Muhammad Sanusi II Related News The Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi, on August 24, warned President Muhammadu Buhari to avoid repeating the mistakes made by former President Goodluck Jonathan so his administration does not telegram up in infamy like that of his predecessor. Here is his full speech at the event: First of all, I want to break from tradition. Usually I speak in Hausa in Kano. To avoid things being lost in translation, I will speak in the language of economics. Let me start by saying congratulations to you minister. This is the first time I am meeting you in an official function since your appointment, and to tell you in public what I have always said in private; that you are one of the sisters I remain extremely proud of your work. I wish you all the best in these challenging times. I have always told people that Dr. So, he takes a lot of the credits, and none of the blames, for what I have become. Ladies and gentlemen, I was not given a specific topic to talk on. But, because the concern today is the concern about the recession Nigeria is in technically, and also because it is a meeting of Planning and Budget Ministers, I thought I will do a proper economic presentation and put down my thoughts on where I think we are; why I think we are where we are, and what I think we need to do to get out of this. I am sure there will be many other presentations specifically on what a state can do to raise revenues and so on. But, having an overarching view of economic policy, and where we may or may not have done wrong, or what the key drivers of growth should be for the Nigerian economy are things I thought we should talk about at this session. So, I call this presentation, Nigeria: The Search For A New Growth Model. I will start by going back to the past, not just Nigeria, but Africa. Africa Golden Decade was basically the decade of the s. Africa moved from the previous decade, where it was a hopeless continent, to a new decade that we have one type lifting all story of Africa rising. This rise in Africa across the world was one of stories of sadness, poverty, famine and hunger to a continent that was full of potentials; where there were opportunities for investments; where capital markets were booming. All of a sudden people heard countries like Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, etc. The first pillar of this growth was clearly shifting terms of trade, which as we all know in developing economics, can be a mirage. But, we know as far back as the s, from the Latin American structure economics, that over the long term, any economy that specialises in exporting primary products and importing manufactures would end up having terms of trade shifting against it. Byone barrel of oil would buy you one Sanyo flip telephone as against 19 barrels of oil to buy the same phone earlier. That gives an idea how well the terms of trade have shifted. This was a time of rapidly improving technology, cheaper manufactured products and therefore our oil could technically import us much more. This process was not common across all of Africa, because we are aware of other African economies that grew, and certainly it was not just one pillar. Between andthe levels of debt to GDP gross domestic product in African countries and what they became after the Paris Club, HIPC debt reliefs and so on. Nigeria was at 50 per cent debt to GDP and came down to literally 5 per cent or so. This happened across all Africa in the form of debt forgiveness, debt relief, debt restructuring and so on. What this did was that it freed up government balance sheets and in that decade of Africa rising, the countries went back on a borrowing binge. Nigeria kept borrowing, not externally, but internally. But, the Naira indebtedness of the Nigerian government, we were spending over 30 per cent maybe 40 per cent now of every Naira earned just servicing debts. Nobody was noticing it. We have written off the debts, and then we kept building it up bit by bit. And when you look at where that debt was going into, you will see why, or part of telegram answer to the problem we are having. So, we have these two pillars rising commodities prices, and we monetise oil revenue, we will be able spend money. We were able to borrow because the balance sheets could accommodate more debts. Where did all these debts go? Did it go to roads, power, refineries, or infrastructure? The new borrowings were simply recycled into much higher recurrent expenditures. What that did was that it helped sustain a consumption boom. And GDP was growing, largely driven by consumption spending. If you look at public sector wage bills in real terms, Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia and Kenya, you will see it was rising significantly from to In Nigeria, for example, our public sector wage bill went up from N billion in to N1. Inthe government increased minimum wage to N18, I was at the Central Bank, I protested and protested. They had an election coming, they increased the minimum wage N18, and basically borrowed money to pay. Inas governor of Central Bank, I said this was an unsustainable wage bill. We needed to reduce the size of the public service. In fact, she said the government wanted to employ more people. And this is the result. The