By Chief John Nnia Nwodo
Protocols.
I am honoured to be invited by the Governor–elect of Imo State, H. E. Emeka Ihedioha to deliver today this public lecture which has been slated as one of the key programmes for his inauguration. Your Excellency I consider this invitation a measure of your respect for Ohanaeze Ndigbo and your pride in being an Igboman.
Thank you immensely.
I have chosen to speak today on the problems confronting governance in today’s Nigeria and the Imo challenge. This topic, I believe will situate Your Excellency, in the immediate context you are about to be immersed in.
In the first quarter of 2018 Government Revenues in Nigeria were at N810.25 billion. Butin the second quarter of 2018 it decreased to N680.13 billion.(1)
The following are indicators of the performance of our national economy between 2014 and 2018 from notable international and national sources:-
Nigeria’s Performance on selected indicators and indexes
Category
2014 2018
Foreign direct investment ($B) 5 2
Unemployment rate (%) 6 23
Inflation rate (%) 8 11
GDP growth (%) 6 2
Debt to GDP (%) 12 25
Non-oil revenue to GDP (%) 4 4
Debt service to revenue (%) 27 60
Bloomberg Economics African
Performance (rank) 12 25
World Bank Doing Business (rank) 147 14
World Economic Forum Competitiveness
(rank) 127 115
Transparency International Corruption
Perceptions (rank) 136 144
It will perhaps make more sense if we look at the table of Nigeria’s total public debt portfolio as at December 31 2018
NIGERIA’S TOTAL PUBLIC DEPT PORTFOLIO AS AT
DECEMBER 31, 2018
| Debt category | Amount Outstanding (US$’M) | Amount Outstanding (N’M) | |
| A | Total External Debt | 25,274.36 | 7,759,229.99 |
| FGN only | 21,043.65 | 6,460.399.86 | |
| States & FCT | 4,230.72 | 1,298,830.13 | |
| B | Total Domestic Debt | 54,162.35 | 16,627,841.75 |
| FGN Only | 41,610.44 | 12,774,405.70 | |
| States & FCT | 12,551.91 | 3,853,436.05 | |
| C | Total Public Debt (A+B) | 79,436.72 | 24,387,071.74 |
Notes:
- Domestic Debt Stocks of 26 States (Abia, Adamawa, Anambra, Bayelsa, Benue, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Plateau, Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara) are as at December 31, 2018, while Domestic Debt Stock figures for 9 States, (Akwa Ibom, Borno, Kaduna, Kano, Lagos, Nassarawa, Ondo, Rivers, Taraba) and FCT are as at September 30, 2018; and Domestic Debt Stock figure for Katsina is as at December 31, 2017.
- CBN Official Exchange Rate of US$1 to NGN 307 as at December 31, 2018 was used in converting the Domestic Debts to USD.(2)
Comment from Elizabeth Adegbesan of Debt Management Office in Business Headlines indicated that Lagos State has the highest debt stock of N517 billion or 17 percent of the total debt of stock of states. It also shows the debt stock of the South Eastern States as follows:-
Anambra N 2.6 billion
Ebonyi N34 billion
Abia N57 billion
Enugu N61 billion
Imo N85 billion
Bloomberg has warned that Nigeria’s interest payments are becoming unsustainable. Right now according to IMF projections our current interest rate payments (without retiring our principal loan sums is 69% of our Annual revenue). This is likely, according to IMF, to rise to 83% in 2023(3)
The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA, announced on June 19th, 2018 that the Federal Government’s subsidy on fuel has risen to N2.4 billion daily from N774 million in March 2018.(4) The rise according to them is as a result of high price of crude oil in the international market. Interestingly, whilst this huge expenditure is incurred no provision of it has been made in our annual budget nor has any reported increase been announced in our excess crude oil reserve account.
