Ituah Ighodalo, managing partner at SIAO, a leading indigenous firm of chartered accountants in Nigeria, is both an economist and accountant.
He has a deep knowledge of the economy, from a wealth of experience in corporate and boardroom management garnered across many companies and organisations, some of which he presides over as board chairman.
Ighodalo is also the pastor of The Trinity House, a non denominational church on Victoria Island, Lagos.
In this interview with Assistant Business Editor, KELECHI MGBOJI, he looks at what the government needs to do to strengthen the naira and reposition the economy.
How naira can be strengthened
The major reason why the naira is weak is that we have a monoproduct economy that is dependent on external purchases.
The second reason is because we don’t have value added productivity in Nigeria. Our industries are very weak.
The third reason is that we have a low export base of anything else. The fourth reason is that our human capital is largely underdeveloped though we have a huge population.
The country has no business importing food. We have the potential to grow and eat anything we need to eat.
If the country does not import food, that will save us billions of money in dollars. It is the biggest injustice to this nation that we are importing any kind of food at all.
Most of the food in the world is grown here, from apple to wheat, any food. So, the first thing any serious government will do is to deepen and develop our agricultural base, and make us exporters of food and not importers.
We may import a few kinds of delicacies for those who have the taste for them but it is not as a matter of necessity.
The second thing is that there must be value added productivity. We should not be importing petroleum products. We harvest crude oil here. Our refineries should be made to work.
If the refineries are working, we will save ourselves enormous amount of foreign exchange and also create a greater amount of employment for our people.
The third thing that should happen in Nigeria is that we should deepen our human capacity.
We don’t have enough educational institutions and technical schools as skills giving institutions to help our growing population, especially our youths who constitute over 70 per cent of our population. They don’t have anywhere to go to.
If Nigerians go anywhere else in the world they are always the best – in medicine, technology, aerospace management, et cetera. Whatever Nigerians do, they do it well. They are gifted.
The fifth thing is to stop the haemorrhage in healthcare. Nigerians spend billions of dollars every day in health tourism. Almost every wealthy Nigerian goes abroad for medical treatment except those who can’t afford it.
There is no reason our hospitals in this modern days of technology should not be among the best in the world, because our doctors are among the best in the world. Anywhere you go, you find an outstanding qualified Nigerian doctor or surgeon.
All we lack here is the infrastructure and enabling environment for them to do what they are trained to do.
We must stop the drain in healthcare, then of course, provide the basic infrastructure for Nigerians and an enabling environment, that is an environment that is easy to work, do business and thrive, where the laws and policies are fair and well known, where the government sticks to the rule of law, without bending rules for anybody.
How long will it take to put things in order?
I think for a serious minded government, in 10 years, it can turn the country around.
Why are Christians like you not making themselves available for value added services?
My biggest regret, not even as a pastor but as an enlightened Nigerian – and one of the painful things that our parents did to us – was to give us the impression that you could divorce politics from the economy, from national life.
The impression that politics was dirty, people got killed, and things like that. In those days, if you told your mother that you wanted to be a politician, it was as though you were committing a crime.
The churches further made a mistake by reinforcing this myth. Come out of them, don’t be associated with them. The result was that politics became dirtier and dirtier, and politicians became dirtier people.
The other problem we had was military involvement in our governance. The military has no business in governance, it is not trained for it and it is not equipped for it. And at that time, the military was not mature for it.
You cannot replace a Tafawa Belewa with his diction and understanding with a 31-year-old; with all due respect, a lieutenant-colonel just out of Sandhurst.
What happens to 25 or 30 years of fighting for democracy, of discussing with Europeans, of working side by side with Macpherson and Stewart, and getting directly from them the kind of processes that they used to run government?
It is a different thing between working side by side with a major or general in the British army and working side by side with somebody involved in governance, because the army is just a small tool of governance.
So, we lost about 30 or 40 years of knowledge and information and process, and lost about 100 years of development in the process. That’s part of Nigeria’s challenges.
A lot of us, when we should have got into government, were frightened and by the time we opened our eyes and realised that politics and governance and economy and wellbeing are twin brothers of the same parents, and none can live without the other, it was a bit too late.
A lot of the so-called unqualified have taken up the whole place and empowered themselves and made it even dirtier.
Some of us are trying to bounce back to claim what would have been our dominant foothold. It is not too late because that process has produced a Yemi Osinbajo as vice president, and it has produced an Enelamah as a minister.
The same process has produced a Donald Duke [former Cross River governor], and has produced a Babatunde Fashola [former Lagos governor] of some sort.
Bola Tinubu [former Lagos governor] bestrides the two worlds a bit, half here and half there. Maybe he is the bridge builder between the two divides. That’s what I see him as a bridge builder because he enters the trenches but he also has the gift to recognise quality when he sees one.
Tinubu recognised the Wale Eduns, the Fasholas, the Osinbajos, et al. It is ok, and maybe that’s his role. You can’t get into the kitchen and be afraid that it is hot. You have to get in.
So, a lot of us now are coming on. If I have the opportunity and the right road, I will get into governance.
How do you make your church members understand this?
Anybody who knows me knows my passion for this country. Ever since I have been pastoring, within our church, we do economic development, we do entrepreneurship development, we have fairs, we have economic discourse, and the timeless Nigeria series that discusses the wellbeing of this nation.
Donald Duke has spoken to us in our programme, Professor Ehiarhe has spoken to us. Pat Utomi and Bismarck Rewane have been with us, and the late Gamaliel Onosode. They have come through in one programme of ours or the other.