problem is that there is nothing that we are facing today that we did not know would happen. That is the truth. Many of them deliberate. We ignored every single word that pointed otherwise. Economics is a science. It is not a perfect science. But, over decades and decades and centuries, people have seen that there are certain things that, when you do, will lead to certain consequences. We knew that this was going to happen. We will see the per capita investment development in Nigeria and per capita results we are getting. These were all from a resource in an enclave economy. And not so that we are not always blaming the previous administration, we have also made mistakes in this administration. We have started retracing our steps. But, we have to retrace those steps. And if we fall into the same hole that we fell into the last time, where the government is always right. Minister, Nigeria is very lucky to have you in office. You tell the minister that you are doing well, but, you know there are these areas that you must change. If a policy is wrong, it is wrong. Nothing will make it right. And it has to be changed. So, this is what we did. Look at real sector wages. It was not just Nigeria, it was all over Africa. Look at sovereign debt fuelling growth. If you take the example of an individual. You happen to know bank MDs and you can make a few phone calls and get loans. You borrow Signals billion here today and build a very nice mansion in Abuja. You borrow another N1 billion and let your family go out on first class ticket as you are travelling all over the world. You borrow another N5 to N6 billion and buy a private jet. We have very many people in Nigeria who you think are very rich. But, who are really bankrupt, because everything about them are being financed by bank debts. When one debt matures, they have enough connections to call another bank, borrow and refinance that debt. They are not earning anything. They have private jets. Their families travel first class. They go abroad and stay in the most expensive hotels. And it is happening today. What do you think of those people? When you think about such people, do you think they are foolish people? Or do you think they are wise people? So, what would you say of a country that does this? So, you feel growth by borrowing money, pay salaries, people spend money on pure consumption spending, nothing is produced. But, it is not sustainable. How much can you continue to borrow telegram consume without producing? And the funny thing is, you did not have to stop borrowing. All you had to do was borrow the right amount and apply them to the right purposes. So, make a choice. As a country, we made a choice. We wanted votes, popularity or palliatives, so long as people are getting high minimum wage, we keep quiet about all other things that were happening in the economy that we should be talking about. That was the relationship between public debts and GDP growth. Today, we are in a new reality. This is what they call the new normal in Africa. And we have a two speed Africa. If we look at the new IMF World outlook, you will see something interesting. Non-commodity Africa will be the fastest growing part of the world, even higher than emerging Asia, whereas commodities Africa countries like Nigeria and Angola are among the lowest growing parts of the world, at the rate of Europe and Latin America. But, think of a country like Ethiopia and then Meles Zenawi, the late Prime Minister. Ethiopia keeps growing year after year at per cent. And what did Meles do? The simple things we have been saying for decades and decades and decades. This is a country that came out of a war, remember? It originated from Ethiopia in the world. But, Ethiopian farmers, before Meles, would get 10 per cent of the value of coffee from their crops. They would just produce the coffee and sell to companies, and the companies will take their coffee signals Latin America and have it improved and dried and and packaged. And Zenawi just asked: You coffee is very good, but your farmers have bad farming practices. Today, if you go to coffee shops in Europe and take a cup of coffee that came straight from Ethiopian farm. And Ethiopian farmers are now getting 70 per cent of the value of the coffee, from the former 10 per cent. So, he tells Aliko Dangote, come and build a cement manufacturing plant here. I am going to give you electricity at three cent per kilowatt hour. For a cement manufacturer, that is all the incentive that you need. So, Dangote goes, builds the most sophisticated cement plant in Ethiopia, gets electricity almost for nothing and cost of cement drops by 60 per cent. The construction industries gets boosted. Roads are being built with cement. And new industry has taken off. Set up the factory here. Nobody knows how much duty they pay. I am not talking about expensive shoes. I am not talking about what you buy from Pierre Cardin, or Gucci. I am talking about shoes people wear on the streets. Shoes that can be bought here in Kano. We can produce all the shoes, and school bags we want for primary and secondary schools children, millions and millions of pairs. You know what we do, we export the wet blue and we import from shoes from China, and we have Chinese people coming here to take wet blue