The real situation is that we are running huge subsidy bills because our local refineries are not running at 100% of installed capacity and are unable to meet domestic demand. Surprisingly, growth of new refineries capable of bridging supply gap in the near future looks dim. One wonders why we can afford such drain from our national purse which can guarantee loan for constructing new refineries and resuscitating old ones even if we have to make a national sacrifice of higher petroleum prices for two years while the construction is going on.
The Federal government has on two occasions released bailout funds to enable states to meet their recurrent expenditure requirements. Only about nine states in Nigeria namely Lagos, Kano, Enugu, Edo, Delta, Abia, Rivers, Anambra and Kwara have their internally generated revenue sufficient enough to cover their interest repayments on their debts without depending on allocations from federally collected revenue. According to BudgTT research in its scale of ability to meet recurrent expenditure obligations rankings, only four states namely Katsina, Kano, Rivers, and Lagos have average monthly revenue in excess of average monthly recurrent expenditure.(5)
According to Fitch ratings, Nigeria’s Government gross debts are 320% of its annual revenue!! – One of the highest in the world!
Michael Kelikume writing in Daily TRUST, December 12, 2015 holds that, “Nigerian economy has grossly underperformed relative to her enormous resource endowment and her peer nations. It has the 6th largest gas reserves and the 8th largest crude oil reserves in the world. It is endowed in commercial quantities with about 37 solid mineral types and has a population of over 170 million people. Yet economic performance has been rather weak and does not reflect these endowments. Compared with emerging Asian countries, notably, Thailand, Malaysia, India, China and Indonesia that were behind Nigeria in terms of GDP per capital in 1970, these countries have transformed their economies and are not only miles ahead of Nigeria, but are also major players on the global economic arena”(6)
A non-governmental organization in Vienna, World Poverty Clock, founded by the German government and led by Homi Kharas, deputy director of the Brookings Institute in the US, and Wolfgang Fengler, a World Bank head economist is predicting that Nigeria will overtake India as the country with one of the world’s poorest people. They contend that “by 2030 there will be 200m fewer people in the world living in extreme poverty than there are today. However, 438m, or 5% of the world’s population will still be below extreme poverty line. This year for example, the extreme poverty level is rising in 30 countries; in these nations a total of 9m more people will be living in extreme poverty at the end of 2017 than 12 months previously in their considered view.”
Continuing the World Poverty Clock holds that,“Very few countries in Africa are making fast enough progress on ending poverty, and in two large countries, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo, their populations are growing faster than their economic growth, so poverty will likely continue to rise. We need a dramatic break from current trends in over 30 countries in order to end poverty worldwide. Nigeria’s population in extreme poverty is rising by 5.7 people per minute and that of DRC by 3.6 people per minute. The situation in Nigeria is such that in February next year it will overtake India as having the most people living in extreme poverty in the world, at 82m.”(7)
In the face of this economic reality, the Population Reference Bureau predicts that Nigeria will in 2050 become the world’s fourth-largest population with a population of 397 million coming after China, India and United States of America. This is only 31 years away.
The future is bleak because we are not diversifying our economy enough and the mainstay of our economy, oil, is fast depreciating. Our daily production of oil has moved from 2.8 million barrels per day in 2011 to 1.7 million barrels in 2017.
America has discovered a new oil production technology – called shale oil production based on the liquefying of rocks and similar solid hydrocarbons. Similarly energy production from solar and waste has improved exponentially over the last two years. China and OECD countries have put a dateline of 2020 – 2024 for cessation of production of machines dependent on fossil oil. Right now in Germany and China demand for electric cars have surpassed demand for cars operated on fossil oil.
Bloomberg predicts that in the next six months American production of shale oil will increase by 12 million barrels a day.
The net effect of all these is that our oil price will fall as world supply will increase and alternative sources will abound.
May I share this thought which a friend sent me on whatsapp that is now trending on the social media
It reads thus,
“Just 17 years ago, KodaK had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they became bankrupt. This will happen in a lot of industries in the next ten years and most people in those industries don’t see it coming.
