How far we still have to go

The Economist published this graphic in a side story that was part of their coverage of the 2009 South African elections. These are supposed to be the five biggest GDPs in Sub-Saharan Africa, and their point is South Africa alone is as economically large as the next three (Nigeria inclusive) put together.

If we assume Nigeria's population to be 120 million (i.e. halfway between a possible high of 150 million and a possible low of 90 million), then South Africa's population is about 33% of ours. This means our federal republic would need a GDP at least THREE TIMES BIGGER than South Africa's just to equal their economic wealth (i.e. their per-capita-income).

And mind you, South Africa is "rich" only by African standards. If Nigeria plans on being a global economic force, would would have to EXCEED South Africa's economic performance (i.e. have a GDP more than three times as large).

Our petty squabbles over petty politics obscures the fact that our economy is not performing as strongly as we need it to, and never has. Our tendency to over-hype our achievements (a psychological phenomenon I call the "Giant of Africa" complex), also tends to make us content with what is in fact massive under-achievement.

Olumhense's critique of the media

You should read this.

To lack substantive democracy is bad. To lack substantive information is worse.

If we cannot make informed decisions based on quality information, our votes will be misdirected even if the elections were not rigged.

One wonders if lack of information is part of the reason we default to the things we know for sure -- like regional, religious and ethnic affiliation. We certainly hero-worship men and women whose decisions and actions make (and made) our collective lives more difficult than need be. And as a citizenry, we offer scant-to-nil support for anything that would ease the burden a little.

It is not that we are bad people or bad citizens. It is not even really apathy or disinterest. We do what we do because the preponderant circumstances (including the flow of information, or should I say misinformation) makes these bad choices seem rational.

For example, if every politician is perceived to be ethnically, religiously and regionally biased, it is rational to vote along ethnic, religious and regional lines because the "best candidate" for you will be the one who is biased toward you. You will even pick up a machete and fight your fellow citizen for that man, not because you think he is a "good leader", but because the other leaders are perceived as being biased AGAINST you. Indeed, much of "tribalism" in Nigeria is less about people trying to dominate other groups, and more about people acting out of fear that other groups will dominate them -- and about politicians manipulating that fear.

My paragraph above describes how circumstances can make people take "rational" decisions that are nonetheless self-defeating in the long-term. But the misinformation that dominates national discourse is as influential (perhaps more) in compelling bad decisions and worse actions.

Our people say it is condition that made the crayfish bend. If we want the crayfish to straighten out (or to bend in a different direction), we have to change the condition. For our federal republic to transform itself, we must transform the acquisition and dissemination of information, statistics, facts and data.

Capping total public debt .....

The federal government has announced a debt ceiling, a upper limit on the amount of debt the three tiers of government can borrow. All debts owed by federal, state and local governments, foreign and domestic, would not exceed 45% of GDP under the new rule.

The article was exactly clear about what this means. There are 812 governments in the Federal Republic (1 federal + 36 state + 1 FCT + 774 constitutional LGAs). Are the debts of all 812, added together, meant to be less than 45% of national GDP? Or is federal debt to be less than 45% of national GDP, the states' debts to be 45% less than the respective state GSPs, and each localities debt measured individually against the respective GLP?

By the former method, we would face the political headache of distributinig "debt rights" to all 812 governments, where the total allowable adds up to 45% of the national economy; some will say they are marginalized by having fewer states or that their economies (particularly Lagos) justifies a bigger slice of the pie, or that it must all be equal, or that they are being exploited because "their oil" is funding everyone else's debt.

By the latter method, the total debt stock could actually exceed GDP because we would be multiplying 45% by 3 tiers of government, for a total allowable limit of 135%. In fact this is unlikely to be the intent of the new rule, so I will assume it is the former method.

MY THOUGHTS

As a philosophical or ideological issue, I have always been in favour of constitutional and statutory limits on the amount of debt our governments can saddle us with. As far back as the 1980s, as our initial external debt ballooned up to exceed $30 billion, even as our governments made decisions that had never been debated and approved by the citizenry (i.e. via substantively democratic elections), it angered me that we the people had to pay the price for loans we never directly or indirectly approved; loans that had clearly not achieved whatever it was they had been borrowed to do.

There should be a set of tests, procedures and strictures prescribed in the constitution before any government can borrow any loan exceeding a certain amount. Since governments will try to get around this by borrowing the same amount in smaller chunks, they should be allowed to borrow these smaller amounts free of restriction only until the cumulative borrowed in a single executive term exceeds a certain amount, at which point the restrictions should kick in.

We are not a rich country, and our national, state and local budgets are rather small compared to our needs. The poorer you are, the more you have to prioritize, and I do not think our 812 governments, past and present, have shown themselves to be good at prioritizing. Debt and debt repayments take a substantial chunk out of what are already tiny budgets. Yes, the smallness of the budgets makes borrowing inevitable, but as citizens we have a right to decide we are willing to borrow X in order to get Y, or if we can do without Y. Perhaps hear an alternate voice tell us that we could get Z, which is almost as good as Y, and only have to borrow half of X. Significantly, none of this would work unless the politician knows that choosing the option we do not want would cost him (and/or his political party) dearly at the next election. Nor will it work if we continue to have elections (or coups) that are not decided by a contest of real ideas, complete with detailed discussion (and subsequent independent analysis) of what will be done in the executive term and how those promises are going to be paid for. And there must be independent sources of quality information, so the public has a strong foundation on which to examine and decide the issues at stake.

