Business
MUST READ!!!The Real from the Unreal in Nigeria by Hon. Ifemosu Micheal Adewale
Having gone through Leadership Programmes and Conferences, if there is anything I have learnt, it is that it is impossible to over inform a leader.
You can under inform him, but no matter how much information you give a leader, you cannot give him too much information.
In today’s world, strength and weakness are gauged differently than they were, say in 1984.
In the millennial age in which we live in, information is power and lack of information is weakness.
My concern is that there are a lot of weaknesses in Nigeria’s seat of power because not enough information is being given to President Muhammadu Buhari.
I, like other Nigerians, have heard or read reports of ministers in President Buhari’s cabinet being afraid to challenge him or disagree with him.
Perhaps unawares, the minister of state for petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, corroborated these reports in a recorded YouTube video now circulating where he revealed that the President ignores his ministers when they bring up issues that he does not want to discuss.
Having such anodyne personalities around you just means that you are living in a bubble, seeing things as you want them to be and not as they are.
On Friday May 20th, 2016, Dr. Yemi Kale, the Statistician General of the Federation and head of the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics revealed that Nigeria’s economy had not grown in the first quarter of the year but had rather shrunk by 0.36%, the worst contraction in 25 years!
Since the announcement was made, there has been various reactions with pundits pointing at this or the other as being the cause of this setback. But I am convinced beyond any reasonable doubts that this negative trend owes more to President Muhammadu Buhari’s utterances on our economy and polity than to any other single causative factor.
The bigger problem is that even though I suspect that his ministers know that what I have just said is true, they would rather pander to the President and like Dr. Chris Ngige, say that Nigerians are lucky to have President Buhari (obvious Ngige does not know the meaning of luck).
In the last eleven months, the President had traversed the globe and has spoken about Nigeria’s economy as if he was the chief undertaker of our polity rather than the chief marketer that he is meant to be.
Of what benefit is it to the President’s agenda or to Nigeria’s economic well being for him to go to foreign nations and instead of highlighting the positive things that are happening in Nigeria, he begins to regale his hosts with the most unsavory stories about Nigeria.
And some of the stories the President tells are just that-tales.
They are not factual.
At best they are arguable.
You go to India for a summit where other world leaders are competing with you for the attention of venture capitalists and foreign investors and while your counterparts are talking about how great their countries are, you tell the audience how everybody in your country is corrupt except you and oh, can they come and invest in your country?
Only a foolish investor would go and invest in a country whose President thinks his citizens are ‘criminals’ (as the President said to the Telegraph of UK in February) and whose officials are ‘fantastically corrupt’ (as the President said in agreement with British PM David Cameron when questioned by Sky News).
The President speaks on the Nigerian economy and polity without any filters and his comments are causing his chickens to roost with devastating consequences for all of us.
Never in the history of Nigeria has there been such a divestment of investment as we have seen in the past year.
Truworths has pulled out of Nigeria, Virgin Atlantic has closed up shop, Iberia is pulling out, RenCap is pulling funds from Nigeria, both Alquity Investment Management Ltd. and Duet Asset Management Ltd. are divesting their Nigeria holding. Zenith Bank laid off 1,200 staff, FCMB let go 700 employees, Ecobank sacked 50% of its top management staff. The President of the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Mr. Tony Ejinkeonye revealed that in just two months 50,000 staff were laid off in Abuja alone.
The results are telling. A little over a year ago, Nigeria was projected by CNNMoney to be the third fastest growing economy in the world behind China and Qatar yet just two weeks ago the International Monetary Fund released its World Economic Outlook and Nigeria is not even among the top 15 fastest growing economies in Africa let alone the world!
And when you try to raise the alarm, the refrain from the government and its horde of unofficial spokesmen is that the downturn is caused by the fall in crude prices.
Yet this logic is flawed.