It will happen with Artificial Intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs. Software disrupting 90% of traditional industries within 5-10 years will prevail. It is amazing to think that Uber is just a software tool, they don’t own any cars and are now the biggest taxi company in the world. Airhub is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don’t own any properties. In the US, young lawyers can’t get jobs because of IBM WATSON. From IBM WATSON you can get legal advice within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared to 70% accuracy when done by humans. Watson already helps nurses diagnose cancer 4 times more accurately than human nurses. Facebook has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.This year, the first self-driven cars have appeared. By 2022, most of us won’t own a car anymore. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up and drive you to your destination. Our kids may never need to get a driver’s license or own a car.
Cities will have 90-95% less cars, parking space can become parks. We now have one car accident every 60,000 miles, Autonomous driving will drop that to 6 million miles and save a million lives each year. Many car companies could become bankrupt. Without accidents, insurance will become 100 times cheaper, the car insurance business model will disappear. Real estate will change, because working while you commute will enable people live better further away.
Cities will be less noisy because cars will be electric. Electricity will be incredibly cheap and clean. Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than new fossil installations. The price for solar will drop so much that coal companies will be out of business by 2025.
With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water. Desalination only needs 2 Kwh per cubic meter. Imagine what will be possible if anyone can have as much clean water as they need, for merely no cost.
One of the major beneficiaries will be health. There will be companies who will build a medical device called the “Tricorder” that works with your phone taking your retina scan, your blood sample and when you breathe into it, it analyses 54 biomarkers that will identify nearly any disease, it will be cheap, so in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world medicine nearly for free”.
It is not only our economic situation that is scary. Our political situation is perhaps worse and sliding into dangerous instability.
Speaking from the Igbo point of view, since the end of the Nigerian civil war no Igboman has been allowed to become the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria either in military conspired coups or through major political party nomination elections. The highest position the Igboman has attained since 1970 is the position of the Vice President, which the late Dr. Alex Ekwueme occupied between 1979 and 1983. Since this forty nine years under review only one Igboman has been Chief of Army staff, the second to occupy that position since Nigeria’s independence. Two Igbomen became Inspector General of Police and lasted for only short spans. An Igboman became Comptroller General of Customs and lasted for just three months. It has been held in many quarters that the reason for the coup of 1983 was to forestall the possibility of an Igbo, in the person of Dr. Alex Ekwueme, becoming President of Nigeria.
Paradoxically since 1979 the North has occupied the position of President and Commander in Chief of the Armed forces eight times in a cumulative period spanning over seven tenures, the West four times (denied of an elected President assuming office) and the Southern minorities once.
Like all Nigerian political phenomenon, the areas from which the President came from have had unprecedented exposure to high political patronages and offices. Most dominant of these patronages has been in appointments into positions in the Armed forces.
The Armed Forces in Nigeria has been most dominant in our politics. Only in the government of President Shehu Shagari was the influence of the Nigerian Armed Forces limited. In all other democratic governments they either influence the election of an Army General or a civilian closely connected to the armed forces as President.
The entire administrative structure of Nigeria, in terms of states and local governments were created by the military. No known parameter of population, economic viability or school’s enrolment were respected. The constitution they wrote and imposed on the country makes amendment virtually impossible and stifles self-determination.
The preponderance of leadership from one part of the country legitimized affirmative action as a standard policy of government. Consequently junior officers are promoted over their superiors and their superiors compulsorily retired to give them effective command. Merit, gallantry and scholarship are sacrificed for states of origin.
The greatest victim in this nepotic style of rulership became the South East. We in the South East, of the six geopolitical zones had the least number of states and local governments, and we receive therefore the least of federally distributed revenue. Our state governments are technically impoverished. Our ability to influence decisions at National Conventions of political parties was consequently sequestrated.
