Wanted: A moratorium on crude oil production (2)

There are indeed very enormous other costs associated with the ‘oil as economic domino’ model that the country currently operates. These include oil spillage and the despoilation of the environment, criminality, banditry, piracy and illegal bunkering, the rise of an easy money culture, spiralling corruption and graft, lowering of the work ethic and indeed the incentive to work and an overall decline in productivity. The truth is that when people see that they can get things the easy way, they would not be motivated to go about their lives following what they consider to be a somewhat ‘more difficult route,’ even when for all practical intents and purposes, their greater reward and achievement is to be found there. However, it is important to address the other side of the tale, namely, what does the nation do in the short-term to address the issue of immediate revenue declines that would accompany the coming into force of our proposed moratorium on crude oil production? And then for how long should the moratorium be in place? Two quick answers can be deployed here. One, while it is true that there would be a resource strain on the nation in the short term on account of the moratorium, the point is that the hope of the gains that would emerge at the end of the day as well as a combination of deft and sincere economic management strategies and the putting in place of a staggered programme of implementation would help ameliorate the short-term challenges. For example, we could in the first instance request the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, to progressively reduce our assigned production quotas to 75 per cent of current figures in the first year, 50 per cent in the second year and 25 per cent in the third. For the next three years after then, we could cut back further to just only 10 per cent of current production quotas which should almost exclusively be used to power local demand and needs. Two, the continuing improvement in Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, in states like Cross River, Ogun and Lagos suggests that there is indeed a basic premise for the more efficient generation of revenue and opening up of the economy countrywide if the enabling environment to drive this is put in place. Our moratorium which would reduce revenues going to states would serve then as a litmus to tighten efficiency in governance and administration at the state level which is the critical plank upon which the new and more productive economy being envisaged would be hinged. The benefits from this scheme therefore would include improved fiscal discipline across board, the development and expansion of alternative economic paths, reduced oil spills and expectedly also, agitation from local communities and a lowering of the presently denuding practice of very ferocious intra-elite contestation for more and more resources from the little that is presently being generated. In its own way, this scheme being proposed is not without precedents in our history. We have already made allusion to the First Republic where the regions grew their internal revenues better, stimulated increased development and promoted a far greater regime of transparency and scrupulous spending than we presently have today. A second reference would come from the effects of the withholding of revenues due Lagos local government councils by the then Obasanjo administration which propelled the state to take even more seriously the need to generate more and more of its own revenues outside of the Federation Account. Today, the state is a net winner for it as it generates well over 70 per cent of its revenues internally. To be most effective however, the proposed moratorium scheme must be seen for what it is. It is not a scheme to punish any section of the country. It is not a scheme to withhold revenues that should be contributed by a section of the country at this time. It is not a ‘victor or vanquished’ project. No, it is a critical economic and social imperative that would help all of the constituent parts of the nation to grow better as well as result in a regime of increased revenues across board, along with additional side benefits that include an enhanced sense of mutual respect by Nigerians for each other, a healthier environment and eco-system and an overhaul of our presently retarded work ethic. Second, the season of implementation of the moratorium would have to be supported by political reform to ensure that states control the bulk of the resources and economic activities from their areas as an incentive to getting them to explore more and more resources that lie within their power to tap. And this is where leadership from the Presidency would be most critical. For example, under the current Constitution, the President, in conjunction with the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission is empowered to make proposals to adjust the revenue sharing formula. Equally, the Executive along with the ruling political party is also empowered to make proposals for constitutional reform to the national Assembly to ensure better and more timely governance. Given the very obvious limitations that we have seen in say the award and supervision of road projects in distant states and locations by Abuja-based bureaucrats, a reform-minded Presidency would do well to work on the emergence of a new model where both the resources for as well as the implementation of the bulk of road projects countrywide goes to the states even if this would result in the extant Federal Ministry of Works losing as much as 90 per cent of its current budget. Another reform that would boost productivity, internal competition and growth for example would be a review of the current VAT model to ensure that states receive VAT only on goods and services within their own precincts. There are of course many more but the point has been made. For Nigeria today, economic reform is a task that must be done.

