Our Political Class Should Be In Jail – Pat Utomi

Nigeria is in a mess and heading towards Somalia, this is the view of Pat Utomi, a professor of Economics in this interview with AYODELE OJO. 

He speaks on the state of the nation, the unrealistic transformation agenda, corruption, trial of indicted oil marketers and other contentious issues. Excerpts:

How has life been since 2011 when you made attempt to participate in the presidential election?
There are people who like to say that they are professional politicians and that life is politics 24/7; I think man is a political animal, all of us should be politically engaged. But I don’t see myself as a professional politician, I relieve in doing other things, but as a citizen, I am active politically. 

Today, we are watching a very sad development in Nigeria. I am more or less spending all my time in reflection about how best can one affect the dignity of the human being in Nigeria, which was the very reason I became active in the political life and not for acquiring power for the sake of power; being able to use power for self or anything like that. In that sense, I have given myself to other ways you can make the world a better place if you can as a human being travelling that track.

I have been very engaged in my work in civil society, social enterprise, working with young people on how they can avoid the mess we have made of their country in travelling a bit internationally, looking at people who have changed the world, not necessarily through deploying of political power but deploying the power of social enterprise. I have been doing all of that and I have been following all the goings- on in the Nigeria political arena and providing some thought on leadership. That is how it has been.

When you mentioned the sad development in Nigeria, what do you mean?
I don’t think anybody who has a sense of self respect is happy about where Nigeria is. Today, Nigeria is now being classed alongside the Pakistans and the Afghanistans of this world. I can tell you this with a sense of authority as someone who has been all over the world. Mystery index is deepening in Nigeria. Clearly, Nigeria should not be where it is; with the kind of unemployment that is all over the place. The NIMASA, a government agency, tried to employ some people and on the day of the first test, the crowd that was supposed to take the exam in a school spilled over to the road outside the premises; many were injured, fracas broke out, just because people were trying to get jobs. 

And if you are not being chased by bombs in the Northern part of the country, you are being chased by kidnappers in the South-East or South-South. Generally, there is a sense of despair and despondency in the land. What is more shocking is not just that things are bad but that people in Abuja are still busy sharing money. They don’t even understand that the country is in deep crisis, they are carrying on as if nothing has happened. It’s a very difficult situation. To be frank with you, I have lived through Nigeria’s independence era but I don’t recall things being as bad as this, not even during the civil war which I lived through. There is a certain sense of despair that is quite unusual.

You classified Nigeria with Afghanistan and Pakistan, why this?
It’s not me; it’s people. The number of people who have been killed in the last couple of months in Nigeria is more than in many active civil wars. Even in China they were saying Nigeria is not safe. The Chinese are tired of going to Nigeria because after they agree with one governor, there is a new governor the next day and everything is overturned. Our institutions are weak, our political culture is poor. Things are not as they should be. For many people, it’s about power over purpose, the very purpose is lost.

You said you lived through the Nigerian independence till date and you have never seen a situation as bad as this. Is this only in the area of security? In a more sophisticated environment, people publish what they call confidence index and confidence decides whether you will make investments for example, plan long term and stuff like that. There isn’t a confidence index that I know of in Nigeria but if there were one, it will be extremely low. Everywhere you see two or three Nigerians; they are wondering whether Nigeria can actually survive. So, from my personal rule of the thumb measure of the confidence index, I have never known it to be as low as this since independence.

But we have a government with a transformation agenda; how much of that do you see?
Every day you wake up; there is a probe about billions that disappeared. People read all of these things and you think it won’t affect them? They believe that they are being ruled by a gang of thieves. Whether it is correct or not, that is the perception – they are just victims in the hands of thieves.

I have not seen anything transformed. You have to reform before you transform. How can you be transforming when corruption is worse than yesterday? General Olusegun Obasanjo tried to change things in his first tenure and one of the things he suggested was the so-called low profile, they tried to cut down on the funding of public officials. But now we have abuse of resources beyond measure at a time when Nigerians are just starving to death, we have public officials spending money like it has no value, hosting conference of First Ladies of Africa and you wonder whether the people in public life are giving any thoughts to the fact that those they are presiding over are having worse times of their lives. This is not pleasant.

The recent index on failed states featured Nigeria prominently though those on the government side argued that it was incorrect. How do you see this as an economist? Whenever indicators that involve all the countries of the world are published and one country denies the authenticity, you can only wonder if the people who designed it just wake up to make one country look bad, that is unlikely. Of course, there isn’t anything that is perfect or that is not subjective. But for anybody in good conscience to assume that life is wonderful in Nigeria is to either embark on self deceit beyond imagination or to live in denial about our reality. 

Things are bad in Nigeria, talk to any Nigerian on the street. American politics used to just resolve the matters simply by saying, ‘Are you better off today than you were four years ago?’ I am sure there are only few Nigerians, maybe those who have been receiving fuel subsidy, who can say life is better today than it was a couple of years ago. We all know from our experiences that life is worse off. Many of the young men and women who were employed in the banking industry have been laid off, the banks are still laying off and will continue and that was self-inflicted. The manufacturing industries have remained in comatose for many years now, so where is the good sign that we have a growth rate of about six per cent? We know that there is a growth that describes Nigeria’s growth as a jobless growth. 

The World Bank studied our index economic performance some years ago anchored by its chief economists and out of it came a book that was entitled ‘Putting Nigeria to work.’ The book described the Nigeria situation as a jobless growth situation. How can Nigeria be growing without creating jobs? If you do a breakdown of the sources of growth, the growth in Nigeria is not so much about what we were doing as managers of the economy but essentially by development. The rain has been so generous that sometimes in one planting season people are planting twice. And since agriculture makes up a huge part of our GDP, it leads to rising numbers. Two, Nigerians who live abroad are remitting a lot of money home. A relatives in the village receives $50, changes it into naira and goes to buy soap to bath. But that has not been affected by policy; policy could be dramatic in the way it pumps things up. If anything, people will tell you that government has done more damage to their businesses than to enhance it in terms of policy instability and all kinds of abuses in office.