Nigeria's debt sustainability is difficult to guage, particularly since the most important influences on our economy are all exogenous. When crude oil prices rose dramatically in the 2000s, reaching nearly $150/barrel, it powered impressive GDP growth in Nigeria. Unfortunately, the global credit crunch, slumping demand and over-supply led to a precipitous drop in oil prices by 2009. What is important to note is the decisions made in boom times could haunt is in times of bust -- which is what happened when the 1970s boom gave way to the 1980s bust, which was the root of our last debt crisis.

Without democratic checks and balances on government fiscal decisions, we the people are at the mercy of tides we don't control, without even a paddle to at least try to steer ourselves on the rapids of the global economy. When our decision-makers leave office, they do not take the debt with them; they carry on with their lives, financially enriched by their time in office, while we the citizens are stuck with paying off the debts even as we lack the funds to properly equip our hospitals.

In the absence of reform, I am almost tempted to call for a moratorium on borrowing until we systemically and institutionally reform our federal republic. In fact, the very announcement of the 45%-of-GDP debt ceiling was a loud sign of the lack of substantive constitutional limitations on decision-making.

This new rule was announced, out of the blue, by "THE PRESIDENCY". Given we are supposedly a federal republic, I would have expected such a rule to be jointly announced by all 812 governments as reflecting a unanimous decision of all 812; and if not unanimous, we could then be told how many (and who) supported and opposed. And I would also have expected a time-frame announced for proposing the rule to the National Assembly and the State Assemblies for debate and approval (or disapproval). And as a citizen, I still want to know how they intend to share the 45% shared cap among the 812 different governments.

Actually, in a federal democracy I doubt the states would agree to a shared cap until they knew what their of the cap would be. This is all the more reason for imposing constiutional and statutory restriction on HOW our governments come to the decision of borrowing money, rather than imposing a specific number as the single, shared national cap on all 812. By making the 812 sets of decision-makers justify their debt decisions to their citizenry, we can allow for 812 free and effective choices, where Yobe can decide what is right for Yobe (without ballooning debt to unsustainable proportions) while Lagos can decide what is right for Lagos (again, keeping debt in sustainable levels relative to their situation).

We need more discussion and more understanding, because right now neither the people of Yobe nor the people of Lagos could tell you where their their debt profiles are headed. I know that the federal and state governments are expected to collectively borrow $10 billion this year to cover their respective deficits .... but how much do they collectively owe as of this moment? What are the projections for the next five years, vis-a-vis budgets and debt? How are these decisions influenced by the five-year projections for the exogenous factors that influence our economy?

Are we just borrowing because we can?

Our future is African

On a Nigerian discussion site I just visited, there was a thread lamenting the fact there was no Nigerian firm in the Forbes Top 1000 (biggest) corporations in the world, and only three Nigerian firms (First Bank of Nigeria, United Bank of Africa, and Intercontinental Bank on the Forbes Top 2000 list. The thread author took it to be sign of continuing economic failure.

Add to this the wave of lamentations in editorials, columns, interviews and commentaries over the fact that Nigeria was not invited to the G20 summit in London. This Guardian editorial was something of an emotional lament, driven perhaps by their realization that the wider world thinks of South Africa and not Nigeria as the "deputy-sheriff" of Africa; while I am a long-time government critic, I do not agree with the editorial's characterization of the JTF. More typical are these pieces from Daily Trust), The Punch and Vanguard. Amusingly, a functionary of the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties blamed President Umaru Yar'Adua for our non-invitation, as if two years of UMY are the reason our economy is not one of the 20 largest in the world. Maybe he thinks two years of Atiku, Buhari or Ojukwu, or maybe a tenth year for Obasanjo, would have catapaulted us from where we were in 2007 to G20 status just like that.

It would be great to have 50 firms in the Forbes Top 55, but right now it is more important for us to worry about how integrated (or not integrated) our firms are in West Africa, Central Africa, and Rest of Africa. And while it would be nice to be counted among the 20 largest economies in the world, it is more important that we raise our rank on the list of trading partners for each of Africa's 20 biggest economies; right now China, North America and Western Europe are far more important to our African neighbourhood than we are.

Nigeria's economic security and long-term growth are dependent on economic growth in the continent of Africa. This requires a paradigm shift in how we look at the world and at the direction of our economic growth, and the Forbes 2000 (and other such global surveys and rankings tables) do not say much about whether we are moving in the direction we need to go.

The dominant global economic model of the latter-half of the 20th century basically boiled down to the whole world trying to sell things to North America, Western Europe and Japan. Actually, it was narrower than that; the Western Europeans and Japanese do not consume nearly as much as the Americans, so essentially everyone on Earth (including the Western Europeans, Japanese and Canadians) were trying to sell stuff to the United States of America.

If you permit me a little hyperbole, there are a million reasons why this model simply could not work long-term. It lasted as long as it did because of distortions in global economic system. The deformations produced economic outcomes that did not optimally allocate resources, production or consumption, and did not maximize worldwide welfare in the textbook sense. For all the ideological rhetoric one way or the other, the underlying nature of global trade was not really questioned not even by so-called leftists and "communists"; at a fundamental level, individuals, firms and nations merely sought to maximize their share of the world economy as it existed. And since those regions of the world that benefitted the most from the system were also the regions that dominated most sectors of life on Earth (the global media, academia/research, pop culture, political/military force, multilateral institutions, etc.), there was much talk, but little effective interest in reforming the system.

