Presidency complains over comments asking what govt is fo<\/p>\n
The Presidency has expressed reservations over a viral article in the the Financial Times which portrayed Nigeria under President Muhammadu Buhari as a rudderless entity.<\/p>\n
In his article, an editor of the Finacial Times had written a week ago:<\/p>\n
Muhammadu Buhari may go but it\u2019s not the leader who matters, the system itself must change_<\/strong><\/p>\n On the British Airways flight between London and Nigeria\u2019s administrative capital of Abuja, one of the airline\u2019s most profitable routes, nearly all the space is taken up with flatbeds. The unfortunate few making their way to a crunched economy section at the back must trudge through row after row of business class.<\/strong><\/p>\n Evidently, there is plenty of money to be made in Abuja\u2019s corridors of power. Nigeria\u2019s economy may be flat on its back, but the political elite flying to and from London will spend the flight flat on theirs, too.<\/strong><\/p>\n Next year, many of the members of government will change, though not necessarily the bureaucracy behind it. Campaigning has already begun for presidential elections that in February 2023 will draw the curtain on eight years of the administration of Muhammadu Buhari, on whose somnolent watch Nigeria has sleepwalked closer to disaster.<\/strong><\/p>\n Buhari has overseen two terms of economic slump, rising debt and a calamitous increase in kidnapping and banditry \u2014 the one thing you might have thought a former general could control. Familiar candidates to replace him, mostly recycled old men, are already counting their money ahead of a costly electoral marathon. It takes an estimated $2bn to get a president elected. Those who pay will expect to be paid back.<\/strong><\/p>\n There are some promising candidates. If Yemi Osinbajo, the technocratic vice-president, were miraculously to make it through the campaign thicket and emerge as president, the hearts of Nigerian optimists would beat a little faster.<\/strong><\/p>\n But that may be to underestimate the depth of Nigeria\u2019s quagmire. The problem is not so much who leads the government as the nature of government itself.<\/strong><\/p>\n Nigeria\u2019s administration is fuelled by oil \u2014 though not its economy; more than 90 per cent of output is generated from non-oil activities. But for decades, the business of government \u2014 whether military or, since 1999, democratic \u2014 has been to control access to oil revenues and earn patronage by spreading petrol-dollars to federal and state supplicants.<\/strong><\/p>\n Outside oil, government raises a petty amount of revenue, proportionally much less than other African states. Since the provision of services is so dire, no one who can afford to pay taxes is willing to do so. Nigerians with money opt out of the system. They send their kids to private school, attend private hospitals, employ their own private security and generate their own power. The state borrows ever more heavily to fund what little capital expenditure there is and service mounting debts. Like a giant leech at the top of the body politic, government is essentially there to fund itself.<\/strong><\/p>\n This thwarts the aspirations of millions of highly capable Nigerians. Officials extract \u201crent\u201d by controlling access to business opportunities. The objective thus becomes to slow down investment not speed it up.<\/strong><\/p>\n Almost all the energy, drive and wealth creation in Nigeria happens outside government. New unregulated businesses in the booming tech sector, fashion, design and the creative arts are flourishing. Every day, tens of millions of Nigerians somehow get by, despite the efforts of those supposedly looking out for them.<\/strong><\/p>\n As is said of India, Nigeria grows at night while the government sleeps \u2014hardly surprising that some libertarian tech entrepreneurs want the government to withdraw and leave the private sector in charge.<\/strong><\/p>\n In reality, the government is not too big. It is too small. The federal budget \u2014 not counting money transferred to states \u2014 is about $30bn, derisory for a population of more than 200m people. Only trust in government \u2014 and a willingness to pay taxes \u2014 can redress this balance.<\/strong><\/p>\n Nigeria desperately needs an administration whose energies go not into preserving its own privilege but into providing public goods \u2014 basic education and health, rule of law, security, power, roads and digital infrastructure. It must remove distortions and subsidies that direct entrepreneurial activity from production to arbitrage.<\/strong><\/p>\n The chances of a corrupt system reforming itself are slim. But if Nigeria\u2019s ruling class cannot manage it, any remaining faith Nigerians have in their system of government will evaporate. That way lies disaster.<\/strong><\/p>\n In its reaction, the Presidency, through spokesman, Mr. Garba Shehu, states:<\/p>\n We wish to correct the wrong perceptions contained in the article “What is Nigeria’s Government For,” by David Piling, Financial Times (UK),\u00a0January\u00a031, 2022.<\/strong><\/p>\n The caricature of a government sleepwalking into disaster (What is Nigeria\u2019s government for? January 31, 2022 ) is predictable from a correspondent who jets briefly in and out of Nigeria on the same British Airways flight he so criticises.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n He highlights rising banditry in my country as proof of such slumber.<\/strong><\/p>\n What he leaves out are the security gains made over two Presidential terms.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The terror organisation Boko Haram used to administer an area the size of Belgium at inauguration; now, they control no territory.<\/strong><\/p>\n The first comprehensive plan to deal with decades-old clashes between nomadic herders and sedentary farmers \u2013 experienced across the width of the Sahel \u2013 has been introduced: pilot ranches are reducing the competition for water and land that drove past tensions.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Banditry grew out of such clashes. Criminal gangs took advantage of the instability, flush with guns that flooded the region following the Western-triggered implosion of Libya.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Presidency complains over comments asking what govt is fo The Presidency has expressed reservations over a viral article in the the Financial Times which portrayed Nigeria under President Muhammadu Buhari as a rudderless entity. In his article, an editor of the Finacial Times had written a week ago: Muhammadu Buhari may go but it\u2019s not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":42863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[4427,249,303],"class_list":["post-55858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-financial-times","tag-nigeria","tag-presidency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}