Obasanjo's Legacy (4)
By Reuben Abati

Economic reform was perhaps the chief project of the Obasanjo government in eight years; through this programme encapsulated in the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS), the government hoped to introduce a new economic order that would be investment-friendly, result in the empowerment of the populace and drive efficiency. On paper, the government's economic agenda looked impressive, when it was articulated by its promoters, it sounded truly convincing. Its major highlights included a review of macro-economic policies, sectoral reforms, privatization of public enterprises, increased non-oil sector growth, poverty reduction, and an all-out war against corruption and inefficiency. The strategy as defined in 2004, arrived late, but it covered the major policy directions of government, the details of which were fleshed out in the enabling guidelines for specific reforms.

Key interventions in the power, education, extractive industry and financial sectors were hailed as revolutionary. But there was one major problem. And this was the fact that the government's economic reform agenda was not in any way pro-poor; instead it resulted in the empowerment of a minority to the disadvantage of the majority. If the people felt the reforms as an expression of a development process, they did so in terms of a devaluation of the quality of human life in the country. The promoters of the economic agenda spoke repeatedly about growth factors within the economy, but these factors did not translate into concrete social transformation. The Nigerian economic situation necessarily raised the question: what constitutes development? Is development to be measured in terms of abstract growth factors or in terms of social transformation?

The more the palace economists spoke about growth, the more the people cried out about the need for democracy to impact on their lives in real terms. There was a general perception that the Obasanjo government had set out to punish the people. When the General took over power in 1999, the pump price of petroleum was about N19, eight years later he had increased it to N65, under a policy of deregulation in the downstream sector which ended up creating new local billionaires and promoted the importation of petroleum products. While the emergent powerful petroleum marketer complained about the need to break even in order to ensure continuous availability of petroleum products and government insisted on the supremacy of market forces, the ordinary Nigerian complained about the hardship that he had to experience. By May 2007, inflation was galloping, the prices of consumer commodities had risen so high that they were beyond the reach of the common man. The country's foreign reserve stood at $43 billion but poverty stalked the land. The government advertised favourable ratings by Standards and Poor's and Fitch, as proof of progress that it was making, and Nigeria's recognition by the Financial Action Task Force as a sign of progress, but what was more observable was the limitation of the neo-liberal economic framework and the error of assuming that there is one approach to the development process.

The general perception, and this is important, was that the Obasanjo government was being teleguided by the Bretton Woods institutions, rather than by local, national priorities. The government was seeking the cancellation of Nigeria's debts, and perhaps it needed to impress the international community, but the general view was that it did this at the expense of the people. For example, the removal (or reduction) of subsidy in the downstream sector, as well as the education sector was seen as an IMF/World Bank inspired strategy. The consolidation in the financial sector has created mega banks and mega insurance companies, but for the banks, this has not translated into a deepening of the quality of financial intermediation. There are fewer banks, but this has had no impact on access to funds, or interest rates. What is happening is a jostling for hierarchy among the banks with a determination to further raise capital base. We have banks which can boast of a capital base in the region of N100 billion plus, but which are not enthusiastic about lending to micro-businesses or actual engagement in banking. Many of the emergent banks are at best conduits for capital flight.

I return to the point about the Bretton Woods institutions. The impression that I defined is further strengthened by the fact that the Federal Government's special economic team (the so-called committee of seven or eight wise men/women) was composed of IMF/World Bank types or persons who took the positions of the Bretton Woods institutions as the last word on economic planning. IMF/World bank officials looked into every economic policy, and their approval was sought. Indeed, the World Bank not only paid the salaries of a few government officials in the economic team, (this became a major controversy), the World Bank was said to have recommended the appointment of Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, possibly Nigeria's most influential Minister of Finance since independence. Ironically, loans from the Bretton Woods institutions were so marginal in Nigeria's development aid architecture.

The economic policy that was defined at the centre was designed to be adopted and replicated at the state and local council levels. In line with this, the states, which were mostly governed by the ruling PDP, launched what was known as the State Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (SEEDS), and at the local councils, the equivalent was the Local Economic Empowerment Development Strategy (LEEDS). Sadly, there was greater emphasis on the acronyms rather than the substance of the strategy. The way the development strategy worked out in the states and the local councils was as follows: the Governors and the Chairmen of councils dug a few boreholes, repaired some pot-hole ridden roads, donated drugs to some forgotten primary health care centres, set up a fund for widows or the handicapped, and they called this development strategy. They spent more money placing adverts in the media to draw public attention to these "achievements". They provided in so doing a poor picture of Nigeria's level of development. At these two levels of government, the local development process was seen largely as an opportunity to award contracts or to dispense political patronage.

But the bigger omission was the absence of a sense/feeling of ownership of the development strategy designed by the Federal Government. There was no early sharing of knowledge among the stakeholders, in government and in civil society, and hence, at all levels, the development strategy was compromised. The Nigerian case proves the point about the need for local initiatives, and the input of knowledge centres in the facilitation of a development and empowerment strategy.

General Obasanjo and the Federal Government are often blamed for many of the omissions in Nigeria's development process in the last eight years. But the attack is a bit undeserved even if it is self-inflicted. The actual culprits were the state and local councils; these being the levels of government closest to the people were supposed to be centres of development and constructive productivity. But they were not. The Governors and local council Chairmen depended almost completely on revenues accruing from federal allocations. Rather than generate productive activities in their areas, they rushed to Abuja every month to collect their own share of oil revenue and rushed to Europe or the Caribbeans to salt away a stolen tranche of the money. Even when there was no money to be shared, many of the Governors spent more time in Abuja than in their states, it was fashionable to be seen in the corridors of the Presidential Villa!