Even in the best of economic circumstances, with distortions reallocating wealth massively to a small section of the world's population, there are still limits to how much an individual, a firm, a nation or an economy can consume. Disproportionate as their consumption of the world's consumption might be, there is only so much North America, Western Europe and Japan can buy from the rest of the world. The global credit crisis arose in part because of a worldwide refusal to practically acknowledge this fact. Even when the USA economy no longer produced enough wealth to pay for its massive consumption, they insisted "the American consumer" was divinely ordained to hyper-consume else there would be no one to drive global growth. To keep the model going, they invented hollow, illusory devices designed to create the impression of wealth where none existed, so "the American consumer" could keep buying stuff. Until the bubble burst.

For years we Africans have been told that the route to diversifying economic production lay in finding out how to sell new things to North America, Western Europe and Japan. But everyone else is trying to sell those same things to those same markets, and there are only so many cars an American can drive. Competition is stiff, and even long-time exporters like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are having to adjust to the rising share of US trade taken by China.

To this quantitative ceiling, add a qualitative ceiling. No amount of WTO negotiating will make Norway buy more ogbono or egusi from Nigeria than they do now; they don't buy these cash crops because they don't want them.

Trade is driven by economics, not charity. For all the hype around the USA's AGOA initiative, it is crude oil, a product the USA would buy from Africa with or without AGOA, that accounted for the vast majority of AGOA-eligible US imports from Africa, with Nigeria alone earning more than half of total African AGOA-eligible receipts; CRUDE oil, a raw material with no value added, not REFINED fuel. Spin-doctors have credited AGOA with raising the value of African exports to the USA, but the truth is the China-driven rise in the price of crude between 2001 and 2008 is responsible for the rise in the value of US imports from Africa.

Some say trade initiatives like AGOA and the EU's "Anything but Arms" are not the problem; in their view the problem is African countries lack the capacity to take advantage of the programmes. But that is a redundant statement. If Africa had had the capacity to fully exploit such schemes, Europe and North America would never have proposed them much less enacted them -- and Africa wouldn't have needed the schemes in the first place. Announced with great fanfare, and meant to symbolize the "internatonal community" helping Africa with trade not aid, these initiatives exist only in the context of Africa being unable to utilize them. If we had the capacity, we wouldn't have the deals; they are less a solution to the problem than they are a sign of it.

Africa long since hit a ceiling in terms of what it could export to Western Europe, North America and Japan. The increase in African exports in recent years came from the creation of a brand new market for our goods -- China. For a shining decade, we were able to export to both the old and the new markets, until fundamental truths about the world economy could no longer be papered-over, and commodities prices and demand tumbled back to where it was before.

The "global market" already buys everything it wants from Africa. The "new market" China wanted the same sort of imports (raw material) from Africa, and expected to export higher-value manufactures to us in exchange. If world markets needed anything else from us, billions would have been invested in its production by now. The lack of infrastructure has never stopped foreign firms extracting natural resources; the only infrastructure of note in Chad is the multi-billion dollar infrastructure built to drill and evacuate their crude oil.

Investment is driven by economics, not charity. China, South Asia and South-East Asia dominate textile exports to the USA, in spite of African countries like Uganda and Namibia pouring millions of dollars in scarce public funds to pay for uneconomic inducements to persuade "foreign investors" to to set up textile plants. These AGOA textile firms are struggling to break into the American market even as the African market is flooded by cheap imports from China, and second-hand (used) clothing from Western Europe and North America. The flood of cheap imports severely hurt previously existing (i.e. pre-AGOA) textile industries in countries like Nigeria, Zambia and South Africa.

It is a paradox. I ponder the fact that West African cotton producers bemoan proctectionist policies in the USA and EU, whilst a country that should be their biggest export markets, Nigeria, suffers a collapse of its textile industry due to cheap and second-hand imports from the protected markets of USA, Europe and China. Yet we are told the way forward is to try to export more to these limited markets.

Ultimately, as the 21st Century starts to unfold, the Federal Republic of Nigeria must look to Africa for the markets it needs to power economic growth in the 21st century. The continent's population is 922-million, numerically large, though high levels of poverty and conversely low levels of wealth make it a relatively small "market" economically. Consumption per capita is low, as is investment; we could do with more of both, but we are lucky in that we have the opportunity to tailor Africa's growth to match the realities of the 21st century economy (including climate change) where much of the rest of the world has to scramble to readjust from their dependence on 20th century distortions.

In fact, elevating the African internal economy us crycuak to disentangling some of the distortions the world has had to live with over the last couple of centuries. There is a natural, normalized, undistorted pattern of global production, resource allocation and trade, one that is more stable and sustainable because it is a truer reflection of what an efficient global market should be. I do not pretend to know what it is, but I know that what we have now is not it. The prime strategic economic issue for Nigeria is the search for this normalized economy in Africa, an economy that is integrated both intra-continentally and inter-continentally, an economy that unleashes our latent productive potential, an economy that will provide Nigeria with 922-million-person market.

As such, it is not as important in 2009 for our firms and business to be in the Forbes global 2000 as it is for them to be in the African 2000. We need to be well-placed not just to take advantage of rapid economic growth in the African continent, but to be the spur, the machine, the cornerstone, the creative spark that kick-starts and fuels such growth in the first place.

