Prof. Ben Akanegbu, is currently an academic staff of the Department of Economics, Nigerian Turkish Nile University, Abuja. An economist who studied in the United States, he bagged his Ph. D at the Howard University in Washington D. C. The Anambra-born professor spent 36 yearsin the United States, working in the Research and Evaluation Department of the United States Housing and Urban Development in.He also worked at the World Bank before he decided return to his father’s land to contribute his own quota. In this exclusive interview with ABDUL RAHMAN ALIAGAN, the don spoke extensively on economic indicators generally with special reference to the Nigerian economy, the president’s perceived lopsided anti-corruption crusade even as he proffered possible solution to arrest Nigeria’s economic challenges. Excerpts
Sir, when an economy is working, what are those indicators to be considered?
There are things to look at when you are talking about economy. However, there are certain macroeconomic variables that if you look at them they will be like indicators for either growth or development. We look at inflation rate at price level, employment and unemployment rate, exchange rate, these are key macroeconomic variables that are very important, that when you look at their directions you can determine where the economy is going, how strong or weak the economy is and when you leave those ones, you equally look at the infrastructural level. But these are the three major economic indicators in any given society.
With the present situation in the country, is it right to say that the Nigerian economy is working?
Though Nigerians are saying that the president has been there going on to two years and nothing is moving… I would not say Nigeria’s economy is not working. Nigeria’s economy is working because we have to understand where we are coming from. There are lots of things that have gone wrong. I want to believe that there are basic things Mr. President is looking at, particularly the issue of corruption. If we did not tackle the issue of corruption in Nigeria, Nigeria is going nowhere. Again, Mr. President is looking at the issue of infrastructure, like permanent power supply, roads are bad and there are many things that need to be taken care of. If those things are not there it will take some time for the government to put them in place before we expect things to be working the way we like it to work. To answer your question, I think the economy is working though at a slow pace.
Government can do better than what is going on, we just have to be patient, Nigerians don’t want to be patient, and Rome is not built in a day.
Recently, Mr. President was said to be asking for emergency power to tackle the critical economic situation. What is your take on that?
That is tricky, what power does he want again? It is tricky in the sense that I don’t want the legislature to give that emergency power, so that the president would not turn to become a tyrant, that is the fear. Giving an emergency power will mean too much power to a particular person and it can be abused, if it is abused that is a serious problem for us. The emergency power is not the best for the country at this time. Given the democratic system of government, we have three arms, legislature, executive and judiciary, all of equal powers. For the legislature to give executive an emergency power to do what they like, some of us might be scared because we know the gravity of that power.
Prof. Ben Akanegbu
Some Nigerians are of the opinion that the present Minister of Finance does not possess the technical-know-how to drive the economy of this country. Do you share this view?
Well! I don’t want to beat down anybody; I listened to her a couple of times when she was making speeches, I think she has an idea of what she is doing. However, she could have done better if she gets good advisors. So far, she is being eloquent, I don’t want to beat down her name and you know what that means.
What do you think government can do to boost the economy at this critical point in time?
At a critical time such as this, it is important for Nigeria to diversify its economy and leave the monoculture economy. Nigerian economy should play more on agriculture, mining, and light manufacturing to rescue this country.
Imagine, Nigeria cannot produce matches, pen, even a small cup. Government should encourage industrialists, there are many ways government can encourage them, through tax rebate, financing and infrastructure. There are many ways government can encourage industrialists to revamp the economy.
Government must encourage those people going into agriculture, a sector that is supposed to be Nigeria’s major area of diversification and it has to be now. There must be massive investment in infrastructure.
I know something like this happened in America in the 1940s, they called it ‘The New Deal’ during President Roosevelt’s administration. The economy was going down. Government invested in massive infrastructure like roads, bridges, and pumped money into the system to reactivate and energise the economy again. I don’t want to believe that Nigeria does not have money. We have enough money. We must think towards that, government must cut tax, employ people and spend money on people.
That equally happened after the Second World War, that is the Keynesian theory of total spending in the economy in 1930s. John Maynard Keynes devised the theory of total spending when economy was going down south. Then, what happened he invested in massive infrastructure.
We should imbibe the theory of Keynes; government should look towards that and invest heavily in infrastructure and cut tax so that industrialists will be more creative.
Again, I am looking at the issue of Treasury Single Account (TSA), I am not saying that is not good but the government has directed all ministries, parastatals, commissions, agencies to be putting their money in Central Bank account and keeping it idle.
That money supposed to be channelled to the commercial bank to ginger the economy instead of idling the money somewhere. I don’t know their thinking, even if Central Bank collects the money, there should be a mechanism that will ensure that the commercial bank have a taste of the economy so that they can lend them out to people who want to invest. There are people who need that money, give it out at a lower rate to those investors. If they start doing all these, you will discover that the economy will start changing.
The last administration was accused of massive corruption but Nigeria still emerged the biggest economy in Africa. Ironically, the present administration is fighting corruption yet theconomy is in recession. How do you situate this?
Yes, the previous administration did its best as far as economy is concerned but I will not shy away to say that there was massive corruption in that administration, may be the then president was not aware of that.However, he was the leader. Inspite of the massive corruption, Nigeria still emerged the biggest economy in Africa during that administration and that was inherited by APC administration. But the present government gives much attention to curbing corruption to the detriment of moving the economy forward. Nobody is saying government should not fight corruption but it should not be at the detriment of economy itself. He can do them side by side.
Even the way government is fighting corruption is lopsided, I don’t think that is the best way to fight corruption, we know the ‘big fishes’, leaving the ‘big fishes’ and chasing the small ones, ‘big fishes’ are untouchables. Corruption should be fought with sincerity of purpose, call a spade a spade.
We know the big fish, even in his government but nobody is touching or talking about them. If Mr. President is sincere let him fight corruption in the face, then, we will know he is fighting corruption. There are big fishes in his government and I don’t want to mention names because it is dangerous to mention names in this country.
Therefore, fighting corruption is good but doing other things side by side is equally good, don’t just fight corruption, do other thing that can add value to Nigerian economic system.
More importantly, what Nigerians need now is the total reorientation of our value system, including me.
We need to change our value system, it is unconscionable that one person steals billions of naira that I can never dream of and the way to change it is continuous fighting of corruption with sincerity and changing the mindset of the people about government.
Whoever is going to government should go there for service and not to have the mindset of amassing or embezzling wealth; we must have a purpose, go there, and give the best we can for the betterment of this country and not having a mindset of embezzlement. It is so pathetic to such an extent that even your family member would say you are a failure if you did not embezzle. No!
We have to sacrifice and the problem with Nigerian is that we don’t want to sacrifice, so tenet of sacrifice must be incorporated in our value system for this country to move forward, otherwise we are not going anywhere