The government’s own economic monitoring agency, the National Bureau of Statistics itself reported that the exponential growth Nigeria enjoyed especially from 2012 to its 2014 climax (when our economy overtook South Africa to be Africa’s largest economy) was spurred not by the oil sector, but “this growth was largely driven by improved activities in the telecommunications, building and construction, hotel and restaurant and business services” to quote the NBS.
Yes, oil accounts for something like 90-95 percent of our foreign exchange revenues but it only accounts for a mere 15% of our GDP.
The service sector and the commercial and real sector are the engine or used to be the engine of our economic growth. But these sectors are heavily capital and technology intensive and require cooperation with foreign investors and when you consistently bad mouth your economy and its regulators investor confidence tanks and the result is what we are seeing today.
I support President Buhari’s anti corruption war but it should not be a substitute for sound economic ideas or policies.
And the way the President has carried out his anti corruption crusade is in itself self sabotaging and feeds the narrative of those who say that Nigeria is far too complex and dynamic a country to be run by someone who should be quietly collecting his pension.
And President Buhari’s behavior is flowing down the pyramid. There is a contagious effect in the utterances of major figures in his administration. For instance, when Vice President Osinbajo tells the world that the Jonathan administration looted $15 Billion in security contracts, many people in the West who like to read such stories to justify their hidden opinion that the Black man cannot govern himself, will clap for him.
Coming from the nation’s own Vice President, the Western press will report the news as a fact. At that level, such a statement carries the weight of an admission.
But then ask yourself, what was the entire security budget for the five years that Jonathan was President of Nigeria?
In 2011, defense and security had a budget of ₦348 billion or just over $2 billion. In 2012 it skyrocketed to ₦921 billion or $5.7 billion. It grew to ₦1.055 trillion in 2013 or $6 billion. In 2014, ₦968 billion was budgeted for defence and security or $5.8 billion. The 2015 budget was passed in April and President Jonathan handed over to President Buhari a month later so I cannot see how the previous administration could have ‘chopped’ that money.
So of the $19 billion budgeted for defence and security while former President Jonathan was in office, how could $15 billion have been looted when more than half that amount went to paying salaries?
Did Vice President Osinbajo think this accusation through?
The President and his vice with their cabinet and their political appointees are not a court.
They cannot convict anybody. As such when they speak this way, what it amounts to is propagandized activity.
In an anti corruption war one must separate activity from results. Results are convictions from a court after due and diligent prosecution. And when you look at it from that perspective, this administration has been delivering activity and not results.
For instance, then candidate Muhammadu Buhari and his party, the All Progressive Congress, had called the subsidy payments made by the Jonathan administration a fraud! They claimed that the amount was too high at ₦1.1 trillion in 2014.
Well if fuel subsidy had been a fraud, the first thing that should have happened naturally when President Muhammadu Buhari took over was that the amount should have reduced, but it DID NOT reduce.
As a matter of fact, Nigeria spent over $5 billion on fuel subsidy in 2015 and President Buhari was in power for most of that year!
The point I am making here is that the elections are over.
President Buhari and his administration should stop tarnishing the image of Nigeria in the mistaken belief that they are rubbishing the person of former President Jonathan.
The President should take in the big picture and realize that you need to be below somebody in order to pull him down.
One year has come and gone and has seemingly been wasted pointing fingers in blame instead of at solutions.
The time for blame games have gone.
Only last month, President Buhari complained that the Sahara desert was advancing southward.
He should also realize that that is not the only thing going south.
The Nigerian economy is going south at perhaps a faster rate and blaming others for it will never stem the tide.
The President should focus on marketing his plans and policies when he travels abroad instead of de-marketing the plans and policies of former President Jonathan’s administration.
It has been said that if you want a conversation with a habitual complainer to end abruptly, just ask him how he intends to fix the problem.
That is the question Nigerians want answered by President Buhari.
Under former President Jonathan, Nigeria’s economy exploded and became the largest economy in Africa and the 24th largest economy in the world.