All these and more eminent Nigerians have been with us. We have a programme called Nigeria Series where we teach people governance, politics, getting involved in leadership, encouraging our people to get involved in politics and leadership, and so on and so forth.
We have, every year, what we call Honour Nigeria where we bring out Nigerians that have done well in various spheres.
We have honoured Christopher Kolade. A few weeks ago, we honoured Akintola Williams, Professor Alele Williams, Arthur Mbanefo. These have all received awards of honour from us.
We also look for some good Nigerians that are totally unknown but who have been contributing in their own little corner to the development of the country.
The man who was sweeping the street despite his being physically challenged, we honoured him. A blind fellow controlling traffic the other day, we honoured him.
A young woman whose husband was killed in the process of providing education in the remote North, we honoured him.
A young man came from abroad and started working on Makoko [in Lagos] and the underprivileged in that community, we honoured him.
Our job is to look for good Nigerians and showcase them as people whom others should emulate. They are getting fewer and fewer as we are going along. But there are still some well determined.
As long as we have breathe, Nigeria will change.
Improvements SIAO brought to financial accounting system
We set out 10 years ago to provide an alternative to international firms that hitherto dominated the sphere of Nigerian accounting system, and to generate a lot more income and resource for ourselves.
Also, to build an institution that will outlive the four of us that started the organisation. Also, to give hope and expectation to other indigenous firms and qualified accountants that they can do it.
Also, to be a source of employment for Nigerians and a net contributor to the economy.
I like to believe that 10 years down the line, we have achieved almost all our objectives by really being able to challenge the international firms in Nigeria.
Nigerians, especially our leaders and decision makers, are focused on thinking that the only good firms in Nigeria are the international firms.
But we are fighting it, and we thank God that companies are beginning to listen and know that it is important that indigenous firms are allowed to compete and grow for the benefit of the profession.
We have nothing against international firms; we work with them, we partner with them. Indeed, all of us trained in one or the other of those international firms.
We consider them to be our friends but we also would like them to work with us and partner with us to make sure that indigenous firms also grow and develop through job share, knowledge share, technology share.
We also are having affiliations with a group called RSM, an international network of accounting firms, so that we can share with them knowledge and technology, even manpower from time to time.
It is a good exchange of knowledge between us and them.
Over time, we may transit and bear RSM name but it will never stop us from being an indigenous firm founded in Nigeria, established in Nigeria by Nigerians, that has put itself in a position to work with international firms.
Before now, RSM did not have any foothold in the country; we are the first to work with RSM in Nigeria. It is relatively a youngish firm, about 25 years old. It is based in the UK but was founded out of America.
It has member firms almost all over the world but it is beginning to have a footprint in Africa. Ghana is just coming on stream, South Africa is quite robust.
It has four or five offices in South Africa, and it is just trying to start in Cote D’Ivoire and Egypt.
So, we are driving that in Nigeria because we believe in knowledge share.
Accounting is a knowledge-based industry, everybody must be able to share knowledge together.
We will also like to share knowledge with the international PWCs, KPMGs, and others. Let us all come together for the growth of this profession.
Controversy around you in ecclesiastical issues
I didn’t start out to be controversial if I were. But I know that I have made news at various stages for various things.
Part of why I have made news is that I do my ecclesiastical job a little bit out of the norm and what people thought were typical, back door, shadow hidden, one way traffic ways.
I brought ecclesiastism to the platform of the whole world. I brought reform, to some extent I would like to think, to ecclesiastical matters where church has to be part of society, part of politics, part of national development, part of human development, where you find church in football, music, governance, simple social gatherings, you find church everywhere.
Everything you do preaches a message as long as you do it on the platform of Jesus Christ. We radicalised to some extent Christian ways of doing things.
The economic summit in church, people are just beginning to catch up on it now. We started doing it years ago. It challenged the status quo and they thought this guy is going a bit out of the norm.
So, that started bringing controversy in the denomination where I was. Then, unfortunately for me, I got divorced. It brought another set of controversies.
But since then I have stepped out peacefully and I am doing my work without problem.
The last controversy was just very unfortunate. It was this issue of Ebola virus. But the truth of the matter is that it was just an unfortunate statement by one of my media handlers without even talking to me.
So everybody heard about it that a statement had been credited to me saying that I can cure Ebola. It was just that my media handler got a bit excited and put out a statement in my name.
Nonetheless, I took full responsibility for it because he did it on my behalf. If he had done something good on my behalf, it would not have been an issue, so I had to take responsibility for it.
I handled it well. I said to them don’t worry, that is not what I meant to say. I really believe in the efficacy of medicine. We also believe in divine health, divine healing.
But guess what, it is God that created medicine and doctors.
God says, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Why then are my people not healed?” He made a balm in Gilead, frankincense and marrh for the healing of people.
So if you are sick it does not mean you’re insane. It’s only that God wants to work a miracle in your life. Medicine is part of His miracles, astronomy, science, discoveries, they are all miracles of God.
Human beings are just discovering the principles on which God made certain things. So while we pray against Ebola aggressively, and deal with the spiritual root of it, you need to apply medicine where it is needed, or do an operation where it is needed.
We have no problem with that. So that was just an unfortunate thing.
I am a very principled man, I mind my business, I don’t look for controversy, I try to help everybody that comes my way. I don’t quarrel with people, I don’t have energy for that. I am focused on where I am going.
But sometimes these things come and look for you, then you handle them the best way you can in the interest of everybody, including those who are seeking as it were the way to trouble you.
You handle it even in their own best interest so that it is a win-win situation for everybody.
All I want in Nigeria, Africa, and the world is to make progress; a situation where a small man on the street has a place in the sun and is given hope and opportunity that if he does the right things he will get the right results.