To make matters worse the military without offering any reason designed a new constitution that gave exclusive control of our mineral and natural resources to the federal government in violation of the agreement of the component parts of the federation between 1944 – 1963 to constitute one country. Our federation was formed on the basis of independent and autonomous regions and a loose federal government.
The constitution we were given by the militaryis not autouchtonous. It was not ratified by the people either in a referendum or in a mass vote.
In law and in political norm it is a no-starter. But it was imposed on us by force and any attempt to oppose it is viewed by the powers that be as treasonable. This is not politics. This violates human rights, this violates self-determination. This imposes a hegemony on some sections of the country.The reactions have been myriad and virtually unstoppable.
In the South/South militants who refuse the sovereignty of the federal government over their resources have remained unstoppable. Armed to the teeth and ready to wage war against the federal government, they have been engaged in a soft approach strategy designed to contain but not to confront them. They are given all sorts of handouts, sponsored in all sorts of professional trainings and allowed to promote limited bunkering which continues to promote their armory and encourage their neighboring Igbos to emulate them.
Buoyed from this experience, in the North, Boko Haram and the Fulani herdsmen began to grow. Now Boko Haram, supported by ISIS engages and decapitates our military whilst the herdsmen kill and pillage with reckless abandon.
This state of affairs has now brought economic relief to the North East with the attraction of billions of dollars to the so called IDPs and the building of uninhabited schools for those who detest Western education.
Also mining companies protected by a combination of ISIS Sponsored militants and European miners invited by, and collaborating with local traditional rulers and security forces continue to violate our constitution and export our mineral resources earning huge foreign exchange that are not declared in our federally collected revenue
In the East the government attitude is appalling. The policy is one of subjugation, dehumansation and containment. Driving from one city to another in the South East one is confronted with toll gates in the name of military/police check points. The extortion is carried out so brazenly that no secret is made of it. To ensure that the practice continues unimpeded, police, army and security bosses sent to the South East are mostly deliberately chosen from other parts of the country.
The message is that you are a conquered people. Given the inability of young graduates of South East extraction to get employment in government agencies and top private sector establishments controlled by non-Igbos, the South East has become a breeding ground for revolutionaries. Their language is persuasive. Their dramatization of marginalization is real. Their sense of hopelessness is pathetic. Their recruitment drive is irresistible. Their call for action is contagious. But the resort to military containment, whether in the form of police mop-up actions or in army python dances is palliative and unsustainable.
The solution to this situation must address the causes. So long as the Nigerian Federation continues to be run as a unitary system of government imposed by the military, which treats the South East as a conquered minority and denies it access to regional self-government and direct control of its natural resources, so long will the agitation for separatism continue in the East.
As President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo and as one who was in the theatre of war in the last civil war, I hate to see a return of hostities to the land. I am convinced that there is only one way out – namely a return to federal system of government in accordance with the agreement reached by our fore fathers between 1944-1963.
The argument for this solution is further strengthened by the fact that this present system has failed. We can no longer sustain our country economically if this system continues. Today, we are spending 69% of our national revenue to service our loans annually without retiring the Principal. Today, we have 12 million youths out of employment. Today, the quality of our education is falling drastically due to lack of teaching aids and qualified personnel. Today, the security of life and property has never been as inadequate and unreliable as it is.
Just driving from Abuja to Kaduna is a nightmare. Farmers in Middle belt and Southern parts of Nigeria live in continuous nightmare of AK 47 carrying herdsmen.
The irony of all these is the total disregard of the security forces in ensuring equal protection for all citizens or prosecuting defaulters.
We live in an era where the rule of law has been thrown overboard. Both the Federal Government and State Governments deliberately ignore court judgments but rigorously enforce those judgments that favour them. Examples are myriad. When government cannot guarantee the security of its citizens or the respect for its laws, the very essence of democracy is destroyed.