Wanted: A moratorium on crude oil production 1

For several months running, they gathered in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja to discuss issues related to the restructuring of the Nigerian federation. As this piece was being put together, the conferees were supposedly on the last lap of the process. And the signals that much would indeed be achieved from that convocation were not there. But did anyone expect more than that? At its inception, some of us rooted for the Confab. But it was neither for want of anything better to do nor because we did not know that there was a real likelihood that not much would be achieved at the end of the day. It was more because, having elected to function as a democracy, the only lawful option for the people of Nigeria is to talk through any and all problems. Any other path is haram. Which brings us to the subject of this piece. Calling for a moratorium on crude oil production in Nigeria today may be misunderstood by some as selfish (coming from a Niger-Deltan) and seen by some others as an extreme reaction. But this writer has some defence in the Itsekiri adage which says that ‘the sacrifice that calls for blood would not accept palm oil substitute.’ The truth about the Nigerian condition today is that we are indeed in very dire straits. Papering the cracks would just not do. At the core of the motivation for the harsh measure being advocated is the imperative of arresting the slide in the land and dealing with the crisis of productivity. This is because, far beyond the availability of natural resources and the sheer mass of population, productivity is truly the real winner for any national economy in the world today. And this involves at its base the provision of an enabling environment as well as the continued supply of incentives with which this would be achieved. When the Chinese faced the crisis of productivity several decades ago, they wisely resorted to a programme of liberalising parts of their economy from the stranglehood of obtuse central planning. It helped. The defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics did not get it. It crashed. There is a time to take a decision. There is day to fix a problem. Nigeria, this is your day. To be sure, Nigeria’s decades-old over-reliance on crude oil exploration and production for its revenue receipts was clearly going to be a problem. In addition to the fact of living in dread of price shocks that come from time to time on account of the global politics that has now come to be part of the economics of oil production and pricing, there have also been introduced additional difficulties on account of the distortions in our national governance order. Hemmed in on both sides, the managers of the nation constantly then have to juggle all of the balls at the same time. They have to watch out for anticipated crisis in the world that could have a negative impact on the price of crude oil, hence the continuing attraction to base the annual budgets on less than market prices which in turn fuels further failings. They also have to constantly balance political interests within the land that stem from the unavoidable demands for more and more resources from oil-producing communities and the countervailing interests of non-producing communities and states who worry that they would continue to get less and less resources from the composite ‘federal’ pie if more and more of these resources are shelled out to the producing communities and states. Within this dialectic of perennially increasing demands and counter-demands, we lose sight of the bigger issue. And this namely is to gauge whether indeed the nation is preparing for, and mobilizing the best of the productive potentials of all of her people in such a way that the cumulative result will be a net performing nation in economic terms. And when this path is not taken, we are correspondingly confronted with the current situation where we are constantly moving from one spiral of crisis to the other. Last week for example, the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, explained that the current resort to the option of transporting crude oil to the refineries by vessels due to the activities of vandals and oil thieves who periodically rupture oil-bearing pipelines has increased the cost of refining the product by $7 per barrel. Before Diezani’s revelation, there had been other costs. There is for example the legendary one about the loss of inter-regional economic competitiveness that was the hallmark of Nigeria’s First Republic. During that period, the leaders of the regions strove among themselves to develop resources with which they would later deliver dividends of independence to the people. Sadly, the end of that era has left us with the very precarious mono-economy that we have today even as it has also encouraged the very tragic structural alienation of the citizenry from direct involvement in the workings of government; leading to the non-involvement of the mass of the people in the affairs of state and the improvement of their well-being. There are other costs. Oil spillage and the despoilation of the environment, criminality, banditry, piracy and illegal bunkering, the rise of an easy money culture, spiralling corruption and graft, lowering of the work ethic and indeed the incentive to work and an overall decline in productivity are some others. The truth is that when people see that they can get things the easy way, they would not be motivated to go about their lives following a ‘more difficult route.’ Having made our core point, it is important to address the other side of the tale. What does the nation do in the short-term to address the issue of immediate revenue declines that would accompany the coming into force of our proposed moratorium on crude oil production? And then for how long should the moratorium be in place? Two quick answers can be deployed here. One, while it is true that there would be a resource strain on the nation in the short term on account of the moratorium, the point is that the combination of deft and sincere economic management and putting in place a staggered programme of implementation would ameliorate the challenges. For example, we could in the first instance request the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, to progressively reduce our assigned production quotas to 75 per cent of current figures in the first year, 50 per cent in the second year and 25 per cent in the third. For the next three years after then, we could cut back further to just only 10 per cent of current production quotas which should almost exclusively be used to power local demand and needs. Two, the continuing improvement in Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, in states like Cross River, Ogun and Lagos suggests that there is indeed a basic premise for the more efficient generation of revenue and opening up of the economy countrywide if the enabling environment to drive this is put in place. Our moratorium which would reduce revenues going to states would serve then as a litmus to tighten efficiency in governance and administration at the state level which is the critical plank upon which the new and more productive economy being envisaged would be hinged. The benefits from this scheme therefore would include improved fiscal discipline, the development and expansion of alternative economic paths, reduced oil spills and expectedly also, agitation from local communities and elite contestation for more and more resources. To be most effective however, this scheme would have to be supported by political reform to ensure that states control the bulk of the resources and economic activities from their areas. And this is where leadership from the Presidency would be most critical.

