Mr. Kelvin Okechukwu.
Story by Dili Utomi.
The average Nigerian’s immediate concern these days is the state of our national economy which has left their finances in tatters with little or no leeway to refuge. The National Bureau of Statistics sometimes ago told us that there are over one hundred and thirty million Nigerians in mult-dimensional poverty. This is a grim picture which has been exacerbated by inconsistent policies and not-so-well-thought-out programmes that have threatened to push more Nigerians into poverty.
Www.greatalternativenetwork.com sought the opinion of a businessman who is also a social commentator as well as a leader in the logistics business administration, Mr. Kelvin Chinedu Okechukwu, the chairman of Kirikiri Truckers Association and he bore his mind on the state of the Nigerian economy and recommended remedies to move the country out of its economic woods.
Question: Sir, the topic on every Nigerian’s lips right now is the economy. Economy, like Bill Clinton said while he was campaigning then “It’s the economy, stupid! So the economy is holding down most Nigerians right now as it is not performing. What are your opinions about what Nigerians are saying about the present economic situation.
Answer: Nigerian economy is dependent on international currency, because Nigeria is a country that is import dependent, and we have little exports, apart from crude oil. And the major problem with Nigeria economy for now is the drastic drop in crude oil production. So the petro-dollar is not coming in the way it is supposed to be coming in. Some years ago, Nigeria produced as much as two 2.2 million. I mean barrels of oil every day, 2.2 million barrels every day. At a point last year, the production dropped to as low as 900,000 barrels a day. With that rate of drop you could see what Nigeria was losing on daily basis in terms of dollars. What it causes is scarcity of the dollar and when the dollar which is an international currency becomes scarce, elementary economics will tell you that anything that is scarce will cause a rise in cost. This scarcity of the petro-dollar has caused everything to skyrocket locally in terms of cost. Everything becomes expensive, I think that in real terms, what we are just supposed to do is to fight hard and increase the production of crude oil as soon as possible. Once the production of crude oil increases, the inflow of dollars will stabilise the currency a bit, and once the currency stabilises, things will start improving gradually. Though, that is not the only problem, but for the immediate, the major problem Nigerian economy has is crude oil production that has gone south.
Question: Yes, good point there sir, we are a mono-product economy, crude oil that is. Then what are the issues? Why has the crude oil production dropped so much? Why do you think the government shies away from taking care of the root problem, which is insecurity?
Answer: There is not much government can do security issues because starting from the head the government is corrupt. There is criminality everywhere. There is no way you can develop when you do not handle criminality, it has become something that is widespread. For instance, now you have security challenges in the North you have it in the Middle Belt, you have it in the South East, you have it in the North East, you have it in the South South. The government becomes so stretched, so overwhelmed and the security agencies that are supposed to fight corruption are equally corrupt. When you are corrupt, your productivity and the efficiency reduces. So, it is a kind of vicious circle and you will not know where to break the chain. To me, I think the best thing to do is to fight criminality from all angles, not not focusing on on oil theft alone because the fight against oil theft alone cannot solve the problem as something necessitates those oil thefts. The security agents that will fight the oil theft are also corrupt as they are mostly also accomplices in oil theft making it very difficult for government to achieve their aims
Question: We have been a mono-product economy for such a long time, for probably the last 50 or so years out of our over 64 years as a nation, and it is not serving the purpose. What about developing other sectors of the economy to bring in money. The agricultural sector has been spoken about, tourism infrastructure that will bring up all other kinds of economic development. What is happening? Why do you think those areas, other areas, are not being developed?
