Excessive Influence of Politics on Economy Disincentivising Foreign Direct Investment

the opportunity to grow. Related to that is a deliberate easing of the limitations. I believe that is what government is trying to do through the easing of doing business initiative. But the ease of doing business initiative is still at the symbolic level, it hasn’t gone deep at all. If this goes deep, and we combine it with government development funding, and interest rate remains single-digit, the process and procedure are simplified. Our experience so far is that less than two per cent of SMEs actually get the development funds.

If you were a governor, what would you do to help SM Es or attract SM Es to yourstate?

I would look at the issues for SMEs today. One is land. Land is very expensive, N100 million, N200 million. Except you want to go to the bush to buy land, I don’t know where you can get it cheaper. Two, power. You buy generator and fuel. By the time you add up your cost, you are operating at a loss from the beginning. Even when you borrow money, you cannot pay back. That is why you have a high level of default. Now to solve the problem, there is land that government can acquire everywhere in this country.

Today they are acquiring land and using it for largely housing. Housing is okay, but if you build your houses on an economy that is unsustainable, sooner or later, the houses would not attract the right return on the investment.

So I would focus on industrialisation. I would acquire land, but instead of dividing it into residential plots, I would divide it into industrial and commercial plots. Then I invite businessmen to come. I give you a piece of land, build roads, and service the estates. If I cannot get reliable power from the national grid, I can buy a chain of generators.

I will assess how much power they need and then buy generators.

A country like Gambia, for instance, didn’t have power from the national grid for a long time. They were using generators. For a city, a set of generators would fire till night, they go to rest, and another set would take from night till morning. If you are in a hotel in Gambia, your light would not go off.

If somebody wants to do business, and you give him land, electricity, water, have you not halved his problem? Some of my South-east governors say, come home and invest, this is the way to bring people home.

And I assure you all these I’m saying won’t be equal to the annual security vote of a governor. I’m not saying do this for the private sector free.

My proposal is, set up your industry and employ my people, you pay them salaries, and the government starts taking PAYE. They buy things, government takes VAT. Then, I will amortise your land. This land, for instance, is worth N50 million, after your third year, you have started making money, you start paying back N2 million a year. In a few years, you pay off. For electricity, you can be billed right away, because it would be cheaper than buying and maintaining your own plant.

An industrial establishment has a multiplier effect. Immediately you set up a factory at a place, maybe sachet water company, the people who make plastics would start coming, people who make chlorine, filters, etc., will start coming. You start a whole set of economic activities that would grow the economy.

An economy grows as a result of the level of transactions that happen in the system. These things a doable, only people in office just allow themselves to be corrupted by power, circumstances, and privilege. I have tried it. The only question is, is it your priority? If a governor does these things in his first two years, by the third year, the results would begin to manifest.

Sometimes I ask myself, am I being naïve? I used to asked myself this question when I was younger, is there something that happens to people when they get to a certain level? Then I said, maybe because I hadn’t gotten to that level. But God took me from the first level as a pharmaceutical sales rep, and I became chairman/CEO of a multinational company. I believe that nothing changes. What changes is that you get busier, and having gotten busier, you devise how to use your time more efficiently.