Corporations from the rest of the world continue to dominate Africa (particularly in mining raw materials). In other ways, the world has been withdrawing from Africa because of the "smallness" of its market, and Nigerian firms (and firms from elsewhere in Africa) have been taking advantage of this. This article in the Francophone African journal Les Afriques from September 2008 discusses Nigerian (and Moroccan) banks that have moved into the banking/finance markets of West African nations, claiming space left by French banks that were withdrawing from markets that are too small in French corporate opinion. And here, the famed Ugandan columnist (for both The Daily Monitor and The East African) Charles Onyango-Obbo discusses Nigerian firms moving into the insurance, banking and entertainment sectors beyond West Africa.

These moves are more important than ranking or not ranking on the Forbes 2000 global list. So much so that I must admit to ambiguous feelings about the biggest of the Nigerian plutocrats.

On the one hand, it is true that rent-seeking, misallocation of public funds, favouritism, conflict-of-interest, misallocation of capital, crass politicking ("Any Government In Power" a.k.a. AGIP), bribery, corruption and so many other forms of immorality have driven the growth of the biggest business concerns in Nigeria. Indeed, the biggest of them all (the multinational oil firms) have for years exploited our institutional weakness to do unethical, immoral and semi-criminal things they would never dream of doing in their own home countries.

The things the plutocrats do to acquire wealth, are things that create unnecessary hardship for everyone else in Nigeria .... and the fact that those citizens with the most ability and resources to fight for change (i.e. the plutocrats) are only interested in milking the system makes change all the more unlikely.

Nevertheless, in a world where other continents are home to mega-multinationals that dominate world trade, I am (unfortunately) resolved to the belief that we cannot throw out the baby with the bath-water. Rather than harm or hurt the business interests of these Nigerian conglomerates and corporate giants, I fear we must instead subject them to the same sort of transformational change the country at large needs .... so they become instruments in driving the creation of a 922-million-strong African market Nigeria so desperately needs, rather than continue being the mosquito-like wealth-sucking machines they are today.

Forget showing off on the world stage and focus on Africa. I do not mean endless invocations of "Pan-Africanism" and postulations about "United States of Africa". Forget the ideology, the rhetoric, and the ludicrous constructs. Focus on the nitty-gritty of growth, trade and development. For example, instead of wasting time on "UN Security Council Reform", the Federal Republic of Nigeria should be pushing strongly for the completion of like the Trans-African Highway system .... particularly the two lines that would connect us to Central Africa and the East African sub-region.

The sort of thinking that prioritizes these trade routes is the sort of thinking that produces governments that pre-emptively move to stop potential conflicts from breaking out, rather than waiting for the world media to start talking about Darfur before belatedly trying to chase a wild horse that has already bolted its pen. Though the proposed routes from Nigeria to East Africa run through war zones, war itself is not the problem; even when the DR-Congo was stable and at peace under Mobutu, there was no transformation in infrastructure. Stability is nice and good, but the stability of poverty and decay is destructive in the long-term. Nigeria's relationship with Congo/Zaire and Chad since independence has shown no signs of understanding our strategic political and economic interests. We just watched, patting ourselves on the back for allegedly being "Giant of Africa" having waged a civil war against ourselves, while our natural markets decayed. In the meantime, we tried to export stuff to Europe and North America.

I really do think we need to refocus our thinking. Okay, we don't rank highly on the Forbes 2000 global list .... but keep your mind on what we are (or are not) doing to expand our markets in Africa.

New Central Bank Governor

Business Day reports the Presidency has a short-list of five candidates. One of the names on the Business Day list is the ex-Finance Minister (and career World Bank bureaucrat) Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

I have no way of confirming their report, and it relies too heavily on innuendo and rumour, rather than transparent fact. Between citing anonymous "Presidency sources" and insinuating tribalism (actually instigating tribalims is a better description, I would rather wait for some sort of official confirmation before treating this as anything more than speculation on the part of Business Day.

Policeman kills 3-year old Kaosarat Muritala

 Late Kausarat Muritala (inset is her father Saliu Muritala).

Story in The Punch and editorial in The Guardian .

Read it for yourself, and think about the eight years we wasted hearing the word "reform" bandied about by the politicians.

The police are still as they have always been. I don't want to stereotype an entire force of hundreds of thousands of officers, but even the good policemen have to admit their Force is in need of drastic transformation. And that is putting it mildly. Too mildly.

For decades, the police have used the term "stray bullet" to explain away killing innocent citizens for no sensible reason. If they do not know how to control their weapons, they either need to go get the appropriate training or give up their weapons. It seems every Nigerian policeman carries a giant rifle, and I wonder if every one of them received full training in the proper use of those weapons; just as importantly, I wonder if our cash-strapped Force even afford "continuing education" (i.e.practice sessions and updated training).

We need laws determining and restricting whom among our police officers can carry arms; these laws should further divide those authorized to carry arms into categories, and establish what kinds of arms each category is permitted to carry

Sadly there are so many illegal arms floating around in Nigeria in the hands of so many nefarious and would-be nefarious groups and individuals.  Any attempt to restrict policemen's ability to carry guns will be met by instant (and understandable) protest. As it stands, armed robbers, "militants" and other dangerous groups arguably out-gun the Force.

