continue to invest to grow this sector' We note it. What do the communities around the oil companies really need' We note it. What does the government need' We note it. What do Nigerians interested in entering the sector need' We note all of these and then try to work out a balancing, where the needs of everybody is taken into account.But we have an imperial approach driven by interests other than this broader sense of what is good for all. So, what has happened is that the oil companies are investing more and more outside of Nigeria. They are automatically shutting down their Nigerian operations. I don't think that the overlords in the oil sector seem to be sensitive enough to this reality of what is going on in the oil sector.Angola has already overtaken us as Africa's number one oil producer, and this does not even seem to shake them.If the Chinese announce $1b investment in Nigeria, we will all begin to scream and yell; but if you look around he corner, they are investing $30 billion in Angola. We are talking in terms of proportion of their investment in Nigeria and Angola.Even though, generally speaking, the figures are positive, they could be more positive than they are. Secondly, they can be positive numbers that improve the wellbeing of ordinary people, everybody and, therefore, the quality of life of the society.At the moment, what is happening is making Nigeria a potential time bomb ' the gap between the top income brackets and the bottom income bracket is out of this world. This s a big problem that we are not addressing as a country and it is going to explode before us in a short time.How can this gap be bridged'The approach is to take Nigeria, for example, and create sixl zones of development; you can call it geo-political or geo-economic zones; or whatever. Look at each zone and say: what can it be most competitive in' That thing should be driven by primary factor endowments; maybe hydrocarbon in the South, East can be Palm oil; North Central can be Sesame seeds alone. Whenever you buy Macdonalds hamburger, what you see on top is Sesame seeds. It is a multi-billion industry and they grow in the wild in North Central Nigeria. There is no Macdonalds made anywhere in the world that does not have it. And you go into arrangement with just Macdonalds alone.You can keep farmers in Benue State making serious money just from Sesame seeds alone; and it is not just that they are making serious money from growing it; you are processing it in such a way that nothing leaves the country raw any more.There is also hides and skin in Kano. We can create value chain from agricultural endowment from local to international markets. But these things involve hardwork; we are not ready to work hard anymore. We just want to pump crude oil and have it reflect on our accounts in Abuja.But the very important message is that no geo-political zone has advantage over the other in the use of the brain, and that oil does not make more money than the brain.Singapore, we have talked about it over and over, does not have one natural resource beyond its natural deep sea port. Today, per capita income in Singapore is over $66,000; higher than that of the United States of America.The quality of life in Singapore doesn't appear to me as being better than an aveage American for instance'It is a the centre of Asia but it has a small populationPerhaps, that explains why the per capita income is high; the Nigerian population is much higher and as such the per capita income is low'Everything they have is ultilised judiciously. If large population is a curse, then, India should have bigger problem. So, it is not a problem.It was Indonesia that was considered the hopeless case in 1960. A Nobel winning economist, Gunnar Myrdal, said that Indonesia had no prospects for progress but that it was locked in intrinsic stagnation. But they managed to turn their condition around. The Nigeria that had prospects is the one that is stuck.Is all about the cure of oil'Indonesia has oil; Indonesia is a big oil producing country.There must be something peculiar about Nigeria'What is peculiar about Nigeria is that Nigeria has an elite that has not managed to find its purpose. Period.How then do you address a situation where you have leaders who don't know what to do'It is not about a leader; we are not fair by pointing to one man and say he is our problem. It is the failure of an elite. 'Every generation must find its mission and either fulfill it or betray it.' The Nigerian elite has consistently betrayed the mission of its generation.How do you get out of this'Kill them all; kill all of us. I am one of them. Kill all of us.The convergence of ignorance and arrogance is the same thing as the convergence of soldier and oil in Nigeria.You wouldn't want to be quoted on this'I have said this at different public fora. The guys who took over Nigeria in 1966 in their 20s are still running Nigeria today, even in their 70s. Forget the surrogates that they throw up from time to time. And basically their legacy is demolishing of the dreams of the founding fathers of Nigeria.And what did my generation do in response to them' My generation, in a cowardly way, left town. ' That is why everyday you pick the newspaper, what you see is 'Prof. Adesina has just been appointed provost' or 'Prof. Nnaji is chairman of American cardiology department of this or that abroad'' we left town, because we were not willing to fight these guys; they took over and ruined our children's future; and they are still doing this.What is the way out'Our children have to fight for themselves. You don't give up. It is never too late; no country is beyond redemption.Is there no way we can address the situation without killing all of you'Of course, there are ways you can redress the situation. First, you can retire all of us but we don't want to retire.Think about values; we've got people who are not influenced by small things such as money. We've got to have people who think about how history will remember them. We have people who are not ashamed that they went to school with a number of burgeoning Asians who have gone back to build their country to where it is now'You guys in the media should stop reporting guys who are buying private jets with stolen money. Remember that the Professor, who turned the University of Ibadan around, is the hero; not the guy who has herds of policemen following him around. That is what matters in life.Budgeting is central to economic growth and development; are we getting it right at the moment, given the debate that trails the yearly exercise'We need to first get our priorities right and find a disciplined way to focus and drive forward on those priorities. I've said a few times that I stopped reading budgets in Nigeria many years ago. I don't know what the budget is currently because it is of no interest to me.Why'I know it will be a joke. I know it to be something that is put out just because'The Finance Minister has promised that there would be clear departure from the past. What about the medium term plan as currently being pursued'I pray it works. I will congratulate and cheer whoever makes it workHow do we chart a new path to ensure budgets don't end up as huge joke, as you said'If we really want to make the budget process to work, we've got to have a zero-based budget (ZBB) so that we can re-evaluate our priorities. What are our priorities'There are many things we need to question in terms of how we spend money. We talked about the ratios in terms of recurrent and capital expenditures.We need to have a theoretical ratio of what is desirable, and then the reality of how you begin to reduce will kick in; and, then, you begin to manage it down.We need to be able to ask ourselves, how can we use the resources we have to attract other resources to drive other things. For example, we talked so much about the PPP but there is still very little going on.Where do we get the most banks for the buck' What part of the economy will be most attractive to private capital to build infrastructure'It is unfortunate that what we are doing now is incremental budgeting. There are some agencies that are of no value for 30 years, and they are still doing budgeting. Nobody asks questions. Do we need these agencies' That is part of what zero-based budgeting should be able to do. It sets priorities.After that, you set up a group of civil society individuals who should be part of the monitoring team. You should have a scheduled stakeholders meeting to come and explain. Before that, you do critical analysis of the budget. In every month, the stakeholders will speak with you and you tell them where you are. Then, there will not be much room to play games.National Assembly and cost of governanceIn last week or so, Ahmed Tinubu, former governor of Lagos State, talked about the need to scrap the Senate. He made the point I have been making that we cannot rely on the National Assembly to review our Constitution because it is narrow interest that drives their behaviours.I have argued consistently for citizen legislature that is unicameral. That is to say that it is only part-time Assembly that can achieve that. Besides, the incredible cost saving it will bring, it will be more effective. This is because the guy that makes shoes in Ariaria Market in Aba, who travels to Abuja to make laws, will be more sensitive to the plight of the people he represents.We have to appeal to our fellow citizens in the National Assembly. They should not take this personally. We are talking about the future of their children, not the momentary power that they have; it is not the money they get from constituency projects. We are talking about what will profit them; they will not need to buy generators, construct roads to their houses and sink boreholes before they enjoy their homes in villages. They will have happier lives; even their children.
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