Asonumaka George Wakama
Bill Gates came as a guest of the President and unfortunately, he is embarrassing his hosts by telling them the truth.
World bank President told them the same thing. I have been telling them exactly the same thing.
Hating hailers hear the truth, buy the truth.
El Rufai attempted to counter Bill Gates but in his eagerness, he forgot the facts. Yet he forgot it becomes incumbent on the Federal Government to drive the States just as the States are expected to drive the Local Government.
Remember, if the Federal Government can give budget support to States that meet salary obligations, it may as well drive this. Therefore Gates is right.
YOU GAVE PARIS CLUB REFUNDS TO STATES TO FRITTER AWAY STUPIDLY – I wonder why they didn’t tell you the basics that wealth generation is the interplay of consumption equilibrating with investments with Government intervention.
Indeed what we are witnessing is lack of capacity at play and lack of capacity births administrative anomies which impedes performance.
We are not thinking about the foundational building blocks of a robust economy. Rather, we are taking measures that will only enslave us the more in the years to come.
Just this year alone, we have had almost 11 poor ratings from Continental and Global ratings and they all signify the failure of the “know how “ and “how to” in running things to obtain results.
Below are the ratings enumerated:
1. Annual Corruption Perception Index
Nigeria’s corruption perception worsened between 2016 and 2017 according to the annual Corruption Perception Index, CPI, by Transparency International. Nigeria slipped by 12 positions in the country rankings from 136 in 2016 to 148 in 2017. The rankings are from 1 to 180, with 180 indicating the country having the worst perception of corruption.
2. International Press Freedom Index
Nigeria’s ranking in the international press freedom index has witnessed steady decline since 2015. The country is currently ranked 122 out of 180 countries according to the 2017 edition of the annual survey. The country fell from 111 in 2015 to 116 in 2016 and has fallen again to 122 in 2017, entering the “red zone” for press freedom.
3. Rule of Law Index
Nigeria was downgraded by the World Justice Project (WJP) 2017/2018 Rule of Law Index. The country currently ranks 97 out of 113 countries, dropping one position from the previous ranking. The index measures the adherence to rule of law across 113 countries worldwide.
4. RMB’s Africa Investment Attractiveness Index
Nigeria has fallen from the top 10 in the Where to Invest in Africa 2018, Rand Merchant Bank’s (RMB) Investment Attractiveness Index. Nigeria fell from No.6 on the list to number 13. The Investment Attractiveness Index balances economic activity against the relative ease of doing business.
5. Global Retail Development Index
Nigeria’s global ranking in retail development dropped from the 19th position recorded in 2016 to 27 out of 30 countries surveyed in 2017. Nigeria’s total sales from the retail sector dropped from $125bn in 2016 to $109bn in 2017. The Global Retail Development Index measures retail investments based on all relevant macroeconomic and retail-specific variables in developing countries.
6. World Economic Forum Networked Readiness Index
Nigeria dropped seven places to rank 119 in the Networked Readiness Index ranking conducted by the World Economic Forum. The NRI is an indicator that measures a country’s ICT development by its ability to implement and take full advantage of ICTs.
7. Global Competitiveness Index (GCI)
Nigeria’s ranking dropped to 127th in 2016 GCI analysis. Nigeria deteriorated by 3 places from 124th in 2015-2016 to 127th in 2016-2017 ranking released by the World Economic Forum (WEF). The GCI index measures the set of institutions, policies, and factors that set the sustainable current and medium-term levels of economic prosperity. The drop in ranking is attributed to two core pillars; the macroeconomic and financial market efficiency.
8. Ernst and Young’s Africa Attractiveness Index
Nigeria declined to the 17th position on Ernst and Young’s Africa Attractiveness Index (AAI) 2017. This is a two step decline from the AAI 2016 ranking. The 2017 report revealed that the number of new FDI projects in Nigeria declined to 51 in 2016 from 53 in 2015.
9. World Internal Security and Police Index
Nigeria Police ranked bottom in Africa and 127th in the world, making the country with the worst police in the world according to the 2016 World Internal Security and Police Index (WISPI) released by the International Police Science Association (IPSA) and the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).
Nigeria was followed by countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Uganda, and Pakistan and the report attributed Nigeria’s low rank to the rising cases of terrorism, corruption and low number of police. The WISPI ranks the police based on 16 indicators around their ability to address internal security issues in their countries across four domains – capacity, process, legitimacy and outcomes.