But do they really need to be carrying assault rifles and machine-guns at checkpoints. I know that in theory these checkpoints are meant for "stop-and-search" to catch armed robbers on their way to or from a robbery, but in practice the checkpoints serve only as depots for the police to extort money from law-abiding citizen drivers, using the implied threat of force of one kind or another to compel motorists to hand over their hard-earned money.  Sadly, when an armed robbery is reported to police at checkpoints, they find excuses to avoid going anywhere near the robbery until long after the robbers have left. So if they are going to avoid the robbers as best they can, what do they need the guns for, aside from using them to intimidate innocent motorists? Don't get me started on the fact that police at checkpoints are "armed" and are in effect "robbing" citizens at the checkpoints.

Post-Script: Unfortunately, websites, even newspaper websites, have a tendency of posting something at a particular url link, and then either moving the material to a different link or removing the material entirely from the web. Sometimes the website shuts down. Ever so often Nigerian newspapers change domain name, or move from one service provider to another, or even just redesign their websites, and for whatever reason nobody bothers to restore old articles to the new urls. This is my long-winded way of saying the links to PUNCH and GUARDIAN above no longer lead to anything.

So, while I was trying to do the right thing in terms of intellectual property, and allow the newspapers to benefit from the traffic to their sites, I am now left with a blog post that has links to nonexistent pages. Luckily, I archived the information, and what I will do is provide the interview with Kaosarat Muritala's father where he discusses what happened to his daughter:

‘After shooting my 3-year-old daughter dead at checkpoint, policemen tortured, detained me’

By SESAN OLUFOWOBI

Published: Saturday, 11 Apr 2009

Muritala Saliu is the father of Kausarat, a three-year-old girl that was shot in the head by the police at Alapere Division. He recounts the event that led to the killing of his daughter in this interview with SESAN OLUFOWOBI

What were you doing at the spot where your daughter was killed?

We were coming from a wolimat (an Islamic graduation) held at Elebinju, close to Ketu here in Lagos.

What time was that?

It was around 9.30 PM in the evening.

And you had to go there with your family?

I think you need to understand our relationship with the people whose child was having wolimat. You see, my wife grew up in the house. Her parent still lived in the house. The people and my wife had been friends since she was single. After our marriage, we still maintained the friendship. So when they are doing anything, we grace the occasion and vice versa.

So that day was not different?

Yes, we left that place after nine and we got to where the police were in front of Mr. Biggs.

Were you in a commercial vehicle?

No we were in my friend’s, Toyin’s, car; a Nissan Sunny. It was driven by another friend, Saheed. I sat behind the driver, my wife sat in the middle carrying Kausarat and there was also another person beside her.

So what happened, did you quarrel with the police?

Not at all. When we got there we noticed the checkpoint. There was a commercial bus in front of us. The police stopped the bus and delayed it for about two minutes. We waited. After they told the bus to go, we also moved. They did not stop us, so we just proceeded.

Are you sure you were not stopped?

Yes, if they stopped us, we would have stopped. After all, we were not armed robbers and that area is not far from my wife’s place.

So you moved on...

Yes. But we were just about 25 metres away from them when I heard a shot. Before I knew what was happening the shot pierced the windscreen of our car, bruised my hand and entered Kausarat in the head and came out on the other side.

How is that possible?

Kausarat was sleeping, so her mother put her on her shoulder and she was facing back. I put my hand around her mother and used it to balance Kausarat on the shoulder of her mother. So the bullet hit my hand before it entered Kausarat’s head.

What did you do?

I did not even know what was happening. I just felt pain in my hand. It was the shout of mogbe! mogbe! (I am done for) from Kausarat’s mother that made me to realise what had happened. She started shouting Kausarat’s name, but one look at her, I knew Kausarat would never wake up from her sleep. I took my child from her mother and moved towards the policemen.

By that time, our car had stopped. Immediately the policemen sighted me, they took to their heels. I ran after them. There were five of them, but I managed to catch one. I laid Kausarat on the road and held the policeman firmly by the belt. I told him that he and his colleagues had killed my daughter. I shouted for everybody to hear. I also took out my phone and started making calls.

To who?

My brothers, my friends. Everybody I could think of. I told them what happened and urged them to meet me there. By that time, I noticed that one of my friends in the car had picked up my baby and ran to the nearest chemist to get first aid. But I knew she was dead.

Did your people come?

They did not meet us at that Mr. Biggs. The policemen came back and started shooting into the air. Everybody ran away. But I refused to let the policeman go. The others threatened to shoot me if I didn’t leave their colleague alone. I told them to go ahead. After all, they had already killed my daughter. They could also add me to their body count.

None of you relatives had arrived by then?

No. Most of them live here in Ikorodu.

So how did the police manage to get you away from that place.

They hijacked two Keke Marwa (tricycles) and pushed me and the policemen I was holding inside. They said we should go and settle it at the police station in Alapere. So I decided to follow them. My wife also joined us.

Did you see the DPO when you got there?

I didn’t even know him until later. Immediately we got to the station, they dismissed the two Keke Marwa and threatened other people that followed us to stay away. They took my wife and me to the police station. And immediately we entered, one of them slapped me for holding on to the policeman earlier. I decided to make another phone call to my brother to tell him what was happening. I got another slap and the phone fell from my hand. One of them took it and before I realised what was happening, they had turned me to their punching bag. My wife wanted to safe me, drawing the ire of other policemen there who gave her the beating of her life.

One of the policemen gave me a slide and I fell to the ground. My second phone came out of my pocket and they quickly took that one too and started marching me with their boots.

Later, they said I should go into the cell. I refused, reminding them that I did not commit any crime and that they were the ones that killed my daughter. Five of them wrestled me to the ground. Three of them took my legs, two grabbed my hands and they threw me into the cell. Before I could get up, they had closed the cell.

