Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and the missing trillions (3)

continued frrom 2 days arrier on my article on this issue

Being concluding part of Prof. Charles Chukwuma Soludo, former CBN gover­nor’s response to Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s reaction to his earlier article on state of the economy.

Second, my earlier article stated that the minimum forex reserves should have been at least $90 billion by now and you did not challenge it. Rather it is about $30 billion, mean­ing that gross mismanagement has denied the country some $60 billion or another N12.6 trillion. Now add the ‘missing’ $20 billion from the (Nigerian national Petroleum Corporation) NNPC. You promised a forensic audit report ‘soon’ and more than a year later the Report itself is still ‘missing.’ This is over N4 trillion, and we don’t know how much more has ‘missed’ since Sanusi cried out. How many trillions of naira were paid for oil subsidy (unappropriated?)

How many trillions (in actual fact) have been ‘lost’ through customs duty waivers over the last four years? As coordinator of the economy, can you tell Nigerians why the price of automotive gas oil (AGO), popularly called diesel, has still not come down despite the crash in global crude oil prices, and how much is being appropriated by friends in the process? Be honest: do you really know (as coordinator and minister of finance) how many trillions of Naira, self-financing government agencies earn and spend? I have a long list but let me wait for now. I do not want to talk about other ‘black pots’ that impinge on national security. My estimate, Madam, is that probably more than N30 trillion has either been stolen or lost or unaccounted for or simply misman­aged under your watchful eyes in the past four years. Since you claim to be in charge, Nigerians are right to ask you to account. Think about what this amount could mean for the 112 million poor Nigerians or for our schools, hospitals, roads, etc. Soon, you will start asking the citizens to pay this or that tax, while some faceless “thieves” were pocketing over $40 million per day from oil alone.

You alluded to debt relief in your response and tried to take credit. Well, your CV is honest enough to admit that your two achievements in office as finance minister under Obasanjo were that “you led the Ni­gerian team that struck a deal with the Paris Club” and that you “introduced the practice of publishing each state’s monthly financial allocation in the newspapers.” You are right about the two achievements. Let me put on record that Nigeria would have secured debt relief under anyone as Minister of Finance. President Obasanjo secured debt relief for Nigeria. Much of his first term was used to get Nigeria back into the international community and to campaign for debt relief. Before you were sworn in as Minister of Finance, President (George) Bush visited Nigeria and both of us accompanied Presi­dent Obasanjo during the meeting.

There, Mr. Bush promised to support Nigeria with debt relief and asked our presi­dent to ensure that he met the conditions of the Paris Club. Obasanjo mobilised the global political support and coordinated all of us to ensure that the government met the check-list of ‘conditionalities,’ as required. I spent five weeks in the hotel with my team (as coordinator/chairman for drafting the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy, NEEDS).

Some of the reform targets in NEEDS became the ‘conditionalities’ Nigeria was required to fulfil to merit debt relief. You and I signed the various MoU with the IMF on behalf of Nigeria (the policy support instrument). We had a great team at work and each member of the economic team had specific aspects of the conditionalities to deliver: Bode Agusto was in-charge of the budget; Oby Ezekwesili held sway at Bureau of Public Procurement and later Minister of Solid Mineral, and Education (but specifically tasked with delivering on EITI and procurement reforms); Nuhu Ribadu was at the EFCC fighting corrup­tion; I was at the Central Bank delivering on monetary policy and banking reforms; Steve Oronsaye worked hard to delist Nigeria from the FATF; Nenadi Usman was in-charge of the parastatals; El-Rufai held forth at FCT and in charge of public sector reforms; privatisation programme went on, etc. Did you know that the IMF wrote Presi­dent Obasanjo threatening that there would be no debt relief if the CBN did not meet some monetary targets, and do you know the magic we performed to meet them? Can you tell Nigerians which of the ‘conditionalities’ that you personally implemented? With the groundswell of political support and Nigeria meeting all the ‘conditionalities,’ debt relief was assured.

Your major role as stated in your CV was to lead the team to negotiate the specific terms of the relief, having fulfilled the condi­tions. I still believe that Nigeria should have gotten far better terms than you negotiated. Of course, with your eyes on returning to the World Bank after office, I did not expect you to boldly stand up to the donor community in defence of Nigeria. Was there a conflict of interest on your part?

By the way, can you tell Nigerians why you were eased out as Finance Minister and you cried like a baby begging Obasanjo to still allow you remain in the Economic Man­agement team – barely a few weeks after the debt relief? Why were you eventually also removed from the economic management team if you were so important? Ironically, President Jonathan has recycled you, with a bigger title and greater responsibilities. But the difference is that the team that did the actual work is no longer there, and the world has seen that the king is naked.

You are brilliant, Madam, but you need serious help. Having spent all your life in the World Bank bureaucracy largely in admin­istration/operations, no one will blame you if your economics has become a bit rusty. There are firebrand Nigerians all over the world to draft to service. It is certainly em­barrassing to Nigeria for you to be bothering World Bank economists to help you with most basic economic analysis.

Your response on the poverty issue is deeply troubling. You accuse me of using “2011 statistics on poverty by the NBS to support his argument, while ignoring more recent figures.” At least you did not refute the NBS figure as valid. In the next sentence, Madam went ahead to note, “as stated in the Nigeria Economic Report 2014 by the World Bank, poverty in Nigeria has dropped from 35.2 percent of population in 2010/2011 to 33.1 percent in 2012/2013.” Did you notice that you have quoted two figures for poverty for the same year as being equally correct? So, for 2011, was poverty 71 per cent (ac­cording to NBS) or 35 per cent, according to the World Bank? To the best of my knowl­edge, the last published household survey by NBS was in 2011.