Answer: It’s not going to be easy now. It is not easy to develop all these things because of insecurity and because of criminality. Before insecurity, we have had a lot of criminality already. It is the criminality that gives rise to insecurity when people are allowed to do their criminal practices unhindered and unchecked. The thing has now grown to serious security problem, and when you have serious security problem, farmers cannot farm, industrialists cannot operate. You need security for any business to thrive, no matter the business. Business is always security shy. It you are a millionaire and you want to go and invest in location A and you heard that there is security challenge there, you will withdraw your investment. Many foreigners don’t want to invest in Nigeria because of the security issue. Many farmers cannot farm as they are being kidnapped from their farms. They have been brutalised in their farms, they are being killed in their farms. So it is a big challenge for the Nigerian economy to be where it is supposed to be because of insecurity. If we have to fix the Nigerian economy thoroughly, we will have to start with tackling insecurity. After tackling insecurity, then we tackle criminality. If we do not tackle all these things, Nigerian economy will not be where it is supposed to be. We are supposed to be competing with countries like Egypt, Algeria and Morocco, because we have certain leverage. We have what they do not have. We have educated population. We have mineral resources that they do not even have. So why is their GDP better than ours? Why is their per capita income better than ours? Today we are managing $1,500 per capita, whereas countries that do not have the crude oil that we have are having up to $5000 to $6000 per capita. It goes back to what I said before, a country like Egypt has developed its tourism as one of its major foreign currency earners, even though we know that there are also subsidies from other countries going to them, but the tourism is what gives it a lot of the money.
Question: Does it boil down to government not having a political will or why can we not do things to improve our economy?
Mr. Kevin Nedu Okechukwu, chairman, Kirikiri Truckers Association.
Answer: I suppose that by tourism, you are talking about foreigners coming to our country to relax, to be happy, to go around and spend money, and spend their dollars or any other of their hard currencies in our country. Nigeria has a lot of potentials. So it is, but people do not go to a place where they are not secure. You understand that people do not go to a place where the rate of criminality is so high. They will always want to go to a country where you know that you feel safe. Nigeria even had some advantage, because we have many Nigerians living in the abroad. They want to come to Nigeria. They are also tourists even though they may come from Europe or America, they will come to Nigeria with their hard currency, but they do not want to come. I have some people from my village that have been abroad for 20 years or more who will tell you that they will never come to Nigeria because of insecurity. It is not that they do not like Nigeria, they wear Nigerian clothes, they speak Nigerian languages, but they don’t want to come to Nigeria because of insecurity and what they constantly hear and watch on television. When things happen in Nigeria and then they hear it abroad they may not understand it the way we do here because they are likely to watch it on CNN, Al Jazeera or any if the International news networks. We know that negative news about Nigeria is always amplified and will always be amplified. They are much afraid watching these news broadcast and will always call to ask “How do we survive in Nigeria? How is it that all of us have not been kidnapped without” What I am saying is that insecurity is one of the reasons why tourism cannot sell in Nigeria, it is not that Nigeria does not have tourism potential.
Question: Now, sir, from your own perspective, apart from the fact that you said, we must take care of the security issues and then tackle criminality, what can you in your own opinion advise that the government should do apart from the earlier suggested?
Answer: Nigeria needs to industrialise. Industrialisation is even better for a country like Nigeria than tourism that you are talking about, yes, because industries employ a lot of people, we have a lot of unemployed youth and old persons because we do not have industries that can employ them. Industries and agriculture are great employers of the greatest number of people. Nigeria like other third world counties need to be industrialised so that the rate of unemployment will drop drastically, but it cannot industrialise where electricity is not there, roads are not there, no pipe born water, even government registration is problematic. When you want to site an industry in Nigeria, NAFDAC, SON and all the others will frustrate you with a lot of demands. It is not really easy, but the major problem is infrastructural problem. China is a very cheap place to produce because they have the infrastructure. They have world class infrastructure. In Nigeria, we have cheap labour, the only thing that is drawing us back is infrastructure. The little business owner, for instance that wants to produce pure water in a factory, which is one of the cheapest industry for you to establish, you will need a generator to power it. You need the generator mechanic then before you now go through the rigours of registering it. Now, when you are now producing water with generator and diesel, you can see that it is very expensive. If government allows people to import water from Benin, it might even be cheaper to import water from Benin than to manufacture it in Nigeria because of the hurdles you need to go cross.
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