to China and bring back shoes. We are just a very interesting country. Every single thing we are talking about today about what we need to do have been said before. We are clapping ourselves that after 50 years, we have learnt nothing. These are very simple economic logic. You cannot continue doing the wrong things and expect to have the right result. Since s and s, they understood what was the essence of colonialism. It was to come to these countries, take our raw materials, process them and sell us manufactured goods, and keep shifting the terms of trade against them, so you get richer at their expense. They understood that independence was not about the flag, but about reversing that process. And therefore they said we needed to stop exporting our cotton. We need to build textile industries. We need to stop exporting groundnuts. Kano used to take pride in groundnut pyramids. I still have people who come to me and say: I want oil mills. What am I doing with groundnut pyramids? They stopped exporting groundnut pyramids and build all these oil mills. We should stop exporting hides and skin. Huge multinational corporations that came to Nigeria, whose business was to buy hides and skin. A company like John Holt. It became a Hausa word, because this was a multinational whose duty was to just buy hides and skins and take to Europe to produce shoes for us to buy. So, they said let us build our own factories and produce our own shoes and bags. Tomato paste that our wives use in kitchens is imported from China. At best, it is packaged in Nigeria. Now, we have a paste factory 40 kilometres from Kano. We cannot process tomato. We have to import tomato from China. A country of million people last week Nigerians were celebrating, because we went to Rio and came back with one bronze medal. I saw Nigerians jumping. Somebody said at least we were on the medals table. Some of these things are not just about numbers. It is about a mindset and a people and attitude. Do we really love our country? Do we feel any shame when we say that Malaysia that came and took palm seeds from us is now exporting palm oil? Palm oil is what Eastern Nigeria people eat. Vegetable oil, groundnut oil. That is the thing that grows wildly here in the Northern part of the country. Somebody takes Moringa, puts it in a tin, packages it. I did not even know it was called Moringa until I took the tea. They packaged it and gave it an English name. I did not even know it again. It was after I drank it that I knew it was Zogale, as it is called in the local language. If they had packaged it and called it Zogale, it would have been known as Zogale tea all over the world. Just like people know coffee from Ethiopia. But, now that it is called Moringa, a Hausa man does not know what Moringa is, and it is growing in his backyard. Then, he takes pound sterling to import Moringa tea. So, this is what Ethiopia did. What is it that works? What is it that these non-commodities African countries have done that we have not done? First, take a model that is investment-driven, rather than consumer or consumption-driven. At the very top, you have Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Ghana, Kenya and Egypt. Those at the bottom are Angola and Nigeria. And if you talk today in Africa, they will think Nigeria and Angola are the richest countries, because they are oil producing. But, the truth is that we are the worst performers, in terms of investments to GDP. If you look at the other countries that do not have oil, look at what they have done. If you have a high investment to GDP, you will deliver high growth that is also inclusive. If you continue working on consumption and rent-seeking model, your growth is not inclusive, which is why in Nigeria, you have, over the past two decades, increasing income distribution inequalities. It is very easy to be very rich based on rent. Again, we can always talk about the policies of previous administrations. We talk about oil subsidies that brought oil billionaires. But, we have also created our own billionaires since from foreign exchange subsidies. People are shaking their heads. Let me give an example. I did not just become an Emir. Before then I was Governor of Central Bank. Before then, I was a bank MD. So, I have friends in the banking industry. Do you doubt it? As a former MD, former governor of the CBN and what they now call a royal father? If I do that four times in a year, for doing nothing, I would have had N4 billion. And people were telling us that this policy was to help the poor. We are not devaluing the Naira, because if we do the poor people would suffer. The people that were profiting from this were people that were telling the government that if it devalued the Naira people would suffer. Meanwhile, they all got the dollars at N and priced their goods at N to the dollar. The poor paid the price of a devalued currency and the rich schemed off the profits. It went on for one year. We talked and talked and talked. If this government continues to behave the way the last government behaved, we will end up where Jonathan ended. We may not like it. But, that is the truth. You have to listen. It is unsustainable, no matter how positive you think about it. So, the first thing I will like to say is that there are many