About an hour later, my hand that was pierced by bullet started throbbing. I shouted that they should take me to the hospital. Initially, nobody came. Later one man in mufti came and asked me why I was fighting the police. I told him it was not true and related what happened, including my daughter’s death. He expressed shock, but went back to the job he was doing before coming back to me.

Where were your family all this while?

They later arrived at the police station. After my friends must have related what happened to them, my elder brother called our uncle who got in touch with the commissioner of police in Lagos, who in turn got in touch with the area commanders of Area F and H. That was when I was released from the cell.

So, what did they do?

I was taken to general hospital for treatment. They said that they would take my baby to the mortuary. I did not know that they abandoned her at the entrance of the mortuary. But they later took her into the mortuary the following day.

The area commanders asked me questions. Later, they said I should make a statement, which I did. They also brought the five policemen, including the one that shot my daughter. That one said that he heard shoot and he shot. Obviously, he was drunk.

What do you want now?

Want? I don’t know. I just want to bury my daughter and forget about this incident. It is my destiny and I have taken it. I leave them to God. If I say they should kill them, will that bring my child back? If I say they should jail them, will they put them in my house? Let the relevant authorities do what the law says. I have accepted my fate.

What about the mother?

What about her? She is currently useless. She can not do anything. We are trying our best to take care of her. Kausarat would have been three years old yesterday. We had put everything together to mark her birthday.

Good news, bad news

Highlights from today's edition of The Guardian.

Good news .....

Construction of what will be the Lekki Deep Water port is on-going.

The idea behind the new port is to create a major maritime hub and trans-shipment point for West Africa and Central Africa. The new port will be able to berth bigger ships than any other portion in the sub-region. Planned completion is set at 2012.

Bad news ....

Nigeria lost $23.7 billion (-N-3.7 Trillion) in revenue to oil theft and shut-downs caused by instability in the Niger-Delta.

In this time of deficits, slowing growth, global economic crisis, Nigerian Stock Exchange market corrections, interest and deposit rate ceilings, pressure on the Naira exchange rate and toxic assets .... think what an extra $23 billion in reserves could have meant.

Kano Economic City

Donald Duke's Tinapa project (official website here) used to get all the press.

With the completion of Tinapa, saturation media coverage has shifted to the Fashola/Tinubu Eko Atlantic City project, covered here by CNN.



Not as much media coverage has been granted to the KANO ECONOMIC CITY project in the ancient city of Kano. Once a major hub on the Trans-Saharan trade routes linking Sub-Saharan West Africa with North Africa (and Europe), then a major industrial and agri-business hub famous for its "groundnut pyramids", the economy of the Kano City metropolitan area has suffered in more recent years.

Politically and economically, Kano is one of the most important city-regions of the federal republic, and socio-economic development here is vital to the transformation of all of Nigeria. I heard about the Kano Economic City project some years back, and have been patiently waiting to here something about it beyond the usual blandishments and promises.

Today I found this fantastic report from The Guardian

I am not going to summarize it, you have to read it yourself. It is an AMBITIOUS project, ambitious enough for a city with the scope of Kano. I hope everything goes according to plan, and I look forward to the groundbreaking.

United Nations Reform

A few minutes ago, I read one (of very, very, very many) essays advocating United Nations reform. These essays usually focus on the UN Security Council. They tend to call for the inclusion of Brazil, Japan, Germany, India as permanent (albeit non-veto holding) members of the Security Council. Supposedly it is to reflect the changing politico-economic power dynamics of the 21st century.

A sub-set of these commentators call for the addition of two African permanent non-veto members. One part of this sub-set consists of politically correct non-Africans, and non-Africans who see themselves as the official guardians of otherwise defenceless Africans. The other, larger part of this sub-set consists of African intellectuals, commentators and political figures who unanimously endorse the "two permanent non-veto seats for Africa" idea, and disagree only on the identity of the countries to hold the seats. Nigerians assume it should be Nigeria and South Africa; Egyptians assume it means Egypt and South Africa; Senegal, Algeria and Kenya assert it is themselves respectively and South Africa; while South Africans believe it is South Africa and somebody else.

I suspect the "two seats for Africa" argument was designed to usher South Africa and Egypt into the Security Council as permanent, non-veto members. The nations of Western Europe and North America (who more less control pretty much all the so-called "multilateral institutions") have more or less appointed South Africa the "official" representative to Africa. And Egypt would fulfill the politically correct requirement to give every global region a permanent seat, by representing West Asia (a.k.a "the Middle East").

I am not sure what Mexico or Canada or South Korea or any number of other countries think about the "two seats for Africa scenario". It would be politically incorrect of them to openly criticize it, but I bet it would irritate them if politico-economically weaker African nations got permanent council status ahead of them because of a sort of global affirmative action.

Speaking as a Nigerian, I think it is nothing short of ludicrous to suggest that our 140 million people are somehow "represented" by giving a seat of any kind to some other country, be it South Africa, the USA, or Kazakhstan. Come to think of it, giving a seat to Nigeria would not grant an iota of representation for Guinea, Congo or Tanzania. Every human being on the world should have the right to cast a vote for his/her government, and that government (provided it is democratically chosen) is the only valid representative of the people therein.

Besides, I would much rather have the real security accruing from a Federal Republic of Nigeria that is a bona fide and substantive politico-economic global power .... rather than the fake, self-deceiving comforts of a cosmetic device granted only to present a public face of politically correct inclusivity.