Governance at the local council levels was worse: the general consensus was that money allocated to the local councils was meant to be shared. Most of the cases of corruption that were recorded in eight years were in the states and the local councils, with the more dramatic incidents being the arrest of Plateau's Governor Joshua Dariye and Bayelsa's Governor Diepreye Alamiyeseigha in the United Kingdom. However, in the instances in which there was actual performance at the other levels of government, the people were able to appreciate the value of democracy as a vehicle for delivering people-oriented governance. In comparison to the military era, there was a greater emphasis on performance in eight years of democracy, and the people could point to a government in which the key players were known faces and names within the community. There were gaps in many respects but the degree of alienation, compared to the military era was relatively lower.

Some comment on the unitary system of governance is necessary. General Obasanjo cannot be blamed for the poor performance in the states and local councils, but he ran a government in which the centre was far more powerful than the states or the regions. Unfortunately, become he came to power, General Obasanjo had articulated a vision of power in which the states and the regions would be the locus of the development process. As President, his style was that of a military dictator turning Nigeria's democracy into a milito-civilian structure and this affected everything else. The Nigerian President was far more powerful than the American President.

The General ran a government in which he was the wisest man in the entire country. Nobody was expected to contradict him, and those who did were punished for their insubordination. Governors struggled to be in Baba's good books. The President was called Baba: he was the father of everyone whose words could not be questioned since this is the dictate of age-old culture and tradition. This military style under which subordinates were required to "obey the last command" created much tension in the country, and it was in part responsible for the love-hate relationship that existed between the President and the Nigerian media. It was a style unfortunately that was copied by Obasanjo's immediate lieutenants.

Most of the Ministers and Special Assistants/Advisers in that government were mini-tyrants; they saw every criticism of government policy as an act of affront, the more deluded and disoriented ones among them, with their arrogance helped to make more unnecessary enemies for government. It was also a style of governance that encouraged sycophancy. The point was often made that Ministers went to the Federal Cabinet meeting only to massage the President's ego. When on one occasion all the Ministers in a show of solidarity with the President rose in unison against the Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who had become Obasanjo's adversary, it was clear at last that we had a civilian dictatorship on our hands.

Others who dared to criticize the government in the general society were subjected to verbal attacks by Ministers and other government officials: a documentation of the public relations style of the Obasanjo government would reveal a consistent shortage of civility, and an obsession with abuse, with the police and the army whenever it was convenient, giving loud expression to this. Federal officials used such abusive words as "idiotic", "insane" "saboteur", etc freely, the soldiers and the policemen turned their guns on anyone who showed any form of independence. It was not accidental that the President bluntly refused to sign the Freedom of Information Bill into law, despite all pressures that he should do so: his refusal was of course self-serving.

On the question of human rights, the last eight years have necessarily been compared to the military era. There is no doubt about it: democracy broadened the scope for human rights but whenever its authority was challenged either by the media or aggrieved groups in civil society, the Obasanjo government never hesitated in wielding the big stick. Human Rights Watch (London/New York) has documented cases of human rights abuses and police brutality and citizenship crises during the Obasanjo years; the local media offered extensive reports of human rights violations in the Niger Delta and in such episodes as the mayhem in Odi and Zaki Biam. There was hardly any hesitation in using the state as a weapon and as an adversary at the expense of the public interest. It has also been said that the Obasanjo government helped to ensure national stability. This should be probed further; we may well have dealt in eight years with a case of phantom stability.

Whatever opportunities that existed for addressing this dilemma were squandered on the altar of too much politics. The biggest problem of the last eight years has been that of too much politics. Politics compromised governance and the development process. By politics, I refer to the local culture of politics. By 2002, President Obasanjo's attention was already being distracted by too much politics. There was a battle for the soul of the PDP, the political platform that brought him to power. Obasanjo was not a professional politician: when he returned form prison and he was selected to lead the nation by a clique of vetoists, he had no political machinery of his own. He was lent an existing machinery, and he was brought to power. It was only a question of time before he fell out with those who facilitated his emergence, and this clique, including his own Vice President Atiku Abubakar began to remind him that he needed to fulfil the terms of an original agreement by spending only one term of four years in office.

The Vice President indeed boasted publicly that he made him President and that he could stop him from gaining the party's nomination for the 2003 Presidential race. Atiku was referring to the PDM caucus of the PDP which then wielded the powers of life and death within the party. In 1999, President Obasanjo did not even win majority votes in his own ward in Abeokuta, and his own Yoruba kinsmen opposed him. He was now under pressure to prove that he was not a puppet President, but a President with political muscle and relevance. At this point, the problems of the Obasanjo years had begun....

Robot  # 1 | 26.05.2007 23:26

Key interventions in the power, education, extractive industry and financial sectors were hailed ...Read the full article.

oyintare  # 2 | 15.08.2007 14:15

Obansanjo The Greatest Criminal Or Maybe Thats To Great A Word Thief(ole) In The History Of This Great Nation He Should Be In A Cage Like An Animal Or Return To Prison Amen.