At a time like this...

As I write this piece today, #Nigeria is trending. Ordinarily this ought to be good news. And it could have been. After all, the nation just completed a rebasing exercise which, unlike the verdicts from our recurrent electoral contests, was so very professionally done that no one has accused us, yet, of ‘figures-rigging.’

Again the outcome of that exercise should ordinarily predispose us to a year’s standing ovation from all over the world. As the outcome so graphically outlines, the result situates the nation in the rank of high-flying economies as one with the 26^th largest GDP base globally and incontrovertibly the numero uno economy in the mother continent.

Another reason why the glasses ought to be clinking is the fact that the nation last week hosted regional and world leaders and indeed the global investing community to a Special session of the World Economic Forum on Africa at its Federal Capital city, Abuja.

There are other things to cheer, including the fact that its national football team, the Super Eagles, is one of only 32 the world over that would shortly be headed for the South American and samba-loving nation of Brazil to take part in one of the biggest events in the globe today, the World Cup.

But then there are other issues that dampen the mood. One is that the impressive GDP results, as we say in these parts, have not translated to dividends for the mass of the people at the grassroots. And yes, while the President is right that the 24^th richest man in the world is a Nigerian and that the nation is today the private jets capital of the world, the other very inconvenient truth is that Mr. Poverty is indeed also Nigerian. Talk about having the best and the worst of indices cohabiting together in the same space!

Second, Nigeria has continued to grapple with an embarrassing barrage of clearly solvable troubles. It cannot refine enough oil for its people so fuel queues are an enduring decimal. Graft has gone haywire. The educational system is tepid and comatose. Power supply is a mirage. Roads, rail air, water and other transport infrastructure stinks. As some friends casually remark, the situation is indeed so dire that it looks like the nation, citizens included, has indeed been kidnapped!

Within this climate of despair has been added a gory scepter of senseless killings, unexplained deaths, kidnapping and abductions with the security services that ordinarily should inspire confidence in their stern and professional resolve to combat these aberrations now having an added credibility deficit in terms of their conduct and public pronouncements. So where do Nigerians turn?

It is within this vortex of confusion and disappointment that fresh word came out last week that the Presidency had accepted to receive help from the United States and indeed some other nations to help resolve the issue of the abduction of Girls and other wanton atrocities being perpetuated by operatives of the Boko Haram sect in Borno State and elsewhere within and beyond the nation’s borders. So we also now have the scepter of formal exposure to foreign security operatives carrying out campaigns within our sovereign national space!   

On a normal day, my patriotic self will object to our so-called ‘Post-colonial Sovereign State’ accepting help from another nation 63 years after it began its sovereign nation-building journey. It just does not add up.

But these are strange times and existence surely precedes essence.

But how did we really get here?