But I digress.

Here is the thing that bothers me:

Why does every commentator start with the assumption that the Security Council has to exist? The first step to democratic, sensible, efficient, effective reform of the United Nations is to getting rid of the albatross of the Security Council. It is about as useful to the cause of human progress as the UN Human Rights Council.

No, seriously.

At the end of World War Two and start of the so-called Cold War, the victors of WW2 were the dominant powers on Earth. They created a body (the Security Council) that would give them the right to control the agenda of the new United Nations; basically they could veto anything the rest of the world might agree on, provided it violated whatever they perceived to be their national interests (conversely, to get anything done, you had to make sure they agreed to it).

Officially this was done to ensure "world peace", but in reality the Security Council was a neutral place for serious discussions between the major powers to avoid war .... in Europe, North America and the Soviet Union.

The rest of us were screwed.

The Cold War was not Cold at all, or more correctly, it was Cold only in Europe, North America and the Soviet Union. For the rest of the world, it was quite HOT. It was like there was an unwritten agreement between NATO and the Warsaw Pact to use the rest of the world as their battleground, thus keeping their homelands safe. Powers on both sides invested vast resources to create and/or sustain endless civil wars, to prop up mass-killing tyrants, and to arm and train disparate guerrilla armies in the arts of terror. And the truth is there is no way on Earth the Apartheid regime could have acquired its nuclear weapons without the tacit approval of the big NATO powers; indeed, the technical assistance to create those weapons was provided by a country that does not make a move without seeking US approval first.

The Cold War ended, and the Security Council remained useless. You can't really blame the body; no matter how much rhetoric you pour on it, a fish cannot become an elephant.

When I think about peace and stability in Nigeria, in the neighbouring West African and Central African regions, and across all of Africa, I do not think about the Security Council or its permanent five. Nigeria and Africa need transformation that verges on the revolutionary in DOMESTIC and INTRA-CONTINENTAL politics, economics, society, government and culture. Without this, we have nothing.

Take Sudan for example. By and large, Sudan has been at war with itself since 1955, some 54 years interrupted by a brief pause (a cynic might say the pause was just long enough to give birth to the soldiers who eventually took over the fighting in the 1990s and 2000s). There is something fundamentally and systemically wrong with Sudan, something that was wrong long before Omar Al-Bashir became president of the country, something that affects the whole country, north, east and south, as well as the west (i.e. Darfur). It is this systemic deficiency (whatever it substantively is), and not Al-Bashir as a man, and the "international community's" obssession with him rather misses the point entirely.

If Sudan had a democracy, judiciary, law enforcement worth of the name, and already-existing peace, they would have no use for a so-called "International Criminal Court". More to the point, they would have no use for men like Al-Bashir, his allies and his current-day rivals. And it would be in the hands of Sudanese citizens to decide whether to punish the guilty, or to adopt the "South African model" of allowing the guilty to go free from punishment in exchange for relinquishing power without war.

We are supposed to be seeking a "normal Sudan" not cementing abnormality, and whether the Euro-American commentariat admit it or not, there is something distinctly abnormal about these so-called "global governance" institutions. Anyone who reads this blog would know I am a critic of the Nigerian political system, but I would fervently oppose any "international" body that purports to have the right to depose a Nigerian president, even a terrible one. That right is OURS as Nigerians, and when we lose that right, bad things result. Mind you, if we don't exercise that right when faced with bad government, bad things result too. This is the central issue, our rights, whether we have them and whether we use them, not some debate over whether the doctrine of "humanitarian intervention" permits foreign countries to compel outcomes in our countries. Why do people act like the choice is between a cabal of unelected domestic leaders and a cabal of unelected (by us) foreign leaders? When do we get to decide? Probably when we insist on deciding, and stop being so damn passive and apathetic.

So how do we change Sudan? Difficult question, mainly because only the Sudanese can change Sudanese society. But if Sudan was surrounded on all sides by neighbours that had undergone transformation, it would be difficult for them to sustain their lack of it. They would come under pressure from neighbours concerned at the potential for spillover and refugees .... and from a continent that needs Sudan (a land of great potential wealth) to pull its weight in uplifting the continental economy (I know Nigeria for one could do great trade/business with a resurgent Sudan).

Unfortunately, Sudan is surrounded by Chad, Central African Republic, Libya, Uganda, Ethiopia, DR-Congo, Eritrea and (mostly disappointingly of all, given their influence in Sudan) Egypt. Far from coming under pressure for their abnormality, the Sudanese leadership probably feels quite normal in this neighbourhood. The political leaders of these neighbouring countries are unlikely to see anything fundamentally wrong with the way Sudan has run itself over the last half-century; their countries may be more peaceful than Sudan (only slightly so in some cases) but these leaders (and their predecessors and successors) run their countries in modes that are but branches of the same tree as Sudan.

In fact this is the central problem with African stability. This is where the problem lies, not thousands of kilometres away in the UN's "Security Council"

For example, instead of asking why the "Security Council" did nothing about the Rwandan genocide, we Africans should ask why Africa did nothing about the Rwandan massacre. If we can answer that question, we will be on our way towards preventing tragedies like that from happening in the future. Almost every African country suffers (to varying degrees) the same poisonous ethnic chauvinism and internal xenophobia that brought Rwanda to violence, indeed, most of us have tasted inter-communal violence too. Our armies and police can barely keep the peace in our own borders much less contribute toward stabilizing a neighbour, and our governments are more likely to cause strife between citizens than they are to solve it.