voodoo economists parading around. And many of them are not economists. They tell poor people, anyone that says devalue the Naira wants you to pay a high price. It is not economics. Many of the arguments I see in newspapers, sometimes I feel like writing back, and I will remember I am an Emir and I am not supposed to. Even this one I am giving this lecture, maybe someone would say: Is that economics or arithmetics? If you ask your boy in Primary 3, if the dollar costs N today, and tomorrow it forex N, what would happen to prices? He will tell you prices will double. One times is two times one times That is not economics. The economics of it is, these billions that are being schemed off by people who get official exchange rate, should you give the states their revenue. Yet, the states were going to borrow from the same government on a bailout when the government was selling dollars cheaply to a small group of people. What kind of signals are we running? Who is advising the government? I have asked that question before. I want to know so I can talk to the adviser. We did not have money. Oil prices had collapsed. Niger Delta Avengers were blowing up oil wells. The scarce dollars we had, we were selling cheaply, subsidizing people. What was the argument? We need to promote manufacturing. But, what percentage of your GDP is manufacturing? Just buy the dollars and sell. Would you import and manufacture? You have an automatic guaranteed 50 per cent return immediately for no labour. With this every manufacturer abandoned production and started looking for FOREX. I had people who would come to me or telephone me and book an appointment only to ask me: So, every manufacturer decided that he would get the dollar and sell, instead of buying raw materials and producing. So, what happens to production and employment? What do you end up with? And why are we surprised we are having a recession? But, we did not call it recession. We called it demand management. People were using words they did not understand. You want to manage demand? You will manage demand for industrial raw materials, you are also managing industrial output. You manage demand into inputs to services and manage down service outputs. The result we have was the result that we were always going to get with sets of policies we put in place. I am glad it seems we have. But, we need to just come out and come clean. That is the best way. We have taken a few wrong steps. It was all done in good faith. Now, we are retracing our steps. Now we begin to talk. For Nigeria, from a base in toGDP has been rising nominally, driven largely by recurrent expenditure. If you looks closely, recurrent expenditure seems to spike on the eve of elections. The economy has quadrupled telegram nominal terms since Our population has grown by 40 million sincebut capital expenditure has not changed. Where are these 40 million people going to be? The Niger Delta creeks and Sambisa Forests? Our economy, at least in part, created terrorism by simply not creating the opportunities for these young people. If you think the Niger Delta or Boko Haram or other insurgents or something are the issue, let me give you another number. We have over million Nigerians today. The median age is In the next 20 years, we are going to have at least 80 million Nigerian men and free between the ages of 20 and Maybe in the next generation you can start doing something about it. You can start family planning or something. But, these ones have been born, and we have to prepare for them. Those of us who are alive now, we have to prepare for what we are going to do with these 80 million young people. And if we do not expand the earnings and production base of the economy through wise investment and very difficult, but appropriate decisions, we will end up in a classical Malthusian situation, where the resources cannot support the population and we start having wars and pestilence. Thomas Max, one of the very first lessons you learn in EC Look at the road ahead. You know this is all a combination of old sets of policies. There are times in the history of this country when we had it right. A lot of the reforms done in the second term of Obasanjo laid the foundation for sustainable growth. But, then we kept going back and forth. And I am hoping that in here we are not free the ordinary innate Nigerian. We do feel a level of shame at what we see. So, on paper, Kenya is half as rich as Nigeria. So, how much is Kenya able to raise as tax revenue per capita? How much was Nigeria raising in ? Now, how much was Kenya spending as development spend per citizen? How much was Nigeria spending? They are the direct consequence of deliberate policy decisions. If you choose to make it very profitable for people to produce fake bills of lading and claim fuel subsidy and build estates and private jets, we are never going to have refineries. If you make it profitable for a Chinese man to come to Kano . Now in Kano, the Chinese are doing tie and dye. Even the tie and dye pit that has been in Kano for about years are at risk. We have been talking about the protection of this industries. Minister of Planning, nobody has done anything you know. In the next 10 or 20 years, if people of Kano starts picking Chinese and throwing them into the dye pits, because