China or the West – When shall Nigeria quit the feeding bottle? (I)

It is usually painful to see Rotimi Amaechi, the Transport Minister being drilled over Nigeria’s Chinese loans by the House of Reps Committee on Treaties and Agreements. Painful, because those inquests often become personal and detract from the core issues. So, an otherwise intellectual debate gets split into two extremes; on one hand is Amaechi, trying to convince the House Members about the merits of signing documents without any scrutiny because we just need the money and infrastructure so badly, and the Honorable Members, who have assumed the position of Tomas de Torquemada, the head of the Spanish Inquisition, circling for blood. All said, the questions to be answered remains whether Chinese loans are not prepackaged heists by which the Chinese are hoping to take over the Nigerian economy on the cheap and to run our lives, and whether we ought to be borrowing so much or at all, right now.

Let me give my humble answer with respect to the second question. I have seen it said in some quarters that Nigeria ought to be tapping into internal resources and redirecting internal revenue right now. My recent article titled “The Mad Scramble for Money by the Nigerian Government”, sought to bring out where some of those leakages were. It is evident that a whole lot is going wrong in our country and especially with our public finance - which is a total disaster. With every Act passed by the National Assembly comes a parastatal or some government agency, such that Oronsaye’s 521 MDAs have growth to almost 1,000. Many of these are rogue organisations which do not prepare or submit accounts, and of late we have seen some of them confessing to being in existence for the comfort of those who work in them. Our catatonic anticorruption avatars, as well as the agencies they set up, are conveniently mute at a time they should be speaking up or taking salutary actions.

More revelations have come out since my article. The Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) was grilled by a Senate Committee for generating N2.4 trillion on behalf of the Nigerian people, sharing N88 billion among its staff as approved bonuses, remitting only N44.5 billion to the Consolidated Revenue Fund, and not being able to account for the remaining N2.3 trillion. The Securities and Exchange Commission was shredded by the House of Representatives Committee for spending N10 billion on its staff, which was more than the N8.4 billion it generated in 2019. NAFDAC explained that a missing N7 billion was spent on inspection, and the Nigerian Customs Service plans to spend N238 billion on staff salaries, overheads and capital expenditure for the year 2020. The service shares 7% of all import duties and 2% of VAT among its lucky staff. Civil servants have ruined Nigeria.

In recent weeks we our Legislators have demand that none of these MDAs should spend more than 60% of their collections on themselves. It is however going to be tough for the legislators to enforce this anyway, because negotiations will take place, votes will be added here and there on their behalf and status quo will remain. It is always incredibly tough to reverse theft when they occur at the levels we see in Nigeria. The problem is systemic, and has only grown to the level where those who benefit now boast about it. An audio clip currently circulates on WhatsApp, featuring the voice of a policeman who boasts about how he gets paid N250,000 monthly by the NDDC as he is listed as Chief Detail to Minister Akpabio. He also said the Minister’s cousin – another policeman – earns N500,000 monthly whether he works or not. While trying to get another woman in bed, he boasted about how his wife, who is a Deputy Manager at Nigeria’s underperforming oil company gets paid almost N30 million in ‘upfront’ rent and medical allowance every January. Similarly, news got out recently that staff of our shut down oil refineries got all these huge amounts as salaries, and even got their regular promotions for doing absolutely nothing all year. Nigeria is just a wonderful place and until the people take to the streets in protest rather than hope to be ‘blessed’ like those ruining the country, forget it. Time is ticking on this country.

It is however almost too late at this stage, to hope that we could suddenly rapidly reorder our spending in order to urgently get out of the present economic downturn. Suggesting that this is possible may betray that we do not fully appreciate the problems this country presently face. Short of jacking every civil servant on the streets, seizing their assets and auctioning them, nothing can reverse this drift. The hard feedback that our government and the civil servants eating Nigeria to death require will never come through because Nigerians are not ready. And so the status quo will remain. A new set of oppressors have arisen in Nigeria. How is it that the best-paid and highestearning Nigerians are suddenly public servants; many of whom are grossly underproductive? The other problem is that we are faced with an urgent, important and multifaceted crisis. Urgent because the country totters on the precipice of a self-inflicted destruction. Urgent because we have a global pandemic and economic collapse to deal with and if we don’t somehow keep the economy running, even those who think they are safe will suddenly see how vulnerable they have become in the blink of an eye. Important because we are faced with a life or death scenario – as a nation, an economy and as a people. Multifaceted because we have health, economic, sociopolitical and human development issues to deal with. The constellation of dark stars is unprecedented, for us and for the world. COVID-19 has come to expose us and push us to the very edge of existence. This is therefore the time to take quick, sustained and decisive actions. We have been played. We may be unable to get our money from the corrupt folk who have grown wings under this government and past ones.

This is where the borrowing comes in and becomes unavoidable.

It may be important at this point, to remind us that indeed every nation is borrowing presently, and for good reason. When your people are forced to lockdown and stay at home for months, someone has to pick up the bill one way or another. Countries are either borrowing domestically or externally, or both. The stronger countries are able to keep the money in the family by borrowing locally. I had tried to push this idea in the beginning of COVID-19, as a way of locking in as much as N20 trillion which may otherwise be chasing the dollar. I saw an opportunity then, and tried to sell it but there were no takers. Now, the Naira has fallen from N360 on the streets, to N480 since that time, and may fall some more. Those entrusted with running the economy are among those scrambling to exchange their Naira for dollar.

Back to the issue, nations borrow in periods of downturn, especially in situations where global trade seizes up or in periods of global economic crises. The world economy is predicted to go into a recession soon. The United Kingdom’s economy fell by a whole 20% and over 50 million Americans have so far filed for unemployment benefits. Wow! If Nigeria was sincere and we knew our real numbers, I’m sure we will all be more than alarmed. Our 6.1% fall in GDP looks mild. Also, we run a largely informal economy where people are their own government and there is a dislink which makes our statistics unreliable. What worries me most, however, is our refusal to change our ways.