The solutions to these issues are in our hands, not in the hands of the permanent five, or the new permanent ten or permanent fifteen. If anything, the current permanent five (and their allies) have strategic and commercial interests that too frequently lead to decisions and actions that are the opposite of what Africa needs for true long-term stability, peace and growth. Take the hypocrisy of Europe and North America criticizing China's role in Sudan and Robert Mugabe's rule in Zimbabwe, when the USA and Western European powers are bosom buddies with the violent, kleptocratic, de facto monarchic dictatorship in Equatorial Guinea! In this world, everyone ultimately looks out for their own interests, and the day we Africans start looking out for ours (continental peace and stability inclusive) is the day we stop accepting and tolerating a lot of the rubbish that we do.

I am not interested in UN Security Council reform. The functions cited as necessitating the Security Council's existence are functions best handled by organizations like the African Union, ASEAN, the Arab League, the Council of Europe, the OAS, etc. Those are the institutions we need to reform. Adding new permanent members certainly gives the newbies a psychological boost, a prop for national self-esteem, but what really does it do to bring peace to anyone? Will the Kashmir dispute be resolved by adding Brazil, India, Japan and Germany to the Security Council?

I am no Nkrumah (RIP), and I do not particularly support the idea of a single government ruling over all of Africa (more on that later), but I would feel so much more secure if NATO, Russia and China had to take into consideration a stronger, more allied Africa when they made their "strategic interest" decisions. There is no security in in weakness and the vain, naive hope that an expanded council of Big Powers will somehow give us peace.

I am sick of the cult of dependence; stability in our lands is our responsibility as Africans. I am more interested in Nigerian Police Force reform, in Nigerian Armed Forces reform, in Nigerian political reform, in ECOWAS reform, and in African Union reform (new name for starters) than I am in ANYTHING at all related to the UN Security Council. The things I care about have direct impact on the lives of my countrymen, and will have (if reformed) a direct and positive impace on security and stability on my continent.

Still on the rate ceiling

An interesting essay in the impressive new publication NEXT.

Their columnist, Bode Agusto, takes us back to the 1980s and 1990s when governments led by generals tried to control the interest rates, noting that the banks merely impose non-interest "fees" on private sector borrowers, equivalent to the difference between the market interest rate and the government-imposed interest rate ceiling.

He argues our governments' (past and present) official explanation of these rate ceilings (that it is necessary to allow the private sector to access loans/capital at affordable rates) are a smokescreen. The real purpose, in his view, is to allow governments facing fiscal problems to fund their deficits by borrowing at below-market rates.

In Mr Agusto's words:

In the end,businesses pay market rates while government borrows at below mar-ket rates. The high interest rates and weakening exchange rates will ultimately impact product prices and erode purchasing power. The poor, the very ones we are trying to protect, suffer most.
It is therefore in the interest of the poor to have high interest rates now because this may force the government to address the fundamental problem the level of government spending.

Our governments, state and federal, will be borrowing an estimated $11 billion this year to fund their deficits, most of that from local banks.

I am troubled by this. We do not really know what the CBN is thinking or why they do what they do. I do not trust the public statements of any political figure, be they Nigerian or otherwise, but in Nigeria specifically there is so little credible information out there that rumours and innuendo rule the roost. Even the so-called credible leaders spend most of their time talking out of both sides of their mouths because that is the only way to keep their jobs; for example the CBN's Charles Soludo had a lot more influence during the Obasanjo regime than he has had under the Yar'Adua regime, but in exchange for that influence, he kept his mouth shut while Obasanjo, the PDP, and Obasanjo's bosom allies the Uba brothers more or less wrecked Soludo's own home state Anambra. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil of the Ubas made Soludo a jolly CBN governor .... but that sort of attitude basically undermines any good a person thinks they are doing.

Basically, what I am getting at is Charles Soludo is not going to tell us if the government's rate ceiling is just a command economy ruse to get cheap money out of the banks to fund the deficit.

And at a time when the banks are carrying $10 billion in toxic assets, it seems odd the government would oblige them to find $11 billion in loans for which they cannot expect a full market rate of return. It is easy to say the bigger banks could just absorb the smaller banks, but is it not better to be safe than sorry?

And do we really want to crowd out the private sector in a time when credit is in short supply worldwide?

I have a feeling I will make several more blog posts exploring this issue further ... but for now, I suggest we look at the other side of the ledger, to rationalize, simplify and tighten up our tax collection. And we can dramatically cut costs by pushing the administrative realignment I advocated thus:

Nigeria should have 7 states and 84 local administrative districts, instead of 36 states and 774-and-rising local government areas. The combined total of state assemblymen and local councillors in the new setup should be at least 66% lower that the comparable figure for today.

There should be 25% fewer total federal legislators in a single parliamentary chamber, rather than two.

This would save us a lot of money. And if it is done right, we would NOT have to sack civil servants to see the benefits of cost savings (but that should be the topic of a separate post .... nevertheless, the strange thing about Nigeria is every time you ask the government to cut costs, they start talking about the effects of laying off civil servants, when civil servants are not the problem and have never been the problem. We keep creating new reasons for new political jobs, be they "elected" posts or "appointed" posts. The only "reforms" our leaders are capable of are the creation of new LGAs, new states, new political bureacracies that duplicate, triplicate, and quadruplicate existing functionalities .... only for the collective mass of bureaux and commissions to fail to do the job that one could have done.)