they are importing simple dye, they took the technology from Kano, went to China and they will now be coming to ask the people the pattern that they want. They come in, they bribe Customs, and because there is no way you can produce that thing in China and bring it and they sell and our industries are destroyed. The textile Industries in Kano are gone. The tanneries and leather industries are gone. A combination of a lack of electricity and infrastructure, lack of investments and very bad trade policies. We have to go back to the drawing board. This is why this conference and the Ministry of Planning are the most important economic Ministry. I have always said that the Planning Minister is the most important Economic Minister. Assuming that, one, he is able to produce a very good plan, and two, that the government listens to him. And this is why I thought instead of coming here to talk about just monetary and fiscal policy, I will talk about them. So, are we going to adopt an investment driven model? Now, we talked about the public sector, and public sector fundings, and when I come forward I will show you that for Planning Ministers, you need to think beyond what the government budget is. If you need to build a road, your job is not about whether you can raise enough taxes to build the road, it is whether you can fund that road. With the combination of taxes, and debts and investment and whatever, that road needs to be built. Nobody says the government must fund every single thing that is development. This is where investment becomes important. We are not getting money from oil. Our non-oil revenue is not rising fast enough. We talk about taxation, but there is a limit to how much you can tax a man who is not able to eat. You know, we play with these numbers. When I free in the Central Bank, we say: What does that tell you? How much tax does it pay? Wholesale and retail trade, how much tax does it pay? If you just look at debt to GDP ratio, there is no reason why the Nigerian government cannot borrow more than N trillion. But, let them borrow now. When are they going to pay? You service debt from revenue. Nobody talks about debt to revenue. I know we all think it is oil. But it is not! Oil does not form even a critical part of our GDP, or our growth. Look at these numbers. The present value of your oil reserve inwhich was calculated based on So, those making noise about oil should stop making noise about ii. People should stop being afraid, because oil is not critical. It is just a working capital. We get the dollars that we use to import. If you can find another source of working capital, we can do without it. The oil sector was not adding anything to GDP growth. The growth was coming from agriculture, services and trade, which is also very revealing. If we are now saying we are in a recession, because of the collapse in oil price, we are not being sincere. What happened to agriculture, trade, services and health? Something else to look at. This is the slide that got me sacked from my job. You know the truth will always be there and I like this power point presentations because the figures tell you more than a thousand words. These are our external accounts, now look at Nigeria and look at Kenya up there in the blue line. These are current accounts surpluses we have had from to Not even one oil price rise in did we have in our current account deposit. I think today, up to we have current accounts surpluses. Now, below there you have other investment assets, which will be your capital inflows. I mean your reserve, and forex have something called net errors and omissions. These are national accounts published by the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Central Bank is telling Nigeria: Now, we are hearing where the money went. All sorts of revelations that nobody thought where possible. Everyday they were captured in errors and omissions. Now, look at Kenya. They do have errors and omissions, but compare the errors and omissions bar to what they were able to account for. First of all, as you can see we have not been able to attract investments. All the other investment assets headed as errors and omissions had been headed out. Which means, the money went out and did not come back. Anything below the zero line represents money that went out of Nigeria and did not come back. Anything above represents what came in on the net basis. How much investment do we have in the oil sector, roads, economy, agriculture, refineries. When you talk to people, they will tell you this sectors are not profitable. But why are people investing in Kenya agriculture? Why are they investing in roads in South Africa? Why are they building bridges? Why are they investing in power plants in Ethiopia? I am Chairman of a company called Black Rhino. This short man who owns black stone said to us: We have projects in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Kenya. I accepted to be Chairman on one condition only, that he will allow me to fix a power project in Kano. And what did we hear? One day some judge in a court sits down and says reverse the tariffs. I am here talking to someone in New York who cannot understand that a government can issue a power privatization plan; that investors can come in; that there is a