15 Dec 2007 |
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A New Hope for Nigeria Darren Whitfield, Press Writer, International News Agency 16 April 2027 It's a hot afternoon in downtown Lagos, and I'm in the reception of of Stallion House to to see Adekunle Opadokun on my visit to Nigeria. The receptionist tells me that he knows I'm around, and he will be with me shortly. After a short wait, Joseph - a big, ebullient man wearing a sharp suit and a hearty smile on his face - finally emerges from an adjoining office, apologising for the delay as he does so. He ushers me into his office as he explains the reason for the delay. "Meetings, meetings, meetings" he says. There is a customer in Europe he is negotiating a deal with to for his business to supply several thousand cartons of canned tomatoes. "It's looking good... we should wrap everything up in a few days." Joseph is one of the growing breed of businessmen who have taken advantage of the remarkable changes that have occurred over the last decade and a half - changes that have seen an unprecendented increase the amount of wealth in the country. It is about these changes that I have come to Lagos to get a sense of. "Certainly, twenty years ago, it was a bad time to be a businessman", Joseph explains. "To do business, you had to build your own infrastructure - you had to install your own generator, buy water from tankers and buy expensive all-terrain vehicles to drive on the road. You also had to pay all kinds of arbitrary levies and taxes to all manner of people - both government officials and hoodlums - if you wanted to get business done. It was only the most hardened businessman that could cope in such an environment. "But the new government we have had for over ten years has shown a remarkable interest in the fortunes of businessmen - and I am not just talking about the heads of conglomerates, I am talking about the people who run small and medium enterprises. Nigerians have always had an entrepreneurial spirit, but this has been stifled in the past by bad leadership. It is only now that we see the right policies being enacted that we can see this spirit coming into full bloom." Indeed, most people could not have imagined that the situation in Nigeria - once notorious for its corruption and its advance fee fraud scams - would have changed to be what it is today. "The beginning of the changes that we see today can be traced to round about early 2009", says Chudi Onyeama, a political analyst based in Lagos. "At the time, there were many people disillusioned with the lacklustre administration of President Umaru Yar'Adua. People were still resentful of the illegalities trailing his ascent to power. They accepted that his administration was not going to be removed from power, even by the courts which had shown suprising independence of spirit in overturning several state election. But they expected him to recognise the illegitimacy of his administration and compensate for this by striving to deliver a better standard of living to Nigerian citizens. "Unfortunately, President Yar'Adua seemed unable to make any progress in doing this - largely because he was held hostage by the political machine of the ruling People's Democratic Party which had dominated the Nigerian political landscape for over a decade. So it was no surprise that in early 2009, a group of politicians and businessmen came together to form the Progressive Front of Nigeria. "It was a curious combination of bedfellows", says Onyeama. "It was made up of two groups. One group were politicians who had been largely excluded from the political process, either because they were members of the largely ineffective opposition, or because they were members of the ruling party that had been sidelined in the struggle for power. The other group were made up of wealthy progressive businessmen who were tired of the economic environment they were operating in and who had lost faith in the government's abilities to deliver the right kind of environment. This group consisted of people who were well-informed about best business practices, and they would eventually turn out to be the ideological engine of the party as well as providing financial support, while the other group would provide the political know-how to drum up awareness and support for the party. "The approach of the PFN was a departure from how most parties have operated in Nigeria. "From the outset, they were quite clear that even though they had offices in all states of the federation as required by the electoral commission, they were only going to focus on five or six key states for now, including Lagos State - the most populous state in Nigeria", continues Onyeama. "They were also very clear that they would have a pro-business agenda - they wanted to create an environment where every artisan, every trader, every industrialist felt that they could unleash their full entrepreneurial talent and thus lift the nation out of poverty. "So they started a massive publicity campaign in those selected states well ahead of the 2011 elections to let everyone know about them and their policies. They started raising various issues relating to the difficulty of doing business. They sponsored various workshops on effective business management, but they pitched these workshops at the man on the street. In short, they set the agenda for discussion of the issues of the day and put the PDP on the defensive so that by the time the elections came round, they had built up so much credibility and such a following that it was going to be much harder for the PDP to engage in the