A couple of articles, one old and one new

THE NEW

Dr. Charles Soludo, the immediate prior Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria is engaging in the worldwide practice of ex-officialdom -- calling in "retirement" for things that they had the chance to do when they were in office but chose not to do because doing so would have lost them that office. Some of these ex-officials (e.g. USA's ex-President Clinton) make a lot of money doing this.

Anyway, Soludo (now a columnist for This Day) has written a very interesting critique of the Federal Republic's statistics. As well all know, our data and statistics has not in the past, and does not in the present, engender much confidence. In writing this blog, I have often had to base a statement on some bit of official statistics, while simultaneously admitting that the statistics may or may not be accurate.  Soludo, a former boss at the National Bureau of Statistics, as well as being a former CBN boss, is a credible person to confirm that I am appropriating hesitant about relying on official statistics even where they confirm my point of view.

And if you think I was being harsh on Soludo by criticizing his after-the-fact realization that proper statistics are important, understand that he is one of the reasons people like me are forced to be hesitant when trying to analyze what is going on in Nigeria.  Even as all evidence point to the fact that the bubble that existed at that time on the Nigeria Stock Market was about to burst, Soludo, then the CBN governor, continued to publicly insist that his data showed him no such thing was happening. Indeed, even before that, as lax regulation from the CBN and SEC allowed the bubble to grow particularly large in the banking sector, while simultaneously allowing banks to criminally or unethically manipulate data and outcomes, and to criminally or unethically use the proceeds from this manipulation, Soludo at the CBN just as strenuously denied any such thing was happening.

You should read the whole article if you haven't already (click the link and give them the traffic), but I will reproduce this quote from the piece: "If the poverty numbers are correct, then the GDP numbers are wrong. If the GDP numbers are correct, then the poverty numbers must be wrong."

THE OLD

If I sometimes come off cynical, it is because experience has taught me to be cynical.  Some years ago, Nigeria launched a communications satellite. Or rather, a satellite was launched on our behalf by foreign partners. This satellite was ultimately "lost" rather quickly after launch, and had to be replaced. But that wasn't the real problem.  The real problem is even if it had worked exactly the way it was supposed to, it still wouldn't have worked.  According to an engineer quoted in this old article:

The satellite was limited because the type of frequency it used was disturbed by clouds in the atmosphere, and did not work properly in Nigeria's rainy season or during the Harmattan, when clouds of dust blow down from the Sahara, he said.

The satellite also operated on frequencies already allocated to other companies and interfered with other providers' equipment.

It isn't just us. There have been scandals in Uganda and Tanzania after what was meant to be brand-new, state-of-the-art imported equipment arrived and turned out to be old-fashioned technology in a state of dysfunction and/or disrepair.  Arguably, even rich world governments tend to pay out excessive sums of public money to favoured corporations (and frankly, to NGOs and "civil society" as well) who deliver goods and services not necessarily commensurate to what they were paid.

But this is why I hesitate to shout "Uhuru" when any of our three tiers of governments announces something that in theory sounds like a good plan. Because at the end of the day, there is always someone (within our country and outside of it) making a lot of money off of making sure the plan is executed in a way that does not quite exactly achieve whatever it was that was promised when the plan was announced.