regulator for power; that they looked at the numbers, looked at the cost of power, looked at what is cost recovery, agree on a tariff, announce that tariff, they bring in their money to invest on the basis of that and a court in the same country says this is illegal. You know, for you sitting here and for Nigerians, this may not sound well, in fact people were saying yes! They are cheating us. But, what that one judgement does in terms of the signals to foreign investors is very disastrous. There is no country in the world where a court had agreed to interfere with commercial transactions between the government and private investors that are in to attract investments. There is a contract! The judge did not even say do not give this going forward. Knowing that you can tell him this is the tariff, and tomorrow your court can wake up and say the tariff is illegal? Your Customs officers should know that okay, this is the duty; pay correct duty. If a man is entitled to 5 year visa for bringing some kind of investment, he will get it. The court should respect legal agreements. And the right incentives should be provided, and when you provide incentives, do not review. Every government comes in and the next thing you know, some businessmen comes to them and say: The next time you offer somebody your own incentive to invest, he will not come, because he believes that the next government will reverse it. If you offer somebody an incentive in cement, make sure that every cement manufacturer gets that incentive. Assuming cement is important to you, if you offer an incentive for agriculture, make sure that everybody who meets those conditions should get those incentives, not just somebody who knows his way around Abuja. The farms are not in Abuja anyway. You can see this. Forex, no investment has come in, and as you can see, I am building a consistent story that you have had growth model driven by commodities and consumption, which is your problem, and you now need to shift and you have a growth model that is driven by investment. And forex this forum, it means you got to stop thinking so much about how much the government can spend, as in how much can we get into this economy. Lagos has done very well. If I have money to invest, I will invest it in Lagos, because it is attracting investment. Lagos has realized a long time ago that the government cannot fund all it needs. And I just love what Lagos has done. The Lagos story is a story of what Nigeria can do with itself transparency, consistency, regulations and people can be rich. There is no problem if people can be rich while growing an economy. But, in Nigeria people become rich when people are dying. Lagos can do without the rest of this country. So, we must not let Lagos go. This country is better off with Lagos than with the Niger Delta. We should be together as a country. Every part of the country is important. But, let us not be so obsessed by a resource, because we have had the commodity driven model, and we are blind to the potentials of an alternative model. What is oil anyway? It is a raw material. You need it to move your vehicles. Now, you have electricity. You need it to fill your generator. Now you have solar power, and biomass. The future of oil is not there. So, those few people who are trying to break up this country over oil, after sometime that oil will be worthless. You are better off being in a country that is based on this model. This is a country of the future, that is the past. Exchange rate Let me start by congratulating the government for making changes. Unfortunately, those changes were a bit late. But, the adjustment has been very severe. My sense is that where we are today, the Naira is already undervalued. If you look at the real effective exchange rate, we are below the zero line. So, you are not really under any more pressures for a devaluation. This is the nominal exchange rate adjusted for relative prices, and also adjusted for rates of our trading partners. So, on a trade basis, the Naira has gone from one of the most overvalued currencies when we were at N to the dollar, to the one that is undervalued. So, that adjustment has been made by the Central Bank. And what the Central Bank needs to do is just to allow this system to operate properly and stop panicking. You know, from what you can see here, even if the markets starts at N, N or N to the dollar, if you allow it to operate, it will revalue itself and adjust. What is causing the problem is all the sense that we are not entirely flexible, and sometimes wrong signals. I was in the Central Bank, the markets works on the basis of confidence and perception. There was a time speculators started hitting the market when I was with the Central Bank. South Africa got hit and they started heading towards Nigeria. And I called an emergency monetary policy committee meeting jerked up the monetary policy rate MPR by basis points, jacked up CRR cash reserve ratio by basis points and declared that I will defend the currency. The market works based on confidence. By the time you have taken over one bank, fire one bank MD, they will believe you when you make a threat. I made many threats as governor of the Central Bank that I never carried out. If banks messed up, I will say, I will remove you, and because