The writer, Chinua Achebe is many things to many people. But without any controversy there are three attributes that resonate from his life’s story. One is that he is simple even when he is not a fool. Another is that he can be blunt and would not cower from a fight if one was needed. And third, he was such a deep and introspective thinker that when he did step into any fray, his views were not likely to be so casually dismissed.

And so when he picked up his pen to write what his perhaps his slimmest published book during Nigeria’s second republic, many read him. In the book, ‘The trouble with Nigeria,’ Achebe, went straight to the point: ‘the trouble with Nigeria, he laid bare, ‘was simply and squarely a failure of leadership.’ He had made his point. And characteristically, he would not say anything else.

At a time like this when Nigeria is caught in the throes of multiple crisis and failings, we need our Achebes to stand up to be counted. This is the least we can do to avert looming disaster and the latter-day censure of history for all who would survive. As J.P Clark would say: the casualties are not only those who are dead.’  And there surely must be hope ‘for the living dead.’

Nigeria will rise again.

Madiba: Lessons from a life richly lived

Nelson Mandela is going home. He has departed this world of mortals but it is very clear that were it to be the subject of a Big Brother-like vote, the global aplomb would almost surely have been for him to continue to remain in the house. This is how well he touched us. But we are not God.

And the Methodist-raised Mandela was always conscious of that. And he did not even allow his characteristic sense of solidarity with his comrades in the African National Congress, Umkhoto wa Sizwe and the South African Communist Party to touch him in this regard. When for example he saw that his comrades were elevating ‘winning the struggle’ over and above the imperatives of peace and development and electing to continue to prosecute the very debilitating ‘black on black violence’ against the Inkatha freedom Party (IFP), Mandela broke with the party line and made his way down to Kwazulu Natal for a one-on-one with Gatsha Buthelezi. It paid off. The war ended.

A second example came also whilst he served as President and had to do with the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) Programme that he had put in place to help long-locked out Africans from the commanding heights of the South African economy. Because the majority of the beneficiaries were ex-combatants who were not adept with the mechanics of commercial business and enterprise, the firms that they had now secured proprietorship over soon began to flounder. Again, much against the party grain, Mandela reached out far and wide to get accomplished business players from across the world, whites included, to come and teach his black boys how to do it properly!

A third reference has to do with the penchant for sit-tight leadership in the continent where pioneer-leaders like Mandela encourage themselves or secure encouragement anyways to continue to remain in office indefinitely. When Mandela sensed that some of his associates had begun making underground moves to return him to the ballot for a second time in office, he again broke with the caucus and publicly declared that he was not a candidate! This is the stuff of which great leadership is made.

Watching the bevy of world leaders and common people to wit, rising to pay tribute to him on worldwide television yesterday and the effusive display of love and respect being showered on a man who gave up literally all of his comfort so his people can get theirs, almost brought a tear from my eyes. And a question also: are these leaders seeing what some of us are seeing? Are they getting inspiration, motivation and vision with which they would return home to their respective states, make restitution, repent of their old prodigal ways and commit now to joining other men and women of goodwill and honour to drive the world to the heights of glory possible only with self-effacing leadership lifestyles like that which Madiba has so eloquently demonstrated.

Practically then, what is the quintessential legacy of Nelson Mandela?

A lot of this can be found in the story of his life and struggles. He was born a privileged Xhosa prince from the Thembu ruling house but he elected for the struggle to elevate all of humanity to the pedestal of honour, love and justice where the Almighty God had established them to be in the first place. When things got heated and the system whipped at him very mercilessly, he could have taken the easy way out, cut a private deal and chickened out of ‘his foolishness,’ but like the Biblical Issachar, he chose to bow his shoulders further to bear some more burden and become a servant unto tribute.’ Mandela was truly a man who lived more than a man’s basic share of life. He was legendary. He was a phenomenon. And because he lived so gloriously, he would almost literally be remembered eternally.

Three points come out for this writer as the core essentials of the Mandela brand that will win any day. The first is that planning over the long haul and living your life with a firm recognition that tomorrow would surely come is a critical success factor that cannot be glossed over.