kind of intimidation that it had used in the last election. In fact, many days before the election, the PFN had called out all of its members and urged them to forcefully resist any attempt at rigging. For their part, the PDP knew how hight the stakes were - if they were seen to lose in those states, then it could portend their doom." The world still recalls the events of that election; how because of the saturation coverage by PFN supporters who not just videod the voting process but also the counting of the ballots, it was obvious that the PFN had swept all the states it contested in; how the electoral commission declared a completely different set of results hours later on; and how the PFN, in concert with civil society groups called for a strike that shut down the nation for a week until the commission reversed some of its earlier announcements; and how other announcements were later overturned by an increasingly independent judiciary. Onyeama goes on: "From that day on, even though it would go on to win the presidential election and return President Yar'Adua for a second term, the PDP was fatally damaged. In the meantime, the PFN forged ahead in implementing some of its pro-business policies in the states it had captured. The governments in these states invited private companies to bid to take part in projects where they would be responsible for building and maintaining arterial roads in the states in return for charging a toll for motorists using the roads. They also invited private companies to bid to build power plants - these plants would concentrate on supplying electricity to commercial and industrial areas, as there were plans to widen the distribution to residential areas if the PFN got into power nationwide. However, it was not a straightforward affair - although there was a definite improvement in the state of the roads, there were some companies that were clearly not able to maintain their section of roads despite the money they were collecting. To counter the public outcry, the governments in the states affected had to introduce a policy which set minimum standards and which penalised the companies if they did not meet these standards. "The other policy that the PFN introduced was a reform the state civil service and local governments. It realised that these were the instruments through which the states would enact policy, so it was important to get them working properly. It got its state governments to institute a carrot-and-stick policy - they would improve working conditions, but they would be tougher on corruption and inefficiency within the civil service. The reform included better communication of the state's projects to members of the public so that they knew exactly what projects the state governments were embarking on and how far they had gone; the publication of details of contracts it had awarded on the internet for everyone to verify; and the provision of means through which members of the public could offer feedback on the civil service and local government peformance, including through the phone and the internet. Such feedback was collated and published on a regular basis. And in keeping with its pro-business stance, it set up Special Business Bureaus affiliated with the state Ministries of Commerce and Industries. These had the responsibility to assist small and medium enterprises with setting up and running their businesses, providing them with information and advice and dealing with complaints. "Of course, there were problems. There were many cases where details of the published projects did not match what was on the ground - and this was a major embarassment for the governments. But the good thing was that these incidents were coming to light, and in some cases, those responsible for the discrepancies were dismissed, and a few were even sentenced to jail. Also, when the state governments published the feedback given by the public to the civil service performance and this feedback turned out to be overly favourable, there were very public criticisms. This forced the goverments to co-opt independent groups in the collation and publication of the feedback. Then there were complaints about the aggressive drive for tax and revenue collection that was needed to pay for the improvement in civil service conditions. And needless to say, there were still complaints about corruption at high levels. "But I think that the major point of all this was that the PFN seemed to actually be doing something, even with the pitfalls that it encountered along the way, and crucially, its actions seemed to be bearing some fruit. In contrast, the PDP was struggling to keep up, following the PFN's lead - but it was looking less and less like a party in power as the PFN leadership began to look more and more like a government in waiting. So it was no surprise when in the election of 2015, the PFN swept into power taking all but a few states." So it was that on May 29, 2015, President Idongesit Ukpong of the PFN was sworn into office, the first ever president from the southern minority region of Nigeria. One of the firs things his administration did was to to complete the privatisation of the remaining government companies - including the notoriously inefficient state electricity power companies - whose sell-off had been stalled during Yar'Adua's administration. In addition, his government began a reform of the judicial process in order to streamline procedures to ensure faster delivery of justice, a reform of the police service which, like the earlier state civil service reforms at state level, sought to change