The World Bank does not conduct house­hold surveys in member states to determine poverty incidence. So, when and by who was the survey that gave the World Bank figures? What worries me is that this government is the first in our history to attempt to manipulate our national statistics under Okonjo-Iweala. When NBS published the poverty figures in 2011, she felt indicted and incensed. She called upon the World Bank to come and examine the ‘methodology’ and get NBS to ‘review’ its numbers. Oby Ezekwesili (as VP, Africa Region rejected the call to try to tamper with a country’s statistics). Once Oby left, the ‘World Bank’ started talking about ‘new figures,’ without conducting any new surveys. I was told about it by a World Bank economist and I cautioned that it was a dangerous gamble that would damage the credibility of the NBS.

If you want to ‘review methodology,’ you conduct another survey but you can’t change ‘methodology’ because you don’t like the published figures. No government in our his­tory has tried it: even Sani Abacha allowed a poverty survey that put poverty at 67 per cent under his regime. At this rate, who will believe statistics coming from the Nigerian government again? Is it now the World Bank that sits in Washington and allocates poverty numbers to Nigeria? Something smells here! Madam alleges that the NBS – as a parastat­al under the National Planning Commission (under me) departed from the ‘international standard method of poverty measurement.’

How and when, Madam? I was in office at National Planning for 11 months from July 2003 to May 2004. A poverty survey was conducted in 2004 and the results computed and published in 2005/2006 – more than a year after I had gone to the Central Bank. Or perhaps, it was a clever way to divert at­tention from your manipulation of published economic statistics. The NBS published its poverty data in 2006 when you were Minis­ter of Finance, and you did not question the ‘methodology’ because the figures looked good. In 2011, the poverty numbers (using the same methodology as in 2005/2006) indicted the government and suddenly, the ‘methodology’ is wrong. Interesting times!

Now that you decide, which economic statistics published by NBS to accept and which ones to ‘change the methodology’ to give favourable figures, you can keep feeding your manipulated figures to your international media circus for the vain glori­ous awards to sustain an empty hype, while Nigerians groan under hardship. We can actually ask Nigerians whether they are get­ting better off now, contrary to your bogus figures.

Many of Madam’s responses were comical, but this one is classic. According to her, the chief economic adviser and NBS “worked hard to determine how many jobs we need to create in a year” and went on to ask, “why didn’t Soludo do this when he was CEA?” (Lol!). Madam, any good econ­omist needs less than 10 minutes to compute this figure, not the (months? of) ‘hard work’ by your team. My calculation is that the number of jobs Nigeria needs to create each year to significantly reduce unemployment rate to sustainable levels in the next few years is at least three million, and not the 1.8 million by your team. We are talking about the Nigerian economy, please.

Your magic wand for mass housing is the Mortgage Refinance Corporation with 23,000 mortgage offers – for a country with 17 million housing deficit! Then, there is the pedestrian proposal of a new development bank – financed with loans from the World Bank, etc? A World Bank loan to set up an­other ‘development bank,’ where we already have Bank of Industry, Bank of Agriculture, NEXIM, Federal Mortgage Bank, etc? Peo­ple have totally run out of ideas and can’t see anything for Nigeria without through the prism of the World Bank. I will offer you free consultancy on how to set up a develop­ment bank without a World Bank loan but we don’t need another one now. I actually gave President Yar’Adua a two-page note for a N3 trillion development fund then, and if we plug your leaking pipes, it could actu­ally be a N10 trillion fund. I envisioned and set up the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) – Africa’s premier infrastructure bank! Frankly, I don’t understand why you seem highly troubled that the Soludo you thought had “disappeared from the political space” seems to be still around. Well, let me assure you that I will only ‘disappear’ in God’s own time. I gave credit to two past presidents who laid the foundation of the market econ­omy we operate today. You did not contest or contradict any of my points. Rather, what you see is that Soludo must be ‘looking for a position.’ Pity!

If I am looking for a position, I would be running around one of the candidates now, just as you are busy dancing Atilogwu dance at (Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria) TAN and PDP rallies, struggling to keep your job. How Yar’Adua drafted me to contest for governor in Anambra and )All Progressives Grand Alliance) APGA leader­ship as well and how I was “stopped” on both occasions are in the public domain. But I am not deterred for one minute.

Chinua Achebe said that on leadership, Nigeria is a country that goes for a football match with its 10th Eleven. I am proud and happy to have offered to serve my people, and for the service of Nigeria, I will do it again and again. How many times did Abra­ham Lincoln, (Barrack) Obama, (Ronald) Reagan, etc contest before they got there? I actually encourage everyone who believes he/she has something to offer to get involved or stop complaining. I am happy seeing the increasing critical mass of professionals (like you) now getting involved. It is good for Nigeria!

What is at stake is the survival and pros­perity of Nigeria. Next elections are critical, and for me the key is the ECONOMY. We must offer Nigerians clarity on the choices before them. Can I propose a three-way debate with you (representing PDP/Federal Government), nominee of APC (Utomi or Fayemi? or any other), and myself (as independent citizen – I don’t belong to any of the two).

Let us have two bouts of debate between now and February 12, 2015 focusing on: CBN/AMCON and the financial system (if you want); our economy and its outlook, and agenda/alternative paths to sustainable prosperity post elections. Choose the dates and times, and for the sake of Nigeria,

I will fly in. You can invite any of your international media friends as moderators. I feel the pain of the 180 million Nigeri­ans whose tomorrow you have carelessly rendered bleak, and when I think of what the missing trillions could do for them, it becomes extremely urgent that we all must deepen the debate. Eagerly waiting for your response, please!

Concluded