10. Worst Electricity Supply
Nigeria was ranked the second worst nation in electricity supply according to a World Economic Forum report released by The Spectator Index on the 15th of January, 2018. Nigeria suffered a loss of power to 3,851 megawatts according to the ranking which puts only Yemen ahead of other countries like Nigeria, Haiti, Lebanon and Malawi.
11. Nigeria Ranked Low on Budget Transparency Index
Nigeria slipped into 90th place behind Zimbabwe and Afghanistan in the global Open Budget index released on Thursday. Nigeria’s score on the open budget index dipped from 24 in 2015 to 17. In Africa, Nigeria currently ranks 23 behind Rwanda, Zimbabwe and Liberia. Among the African countries, South Africa led on the index and was closely followed by Uganda, Senegal, Ghana, Namibia, Kenya, Morocco, and Egypt, in that order.
The Open Budget Index assesses the comprehensiveness and timeliness of budget information that governments make publicly available.
According to BudgIT, the federal government of Nigeria provides her citizens with insufficient budget information making it difficult for taxpayers to understand how elected officials utilise available resources. In addition, it argued that the country’s budget process takes very little feedback from the public, and the final budget document does not reveal how the meagre feedbacks are used.
Nigeria’s low rank can be connected to the failure of the federal government to produce the mid-year review.
Also, the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and the Budget Implementation Reports were published late while the content of all budget documents produced in Nigeria falls short on the minimum acceptable global standards as itemised in the Global Initiative for fiscal Transparency Framework.
If you have a plan, you can develop it into a blueprint and eventually sell. Everybody would buy into it if they can be made to the see the benefits thereof.
Let me give you an instance! During the Shagari era, they came up with a program to develop our nuclear potentials (not weapons ooo). A program was put in place and a Professor from University of Ibadan was appointed to head it, where the best engineering students nationwide would be picked up and trained in metallurgy and other Nuclear themed engineering sciences and Physics.
France stepped in and agreed to give our graduates training from Post-Graduate training free of charge so that they can comeback to set up the agencies and program locally and contribute to the economic advancement of our country through Nuclear energy.
When the Buhari led- Military came in, what did they do? It was one of the first set of programs and projects they cancelled that set off the first set of brain drain before our Doctors followed suit.
Our best young NUCLEAR scientist after being trained never got back home. America instantly recruited them. The UI professor is the most frustrated genius we have right now. When I think of North Korea and the table that they are shaking, I shudder.
The path to our development is on the human capacity and service sector. That with Education Healthcare and Diaspora remittances, we can turn the fortunes of this country dramatically with speed.
Let me focus on just Education and HealthCare for this discourse.
How can ASSU be going on strike when they are the factory producing the human capital resources?
Why don’t ASSU sign two stream of partnership agreements /contracts?
Internal stream with international strategic alliance partners to broaden their curriculum like what facebook is doing with the Nigerian business?
External stream (contract) with employers of Labour domestically to produce the labour resource?
For example! The Telcos and IT companies can give ASSU ( Universities ) contracts to produce the skilled work force and pay up front for such.
Therefore, several universities can specialize in several fields and get funds for research grants to produce:
1. So that students from day one would know that their education has been paid for and their services are the repayment for such down payment.
2. I am sure most us would have been serious from day one and know that as we enter the university, we have at least a 15 years of labour -dues to pay.
3. All these nonsense cults and stupid lives we lived on campus, we wouldn’t have lived.
These model can be replicated with some minor adaptations with the Healthcare sector bearing in mind it’s peculiarities, with the $10billion we are dashing India on medical tourism alone would be retained here and can be the source of treatment for the entire 670m west African population.
Our health care services alone can make so much money for us because we can cater for the health care needs of the entire West and Central /East Africa if we had put in the right model. It doesn’t have to come from Budgetary expenditure from the FGN, just policy alone can generate the funds.
Are you aware that when EBOLA first occurred in the Congo in 1970s, the epidemiologist that found the vaccine and cures are Nigerians?
And when it started again 2 yrs ago, these where the same people now old that the UNO got to go to Liberia to stamp it out?
I am sure most of you don’t know.
Asonumaka George Wakama is a Professor of Economics.