the process of police investigation and improve the public image and conditions of service for the police while cracking down hard on corrupt practices. But the cornerstone of his administration remained encouraging the creation of wealth and creating a business-friendly environment. There were two main initiatives - the nationwide expansion of the programmes already showcased at state level to involve private companies in the creation and maintenance of infrastructure; and the strengthening of property rights by the reform of the laws governing land use so that freehold title acquired by individuals and corporations would be recognised in law, thus divesting the government of any involvement in land ownership except for purposes of the environment and large public works. "It is impossible to overstate the change that the PFN government has brought about by its policies. Before, people had very little hope of change. Now most people feel much more confident about being able to better their lot by their own efforts", enthuses Opadokun. "Many more people are encouraged to go into business, and there are many more opportunities for employment. Many people who would previously have embarked on a life of crime are no longer as tempted because there are many less dangerous and more socially acceptable ways of making a living. You can see, feel the confidence in the air." And the air of prosperity is certainly evident from a casual observance during a stroll around downtown Lagos. The streets are a lot cleaner, there are more shops selling the latest goods, and many more people buying these goods. A rough straw poll gives the impression that people do feel more confident about the future than they felt twenty years ago - there is general agreement that the government has done a lot to improve the power supply and road network in the country. They also feel much more secure than they did back then. But not everyone agrees with this assessment. "In fact, this is an uncaring government for the rich", says Musa Kaltungo, a civil society activist. "Inequality has widened faster under this government than any other government in history. The government has done very little to enhance the lot of the underprivileged. Education and health are still a shambles - and apart from improving the conditions of the road network at great cost to the road user, the government has done very little to introduce efficient and integrated forms of transport. And most shameful of all, the government has done very little to combat high-level corruption which continues to thrive as it did twenty years ago". The government is aware of these shortcoming, but says that it is taking steps to address them. "We admit that in the first few years of President Ukpong's administration, we have focused too heavily on encouraging the growth of business to the detriment of areas like education, transport and health", says James Iorfa, spokesperson for the administration of Eze Okwechime, the successor to President Ukpong. "But the government's aim has been to grow the tax base so that this administration can use the increased revenue for education and health programs. Specifically, we plan to introduce policies to encourage the private health insurers and health maintenance organisations already operating in Nigeria to broaden coverage and reduce premiums for more Nigerians, as well as spending money on state hospitals for poorer Nigerians. And we plan to tighten standards on education as well as introducing a voucher-based system which will allow parents more choice in which school they send their children to. "Regarding inequality, our approach to dealing with this is not to encourage a culture of dependency, but a culture of self-reliance. We don't want to merely give people help - we want to help them help themselves so that they attain a standard of living that they are comfortable enough with not to worry about how other people are doing." But what about the claims that corruption still persists? "That is certainly the case, although it has mutated and lessened somewhat - or at least, the perception of corruption has lessed", says Chudi Onyeama. "Whereas before, people would loot state treasuries openly, these days, corruption is much more subtle - it takes the form of the award of inflated contracts to cronies, although the contracts usually get properly executed because these days, the practice of publishing the details of contracts awarded makes it harder to execute substandard projects and get away with it. Besides, people are less vocal about corruption when they feel that they are doing well." So what hopes for the future then? "Unless this government starts to address the issues that matter to the ordinary people, like poverty and corruption, it will go the way of the PDP" says Kaltungo. "It is already beginning to show the same signs of arrogance that brought down the PDP, because there is as yet no serious opposition to its neo-capitalist ways. But it is reckoning without the anger of the people - and that will be its eventual downfall", he concludes. But Adekunle Opadokun disagrees. "I think it is unfair to condemn this government for not eliminating poverty and corruption. After all, Western governments are still struggling to deal with these. But a poor man will be able to tolerate his poverty better if he realises there is real, tangible hope of escaping from it - and the most important thing that this government is doing is to provide this hope for millions for the first time since independence."
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