In this special focus on Nigeria @60, African Voice Newspaper Nigeria Correspondence, OLAKUNLE AGBOOLA interviews Prof. Pat Utomi, a political economist and former presidential candidate.
Prof. Utomi who is also a fellow of the institute of Management Consultants of Nigeria and founder of Centre for Value in Leadership and the African Democratic Congress bares his thoughts about the state of the nation.
In 2016, when you were 60, no doubt you were excited about it, are you excited about Nigeria at 60?
I do not think this is a celebratory kind of event because at 60, Nigeria is still crawling. Last week from my desk, I was running a zoom meeting on the rise and fall of Nigeria foreign policy and my guest were Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, Ambassador Martins Omoebi and host of foreign policy experts. The general consensus was that Nigerian foreign policy has once reached an altitude and right now, it is at the bottom. This is not peculiar to foreign policy alone; Nigeria is near the bottom in most things.
We cannot have a kind of “Owanbe” anniversary for now but we can have a kind of reflection anniversary asking ourselves questions of where the rain started beating us or what went wrong. Perhaps we can turn things around asking the right questions. Nigeria at 60 ought to be a sober reflection and not the kind of dance I danced when I turned 60. When I clocked 60, I looked back and I realized I had an interesting life, at least from my perspective looking at the lives that I have touched.
Considering this is a landmark anniversary, are you saying there are no milestones to be celebrated?
Of course, there are milestones to be celebrated. A lot has happened and as a Nigerian, there are lots of things we should be proud of, and also there is a lot of things we should be ashamed of. When you study the history of Nigeria most especially our economic activities, you will realize that colonial experience did not design us to be a competitive growing economy. We were driven largely by industrialization in Europe sourcing raw materials in Nigeria and the rest of Africa. Throughout the reign of colonization, there was hardly any industrialization in Nigeria. At the time of independence, due to our founding fathers, we began to push for industrialization while the economy began to grow very dramatic in the 60s. Civil war set and there was downward spiral of all economic activities.
I am happy you mentioned how the colonial master trampled on us so to say, does it mean we have to go back to the foundation just to rebuild?
I think we need to understand that the foundation was deliberately set wrong. Britain was a horrible colonizer and not only in Nigeria, all over the world. They were brutal and one thing that they did very well was to divide people most especially countries they colonized. India was divided along the ethnic lines, so also Malaysia and many places across African continents. British solemnly divided our rule in Nigeria and up till now, we have not had any political leader that is savvy enough to overcome this divide which is deep in ethnicity conflicts most especially among the Yorubas and Ibos.
This reminds me of when Oni of Ife said, Ibos and Yorubas are cousins, there was uproar from the two ethnic groups that it cannot be so. You begin to question the humanity in us or our share of common humanity. We must continue to emanate the mind of the people at least building an educated civilized class, who can pull our common humanity together, and then we can build a new civilization that will elevate the dignity of a black man.
You have said, what should be done but giving to the economic realities of Nigeria, can we ever sit down to discuss this?
This is not the matter of what can be done but what must be done. What are the options? Many have said everybody should go to their father’s house forgetting that we live in a globalized world. We have our people in London, Brazil, America and everywhere all over the world. Going to your father’s house is not a solution but to develop a sense of what is important to all and be of use to one another.
My view of creation is that God created us all to be of use to one another most especially in the area of our gifting. How do we live a solidarity humanism in which we can recognize the inalienable dignity of human person that is in all of us? In my opinion, education ought to be our watchdog. I am not talking about going to school to have a degree; even those who have a degree are still far behind from the reality of common humanity not to talk of solidarity humanism. My regards to education is all about the elevation of the mind from the extraneous which is a bone of an ordinary man.
Olio grates divided the society into three different categories of people. At the base we have the Idiots and this is not used in an insulting way. The idiots are the one who care much about themselves. What they will eat and also take care of themselves. At the slightly higher level, we have the tribe’s men and these are the people who care about those they are connected with by blood. They are parochial in their minds considering everybody outside their blood line as an enemy to be fought. Unfortunately many of us are still at this level. The third level in which we must grow to become is what is known as citizenship. This is where we share the common good of all. Until we grow to become a citizen, we might not be able to overcome our problems.