Second, that man or woman that would amount to much in a respectable way must find out what his calling in life is and live for it. As the philosophers would say, if you live for everything, you will fall for anything. The challenge then is to identify the critical something that resonates with you and commit to living for it no matter how many obstacles are placed on your path.

And third, the winning person must be a person of courage, a will-do and can-do type. This flows from an essential recognition that life does not hand over laurels for wishful thinking, but on the contrary to people with a ‘solid weight of personal achievement,‘ as that other equally recently departed achiever, the venerable Chinua Achebe would put it.

And then we close on this point. As many commentators have very well asserted already, the Mandela type is a rarity in our world today for several reasons. While the purpose of this piece is not to go into elaborate detail about ‘why we are indeed so blest,’ it may be important to state that this state of degradation is clearly not unconnected with the decline and loss that we have suffered on the prism of values. For if the truth is to be told, the world in which we live in today is caught in a very frightening tailspin where the pristine values that forged and kept communities in the past have slowly but gradually been denuded with very little being done to replace them.

But for the moment, let us savour the privilege of the moment and bask in the glory of the fact that Mandela came, saw, lived and conquered even in these besmirched times. And if we would be willing to sit where he sat, then we can still have a few more Mandelas in the years that follow that will continue to point us on towards the path of rectitude, honour and good sense. Here indeed was a great man. When comes another? We wait.

 This piece was first published in Hallmark Newspaper of Wednesday, December 11, 2013.

Why you should join the Neighbourhood Book Club (NBC)

·     1. It would help you to become smarter and wiser

·     2. It would show you how to read productively despite the challenges of your 'busy' environment

·     3. It is a platform for exploring your reading interest in a relaxed, social environment

·     4.Access to a wider pool of books from other members and club’s library network

·      5.    Buying books at discount

·      8.  It would help build your presentation and public speaking skills

·      7.  The opportunity to participate in community development activities.

Saving the Nigerian Book One Reader at a Time

Clearly the Nigerian book is in distress today.

Months ago, Debonair, one of the avant-garde book selling outfits in the city of Lagos was forced to shut down its upscale Sabo, Yaba offices.

Silverbird Bookstores Port Harcourt has also followed suit.

Onibonoje Publishers, Odusote Bookshops, CSS Bookshop are either out in the cold or are mainly a shadow of their former selves.

Across, Nigeria, libraries are shutting down or suffering a new titles-kwashiokor

The book is in retreat and needs to be salvaged.

Many reasons account for these developments and we have a few thoughts in this regard. But the critical point today is what is to be done to reverse the rot.

And for us it is not too complex: we think the answer lies in reaching and cultivating readers, one after the other.

To do this we have set up the Neighbourhood Book Clubs.

And this is how it works. Through organising 5 to 50 readers in a neighbourhood unit, we intend to use the principles of consensus building, shared passions and team work to stimulate even greater reading passion amongst the members, and then their own extended community.

The second plank of the work has to do with setting up book clubs in schools countrywide.


To be continued

The Sunbird Book Clubs: Statement of Objective

This week we make history with the first of the Sunbird Book Clubs, the Arepo Book Club being inaugurated on Saturday at Utol Schools, 7 Jemima Laalu Street, off Journalists Estate Road, Arepo, Ogun State,  from 3-5pm.

The reading clubs are being put together because we definitely need them. The reality of life in the contemporary world today is that nations and peoples that aspire to success and greatness must continue to invest in life-long learning systems. Gone are the days when we went to 'and finished school!' That will not work anymore.

On the issue of targets, we are looking at setting up 10000 such clubs within a decade. With fifty members per club, this would come to an active reading population of 500,000 members.

Of strategic import is our decision to let the clubs be established and function and thrive at the neighbourhood level. Each club unit will after the initial tutelage period, be deregulated to continue to take decisions on its specific programmes, finances and events/projects as long as these do not conflict with the larger goal of reading culture promotions among our people.

As for membership, it is open to readers that can read and are willing to continue to read and collaborate with other readers in a peer-support social environment designed to sustain and grow their reading passion and help other members of the society equally become readers and better readers.

Thanks