The Importance of Strengthening State Economic Management Systems
Being an address delivered by His Excellency, Atiku Abubakar, Vice President of Nigeria 1999-2007 at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) on Wednesday April 25, 2018.
Protocol:
I thank the Royal Institute of International Affairs for giving me this platform to speak to such a distinguished audience. I specifically want to thank Dr. Alex Vines for inviting me to give this address.
I particularly want to thank Nigerian nationals who are present here today. Your love for Nigeria is evident in that you have left your regular pursuits to be here to interact with lovers of Nigeria on issues that, if implemented, will lead to the progress of Nigeria. Your presence inspires me.
To friends of Nigeria here present, I appreciate your friendship and it is my strong desire that our collective wish to see Nigeria fulfill her potentials are realized in the not so distant future.
I am a widely traveled man, and everywhere I visit around the world, there is agreement that Nigeria has the potential to make that leap from third world to first that Singapore, under Lee Kuan Yew, made. We have the human and material resources required to make the leap and in fact, many of our nationals have helped other nations make that transition.
And it is not that we have not made progress, after all, within a decade we were able to move from being the third largest economy in Africa to being the largest bar none.
Yet, there is still that consensus that we are not meeting up with our potential and all things considered, that verdict is true.
The question becomes why is Nigeria not living up to the promise of her potentials?
More specifically, why are we saddled with a heavy and almost unsustainable debt burden twelve years after President Olusegun Obasanjo and I provided the leadership that paid off Nigeria’s entire foreign debt of $32 billion in one fell swoop?
After paying off a monumental debt accumulated by previous governments, then President Olusegun Obasanjo on April 22, 2006 said "Nigeria will not owe anybody one kobo”. Today, almost exactly 12 years to the day, you can almost say ‘Nigeria is now owing everybody more than one kobo’.
What happened in the intervening years to turn the dream that our administration had, into this present reality where Nigeria now owes double what we paid off in 2006?
In talking about the Importance of Strengthening State Economic Management Systems, we must identify the structural defects in Nigeria’s federal structure that prevents all levels of the Nigerian government, federal, states and local governments, from operating at optimal levels.
After nineteen years of uninterrupted democracy in the fourth republic, it is now an indisputable fact that today’s Nigerian states essentially have been reduced to parastatals of the Federal Government and are addicted to the monthly allocation they receive from Abuja.
There is nothing as addictive as states that are dependent on their monthly share of revenue from crude oil sales and the only way to get them to manage their economies in an economically viable way is to cure them off that addiction. Nigeria needs to be restructured. We must commit to a new development agenda with focus on wealth creation by the federating units, rather than wealth distribution from Abuja to state and local government capitals. We must undertake far reaching economic reforms to attract private resources, including financial resources and build bigger, stronger and more dynamic sub-national economies. We must expand the frontier of private sector activity beyond the realm of the oil sector and build a new Nigeria without oil.
If oil could save a nation then surely it would have saved Venezuela, the nation with the largest proven reserves of oil in the world. But you and I know what is up with Venezuela and if oil has not saved her, it will not save Nigeria.
Being an address delivered by His Excellency, Atiku Abubakar, Vice President of Nigeria 1999-2007 at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) on Wednesday April 25, 2018.
Protocol:
I thank the Royal Institute of International Affairs for giving me this platform to speak to such a distinguished audience. I specifically want to thank Dr. Alex Vines for inviting me to give this address.
I particularly want to thank Nigerian nationals who are present here today. Your love for Nigeria is evident in that you have left your regular pursuits to be here to interact with lovers of Nigeria on issues that, if implemented, will lead to the progress of Nigeria. Your presence inspires me.
To friends of Nigeria here present, I appreciate your friendship and it is my strong desire that our collective wish to see Nigeria fulfill her potentials are realized in the not so distant future.
I am a widely traveled man, and everywhere I visit around the world, there is agreement that Nigeria has the potential to make that leap from third world to first that Singapore, under Lee Kuan Yew, made. We have the human and material resources required to make the leap and in fact, many of our nationals have helped other nations make that transition.
And it is not that we have not made progress, after all, within a decade we were able to move from being the third largest economy in Africa to being the largest bar none.
Yet, there is still that consensus that we are not meeting up with our potential and all things considered, that verdict is true.
The question becomes why is Nigeria not living up to the promise of her potentials?
More specifically, why are we saddled with a heavy and almost unsustainable debt burden twelve years after President Olusegun Obasanjo and I provided the leadership that paid off Nigeria’s entire foreign debt of $32 billion in one fell swoop?
After paying off a monumental debt accumulated by previous governments, then President Olusegun Obasanjo on April 22, 2006 said "Nigeria will not owe anybody one kobo”. Today, almost exactly 12 years to the day, you can almost say ‘Nigeria is now owing everybody more than one kobo’.
What happened in the intervening years to turn the dream that our administration had, into this present reality where Nigeria now owes double what we paid off in 2006?
In talking about the Importance of Strengthening State Economic Management Systems, we must identify the structural defects in Nigeria’s federal structure that prevents all levels of the Nigerian government, federal, states and local governments, from operating at optimal levels.
After nineteen years of uninterrupted democracy in the fourth republic, it is now an indisputable fact that today’s Nigerian states essentially have been reduced to parastatals of the Federal Government and are addicted to the monthly allocation they receive from Abuja.
There is nothing as addictive as states that are dependent on their monthly share of revenue from crude oil sales and the only way to get them to manage their economies in an economically viable way is to cure them off that addiction. Nigeria needs to be restructured. We must commit to a new development agenda with focus on wealth creation by the federating units, rather than wealth distribution from Abuja to state and local government capitals. We must undertake far reaching economic reforms to attract private resources, including financial resources and build bigger, stronger and more dynamic sub-national economies. We must expand the frontier of private sector activity beyond the realm of the oil sector and build a new Nigeria without oil.
If oil could save a nation then surely it would have saved Venezuela, the nation with the largest proven reserves of oil in the world. But you and I know what is up with Venezuela and if oil has not saved her, it will not save Nigeria.
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