I love your optimism sir but I am also concerned about the reality on ground. Britain that colonized us as we speak is re-thinking its togetherness. Scotland is saying we don’t want to be part of this, even California when they got tired of Trump and his ways, they are pushing for a kind of referendum too. Is it possible to run our race on different lane and still be together?
There is what is called competitive communalism and this is a competition between ethnics’ nationality groups on who must bring progress to their people. The effect of competitive communalism was actually growth and development, which we experienced during the time of Obafemi Awolowo who was challenged by the decision of broadcasting service in the western region while he pioneered the first television station in Ibadan, WNTV, the first in Africa. The premiere of the eastern region could not manage this indignity of falling behind Awolowo and before you knew it, Eastern Nigeria Broadcasting service was born. This was the beauty of our federation until the military took over and damaged this.
Military structure could not be of help because it does not give room for dialogue or argument rather, you must follow the last order. When oil was discovered, the payment was collected by the region while they take 50 percent and sent 50 percent to the centre. When military took over, it was not the same, they sent all to the centre while they give the region a certain percentage less than 3 percent most especially the oil producing states. These are the things that led to frustration while the whole idea of restructuring became a sharing route and this is not what restructuring really means. The projection by the west is that in the next 18 years, crude oil will become irrelevant. And if our idea about sharing of oil money is restructuring, we better put on our thinking caps now because 18 years is just behind the next hills.
Also, you will realize that those who have tried to keep most of the oil money have become poorer. In the 60s there were more local government in the Southern Nigeria than the Northern Nigeria; it is more of Administrative convenient. After the reform of 1975 and 1976 under Obasanjo’s regime, Nigeria choose a new formula which the local government became a federating unit in a physical arrangement so that 27 percent of all revenue goes to the local government, then certain percentage to the state and the federal government simultaneously. What it means is that when Obasanjo began the local government reforms the powerful people were the young colonel in the army who were majorly northerners. They all made their villages a local government until Nigeria had 774 local governments, where more than 500 local governments were in the northern Nigeria.
But from the look of things, who is poorer today? The North or the South. By far the North The lesson I want people to learn is that it is not how much money you get because progress is not a function of sharing but of production. If we trigger our mindset, we will realize, it is better for all of us to live together rather than drift apart. If we are to build a proper federation, we have to look at our comparative advantage rather our latent comparative advantage that can become globally competitive so that we can prosper together.
I appreciate all inclusive solution that you have proffered to our problems. And like you said, we should go back to production and think of what we can produce rather than what we can get. In your own opinion, what can we do with our politics because it is also in a mess?
Complete total mess and we need to get rid of those who are in politics. Anybody who thinks that politics can make their life better should not be in politics. Politics should be a place you go to loose, to serve and sacrifice. The Arena of public life should be for those who want to impact and make a difference in the life of the citizens. This is what politics should be about. We should slash the number of people in National assembly to less than a third, reduce cost of running government dramatically and stop this nonsense called security vote because it is a complete mess. We must change all these dysfunctionality and if we don’t do something, we are not going anywhere.
How do we get our politics going with all these actors who are not ready to live the stage? How do we get rid of them?
There are too many of us, the middle class citizens who are sitting at our comfort zone. We are too complacent and it is time we wake up and start thinking. What will 5000 Naira you will collect at the pooling unit do for you putting the wrong person in power? You must have wasted another four years wallowing in poverty when you have traded your chance of putting the right person in power. We really have to challenge our mindset.
And lastly where do you see this nation in the next ten years?
One of the things that history has taught me is that salvation can come from anywhere. Change is inevitable and it can come at anytime. Let me give you an example of a country known as Brazil. This is a country with ultimate potential but going nowhere. But when change came, it was through their finance minister who turned things around. There are classical examples of change that we can epitomize. When it comes to Nigeria, just get the right leadership and in five years, Nigeria is set on the right trajectory. Everything is possible to those who believe.
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