Let it not be said that under President Buhari that economy collapsed like a pack of clouds because the hand that should have steered the ship was too busy pointing an accusing finger.
Written by Ifemosu Michael Adewale
Founder Youth in Good Governance Initiative YIGGI
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Zacch Adedeji: And The Revenue Keeps Increasing By Rabiu Usman
By Rabiu Usman
It was President Bola Tinubu that declared that in the first half of this year, the revenue of Nigeria soared to over N9.1 trillion, compared to the first half of 2023.
For instance, N5.2 Trillion accrued into the Federation Account for the period January to June 2023, while a total of N7.3 Trillion accrued into the account for the period July to December, 2023.
However, for June this year, accruals into the Federation Account rose to N2.483 trillion in June 2024. It was N2.324.792 trillion in May, meaning for the two months of May and June this year alone, about N4.8 trillion accrued into the Federation Account while N5.2 trillion accrued into the account for the first six months of last year.
The President attributed the revenue increase to the government’s efforts in blocking leakages, introducing automation, and mobilizing funding creatively, all without placing an additional burden on the people.
A few days after the President spoke glowingly of the considerable increase in the revenue of the country, a process being powered by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), under the Chairmanship of Dr Zacch Adedeji, the Nigeria’s Zaccheus the Tax Collector, the World Bank also confirmed the progress being made in the area of revenue generation.
The World Bank projected that following the recent increase in government revenue, Nigeria’s revenue-to-GDP ratio could rise to over 10.5 percent by the end of 2024.
Ndiamé Diop, World Bank country director for Nigeria shared the forecast during an interactive session on ‘Fiscal Reforms for a More Secure Future’ at the 30th Nigerian Economic Summit, held in Abuja last month.
Also, according to data released in September by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigeria’s Value Added Tax (VAT) revenue increased by 99.82% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2024.
During this period, total VAT revenue reached N1.56 trillion, a 9.11% increase compared to the previous quarter.
The NBS report highlighted that the revenue growth was driven primarily by local payments, which brought in about $484 million, while foreign payments contributed $242 million. VAT on imports generated $228 million.
However, despite the level of progress already made, the FIRS under Dr Zacch Adedeji is not done yet.
Various innovations are daily being introduced to ensure seamless payment of taxes by Nigerians.
Last week, the Taxpayer Services Department of the FIRS launched the new USSD code *829#, aimed at revolutionizing taxpayer engagement and access to essential tax services.
According to the FIRS, the initiative was aimed at “simplifying tax processes and providing a seamless, efficient service experience.”
With the *829# USSD code, taxpayers can now effortlessly access a range of services, including TIN retrieval, Tax Clearance Certificate (TCC) verification, and general inquiries all from the convenience of their mobile phones and with no need for internet access.
Also, Zacch Adedeji is everywhere, explaining the four tax bills currently before the National Assembly, assuring that it will not reduce the funding or operational efficiency of government agencies.
Last week Wednesday, Adedeji addressed the heads of the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), and the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) at the Revenue House in Abuja. He allayed concerns surrounding the proposal to rename the FIRS as the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS), clarifying that the change is intended to streamline and improve agency efficiency.
He said the main goal was to align government revenue practices with current fiscal demands to ensure all agencies are well-funded and effective.
Adedeji further highlighted that the proposed legislation would enable government agencies to concentrate on their core responsibilities without the added task of revenue collection.
“The bills, once enacted, will allow agencies to focus on their primary functions instead of managing tax collection duties,” he explained.
Adedeji, who appears to have taken up the job of an Explainer concerning the new tax bills, further pointed out that the bills were the aftermath of President Tinubu’s administration recognition of the need for a unified tax code to reduce complexity and stimulate economic growth.
Perhaps, by the time this is being read, Dr Zacch Adedeji, will be standing before another audience to explain the ideas behind the new tax bills and their capability to further sore up the revenue base of the country, because for him, the revenue must keep increasing.
Usman, a public affairs commentator lives in Abuja.
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