I have removed bank MDs, they will say sorry sir. They fell in line. So, if you are going on a flexible exchange rate, have the nerves. You have produced a fantastic document, stick to it. You are in a recession anyway, so you are trying something different. So, try it and try it properly. Again, Central Bank has raised it and people have been attacking the Central Bank for raising the rates. It is about stabilizing the currency, because the truth is that where we are today, the only way we are going to reverse this recession is to increase liquidity in the foreign exchange markets and reduce the gap between the official rate and the parallel market rate. And this is what I think the Central Bank needs to keep doing. A flexible exchange rate regime and a positive real interest rate will combine to bridge that gap. Bring in the dollars that we need to finance imports, and those imports of raw materials are the things that will increase production, and that production is what will lead to growth. I have been very critical of what the Central Bank has been doing since the beginning of this administration. On the treasury single account TSAthey should just realize the difference between the dollars balance sheets and the Naira balance sheets, because I have seen this whole thing about banks being banned from foreign exchange markets for dollar TSA. The Naira balance sheets of banks is highly diversified. Banks are financial intermediaries. They engage in what is called maturity transformation. They borrow money short term and loan for long term on their Naira balance sheets. They have this signals coming every day current accounts, savings and deposits. If you tell them to pay off government deposits, they pay off and send marketers out and raise money. On the dollar balance sheets, Nigeria only raise dollar on oil sales. The IOCs international oil companies have their money in international banks. NNPC is the only provider of dollar money, and they have lent out that money. If you apply the same rules on the Naira balance sheet and dollar balance sheets, without looking at concentration risk, you bring the banks down. They have lent out these dollars. Look at the maturity of their assets. Give them time to pay back these dollars. For them to pay back these dollars, they have to find dollars elsewhere. Where are they going to find? Who is the other exporter, apart from oil. What do we export in Nigeria? And that is the point. So, they need to be very careful. So long as you know where the money is, give them the time to sort out their assets and pay back. In the history of this country, and Dr. You build up non-performing loans. So, let us think through the consequences of some of these decisions that we take. But, apart from that, I am extremely supportive. I think the Central Bank is doing the right thing, and I think we should encourage them. I think the government should be given credit to say we are going to retrace our steps. The government has said we are going to eliminate wasteful subsidies. I have been saying a lot about fuel subsidy since We have seen everything. Just an interesting thing. Now, we are down to a little above 30million liters every day, has our population gone down? Do we have fewer cars? Are we consuming less? All those numbers were fake. Again, you can go back to the recordI sat in front of the House of Representatives and made a presentation. I had documents that showed people claiming they had 15 vessels of 30, metric tons offloading in Lagos on the same day, and they were being paid subsidy based on those documents. All they needed was a paper that says you have allocation, and based on that allocation they will go. I am glad again that we are moving towards removing these subsidies. Let me make that clear. If you have to pay more for fuel, it hurts, it bites. The truth is that no system is perfect. And the subsidy system benefited a very small groups of criminals much more than it benefited the poor people. And if you are going to subsidies, please provide this subsidy in production. Provide cheap gas to power plants and set power prices to a level where they can make a profit without passing on high gas prices to customers. Reduce the cost of setting up a business. Reduce the tax burden on pioneer industries. Do not subsidize consumption. Rather than give poor people subsidy on fuel that never gets to them, take that money and put it in their hands. And where is that money today? It is not in this economy. I was the governor of Central Bank. Every dollar we earned from the oil sector went back to petroleum sector in Not one dollar went into education, roads, power. The numbers are there. Not that this one I am saying will change anything o! I am just saying it. But, tomorrow if you invite me, you will hear. Look at power generation. That is where we need to focus on. People bought DISCOs distribution companiesbecause they had connections. Usman was head of what was called the technical committee on privatization and commercialization in the s. I know because as a Merchant Banker, I privatized Okomu. Okomu oil mill is still there. If you say you are going to invest, they had a process of making sure that after you bought that company, you make those investments. Privatization is not just