Service chiefs who supritend this insecurity are given extension of tenure unavailable in our establishment rules and regulations simply because of LOYALTY and where they come from. A system of federal governance that gives priority to loyalty and place of origin at the expense of competence destroys the very essence of building excellence and national unity. Nigeria has never been more divided that it is today.
I recall my days at University Of Ibadan with nostalgia and despair.
For those who deride Igbos every day in our newspapers and say we can never be President on account of our voting in the last election, my answer is simple. We don’t want to be President in a skewed and unjust federation. We have demonstrated that unless you rig Igbo votes will determine who will be President. They now know that our votes are sizeable!!We want a restructured Nigeria and this is not negotiable nor is it stoppable!!
THE IMO CHALLENGE
Your Excellency, Gov-elect Emeka Ihedioha, you are at the junction of history.
To make a difference you must be different. You cannot continue with the old ways and be different. You must develop the will to be tenacious, unbendable and resolute in your convictions. You must be selfless. Avoid sycophants, job seekers and 419ners!
It is my profound advise that you must make the common man, the poor village fellow your gauge for growth and prosperity. In all you set out to do you must consistently ask yourself, how does it benefit the common man.
Imo state is the most educated state in Igboland so I hardly need to canvass here the need to democratize education. But I need to challenge you to change the emphasis to education leveraging on technology.
The days of theory based education is gone. Retrain your teachers. Give our children skills – skills that count in today’s world. Diversify them. While you encourage science, develop consumable skills in arts, movies, playwriting; tailor our skills to consumption patterns, rejuvenate learning and learning processes.
Imo State has the highest number of higher institutions in Igboland and, therefore, the highest number of educated youths. This huge population of youths could be a waiting time bomb if undeveloped and unharnessed.
On infrastructure, aim at the ones that promote growth not conspicuous consumption. On roads open up your hinterlands and markets so that mobility of goods and services can promote production. Internationalize Owerri Airport even if it means taking a franchise from the Federal Government and inviting foreign partners.
Champion the development of Oguta sea port on the same basis as Owerri Airport.
Exploit the abundant gas reserves in Imo State to build industrial clusters in every local government powered by gas, mechanise agricultural production and revive our palm oil exploitation to match or overtake the Malaysian example.
Go all out for Igbo in the diaspora. Not just Imolites, Igbos.
Prof. Aderanti Adepoju, the Coordinator Network Research on Africa (NORMA) disclosed in Lagos in July 2017 that Nigerians in diaspora have repatriated about N7.519 trillion into either development finance projects or family assistance(8)
Many of these diasporians are Igbos. A lot of them have attained their highest levels of promotion in their professions and have many frustrations. Some are just being exploited in developing or protecting technologies aimed at exploiting their kit and kin. Some have hit the glass ceiling and cannot go higher on account of race or nationality.
Some have lost their cultural identity and seem helpless as their kids face the same calamity.
They want to come home to serious ventures where their skills will be respected, unhindered by bureaucracy and allowed to germinate.
Create welcoming incentives for them and give them challenges in Health, in Education, in Computer Programming,Environment and Agriculture.
In all these tasks know that the greatest of them all is fighting for the restructuring of the federation.
You may, among the South East Governors, be the latest kid on the block, but you come with enormous national exposure and experience. Furthermore in a country with declining respect for its electoral process and its management, your emergence, in spite of all odds, is Providential.
We have, thanks be to God, developed an unstoppable alliance of Southern and Middle Belt Elders Forum working with the Northern Elders Forum that is determined to turn our country back to the path of security and quantum development through restructuring. We hope that we can count on your support.
Your Excellency, all that remains for me at this stage is to wish youthe best of the Almighty God’s guidance in your new assignment, a very good health, a loving and supportive family and an inspiring team to work with you.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak at this lecture and for your kind attention.
Full text of the Imo State 2019 Inauguration Lecture delivered by Chief John Nnia Nwodo, President General Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, at the Ahiajoku Convention Centre, Owerri on May 28, 2019