about selling assets to people, it is about making sure that they make the investment they are committed to making when they bought it. So, we have people who bought DISCOs who said they will invest, but they have not invested. Lagos has done well, but you need to do more. In Lagos alone, you have 13 procedures to register land, according to World Land in Business Report. Lagos has now moved up, they are merging all relevant laws into a single piece of legislation. The only reason why I am not praising Lagos is, because I want to see the result first. But, they have at least realized that this is a problem. And I hope all states would look at this. Power and Land reforms are very important and having that data base is critical, especially for agriculture. Mark your land, give a C of O; let the farmer be able to use that land as collateral to borrow, or as security. I have that big problem here in Kano, especially in the Muslim villages. He uses her farm. He earns a living and he gives her chop money from her own money. We are working on farmers trying to improve their yields, and I am having that problem, and Free get to the district heads and say: This money that is being given for seeds, for fertilizer, for inputs is being given to the woman who owns the land. If your husband wants to be the labourer, let him be. You are the boss, because she owns the land. If your husband is ready to farm for you for a fee, let him do it. Otherwise, we will find a farmer for you. Many of them own lands being hijacked by their husbands and they remain poor. But, the Muslim woman has been stopped from farming, but in the name of culture. And therefore, as leaders, we have to address this social issues as part of economic rejuvenation. You know, I keep sounding like a broken record It was very controversial. But, if you google it, you will see it. Now, look at this. These are our trade with China. We are all importing from China. Those that export to China are exporting oil or solid minerals. Europe interest in Africa is not our developments. Likewise America and Europe. If they are going to produce textiles in Shanghai. Bribe our Customs Officers. Come to our markets and destroy our industries, we have to say no sir! If China is lending us money, and we are going to pay back that money to import equipment from China, we should please check that those equipment are properly and transparently priced; that we cannot get them cheaper from another part of the world; and that they are of high quality. Now, we go to these countries and we think there are no strings attached, especially at this time that the World Bank and the IMF and the Europeans are saying we want you to pursuit policies, China does not interfere. So, we are running to China, it is a good partner. We must trade with China, India, Europe with America. I have nothing against any of them. What I want us to do is to sit on the table with them and negotiate trade agreements that protect our interest, because that is what they are doing and that is what every reasonable country in the world does. Historically, that was driven by commodity growth, by consumer spending. We have a future that is based on investment that should come in. We need to move to an investment-driven model. We need to have some elements of state planning. We cannot just allow the market. The market will not put money in agriculture, refineries. Sustainable inclusive growth now depends on investment. Please every planning commissioner should remember that its investment. You have seen how much money you are raising per head. It is not much. Even if you move money from recurrent to capital expenditure, if the pull does not increase, it is not much. If you got to look for private investments, local and foreign, to to do that, and you do that by having a corporate micro-policy and the government is getting it right, finally, and also creating a supportive business environment. So, set excess rate to intensify it flows, eliminate subsidies, that has been done. Now, address failures in the power sector value chain, starting with the DISCOs, digitize state, land registries, prioritise public spending towards investment and protect infant industries. Anybody who tells you not to protect your industries is deceiving you. Create a level playing field between the infant industries and the big ones.
Writing assessment term papers we apply all our talent and skills with some special care to show you how good we are in writing papers of that complicity.
Tychism: A term derived from the Greek, tyche, fortune, chance, and employed by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) to express any theory which regards chance as an objective reality, operative in the cosmos.
There is no guarantee however, that your workers compensation carrier will approve your claim.
Writing assessment term papers we apply all our talent and skills with some special care to show you how good we are in writing papers of that complicity.
NYPost: Huma Abedin Denies Active Role as Editor of Radical Muslim Journal.
Tychism: A term derived from the Greek, tyche, fortune, chance, and employed by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) to express any theory which regards chance as an objective reality, operative in the cosmos.