INTERVIEW: I’m not available to serve in Buhari’s govt.
now — Soludo

It has been difficult tracking Professor Charles Chukwuma
Soludo (former Governor of the Central Bank) since his
bombshells before the general elections, but finally we
tracked him down in his private library at his residence in
Abuja on Friday, 5 th June, 2015. He seemed unwilling to say
much, at least for now. But it was still vintage Soludo, and
some of the issues he raised are explosive. He sees hope
and opportunities for the new Government, even though he
says his current engagements will not allow him to join the
government on a full time basis, contrary to wide
speculations. He says he can however freely offer advice to
the government if needed. Soludo says: Nigeria needs a Job
Manifesto, and that solid minerals and agriculture can’t be
relied upon for job creation; Argues that a sustainable
change will not occur without a new constitution; says the
clamour for zoning and sharing of public offices is an elite
power game which has little to do with the masses and
therefore misplaced; believes the argument for local
government autonomy is anti-federalism; is waiting for the
action plan from the new government before joining the
debate on the agenda; says his public spat with Okonjo-
Iweala was unfortunate; raises questions about the proposal
by CBN governor on selling government equity stakes in oil
for immediate revenue as well as the new NBS data on
unemployment; etc.
The full interview below is his interaction with us at the
Premium Times. Read on….
PT: Thank you sir for granting me this audience. You
promised not to keep quiet again and to ask more
questions about the running of the economy after
elections but you seem to have been very quiet since
the elections. Can you now raise the questions?
Soludo: Great to see you too! And I hope this will be a short
interview please. Two quick points: The elections have come
and gone but that was the easier part. The hard part now
begins. Like most Nigerians, I am happy that Nigeria made
history with the election. On your question, No; there was no
need to raise further questions for the outgone
administration. President Jonathan raised the bar and set a
new tone in his statesmanly acceptance of defeat. That was
noble. Last month, the government admitted that they were
borrowing since January to pay salaries. What more do you
want me to say? The two articles I wrote in January and
February (which Vanguard newspaper still posts on its
website as ‘The Soludo Debate’) remain living documents
and raised some of the salient questions, some of which
may be bold markers for the new government. Our focus
should be on the future and the new government.
PT: How is your relationship with Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-
Iweala now?
Soludo: Why do you ask? Of course, she is and will always
be my dear elder sister and Madam; someone I deeply
respect. We may not always agree, especially on public
policy. The public spat was unfortunate. She felt she had an
obligation to defend her government but she did so in a
manner that I also felt an obligation to respond in equal
measure. But all that is now history. There is nothing
personal. Now without the encumbrances of government
and its pressures, I look forward to our returning to the
good old days in our personal relationship.
PT: The economy is really bad; falling oil price, dwindling
revenue, debt, inflation, unemployment, collapsed
Naira, etc. Where does President Buhari start from?
Soludo: I don’t envy President Buhari and his team. His
government will preside over the transition to a post-oil
economy, and it won’t be a tea party. If Buhari works 8
hours a day, he last less than 7,500 hours left to bring about
change in his first term in office or less than 9,700 if he
works 12 hours a day, with three substantive annual budgets
to go before the next elections. The clock is ticking already.
But the Rescue, Stabilize, and Transform (RST) Plan requires
a 24 by 7 operation. There must be something in the
President’s natal chart that keeps bringing him to govern us
just when things are in shambles. But I see hope; I see
opportunities. The president and his team have a historic
opportunity to create a new Nigeria without oil; a Nigeria
powered by competition and compassion. Fortuitously
Nigeria’s centenary was last year, 2014. This year marks the
beginning of the next 100 years. President Buhari and the
new crop of elected officers at all levels must lay the
foundation for the next Nigeria; a re-engineered Nigeria with
the structures and incentives to move from cake-sharing or
consumption to cake-baking or production. Old thinking and
ways of doing things won’t work. But an attempt to drive
change from Abuja will fail. It will be akin to trying to clap
with one hand. A coordinated national (not federal)
response is required.
On your specific question as to where President Buhari
should begin, let me say that I don’t want to join the new
industry in town which is ‘agenda setting’. Everyone is
grabbing the microphone to ‘set agenda’. That’s ok. I am
aware that the transition committee is working hard on an
agenda, and I believe that the committee is made up of
eminent Nigerians. For me, let us wait for them to unveil
their action plan and we would have something to comment
upon or contribute to. I am aware that the African Heritage
Institution (Afriheritage) is planning a session focused on the
agenda after it is announced. So, I won’t join this fashion
parade of the day. Not yet.
PT: Let me be more specific. With the terrible condition
of the economy, and the high expectations of Nigerians
on the new government, what practical steps should
Buhari take to create jobs speedily?
Soludo: I told you I do not want to discuss specifics now. For
sure, job creation should be the focus of the new post-oil
economy. Nigeria certainly needs a Job Manifesto, with a
target of 8 – 12 million jobs over the next four years. This is
easier said than done. We are diversifying the economy by-
passing the manufacturing/industrial sector to the tertiary
sector (services). Creating value-adding jobs in such an
economy with one of the highest rates of urbanization in the
world will task our creativity to the limit. The agenda will
require a kind of coordination between the federal and state
governments in a manner never seen before. Luckily the
APC states are in majority and I hope their party will rein
them in. I have read some newspaper reports that solid
minerals sector and agriculture will be the new kids on the
block to mint the jobs. That won’t happen! At least not in the
manner it is being romanticised about. They would have
very limited impacts on job creation over the next four
years, and over the long-run agricultural transformation will
actually reduce jobs. The prospects of the solid mineral
sector will depend on the policy framework and even
legislation, the dynamics of commodity prices especially
given the apparent end of the commodity super cycle, and
the nature of forward and backward integration with the rest
of the industrial structure. Anyway, let us wait for
government’s agenda before we can comment, please.
PT: In your previous answer you alluded to changing the
structures of Nigeria. What should President Buhari do
with the report of the recent national conference?
Soludo: It is up to him to decide what to do with the report.
A fundamental point however is that you can’t create the
new Nigeria, a post-oil competitive economy without
fundamentally altering the existing constitution. The current
constitution and the political-governance structures created
by it are designed to share and consume the oil rent. A
system designed for consumption cannot become efficient
for production. Ours is a dysfunctional unitary-federalism,
with a queer fiscal federalism and it won’t go too far. The
federating units were created by the central government; it
also created the local governments. Every month, both the
governors and their local government chairmen are
supposed to beseech Abuja to collect their allocations, each
supposedly with powers to do whatever they like with the
allocations. As oil stumbles, the fiscal viability of these
creations is coming into question. Suddenly, states and LGAs
designed to collect and spend oil money will be required to
produce and create wealth to survive. We will see how the
old order will give rise to the new without some creative
destruction. The problem with the structure is that those
who benefit most from it are required to dismantle it— the
incentives are incompatible. We need to study the UAE
(United Arab Emirates) model of competitive federalism—
that created the incentives for Dubai and other prosperous
non-oil regions to emerge. I have written a lot on this
subject, and we can talk about this the whole day. The point
is that APC cannot deliver sustainable change to Nigeria if it
does not go to the roots, and effect systemic change.
Tinkering at the margins will amount to papering over a
cracked wall.
PT: That reminds me of the ongoing debate about local
government autonomy and joint account with the
states. Shouldn’t the local governments be
autonomous?
Soludo: Autonomy from who? I know that it makes for our
emotional satisfaction to “deal with the state governors” and
let the LGAs have ‘autonomy’— but only in the sense of
getting their “allocation” directly and unhindered by state
governments but with no incentive-sanctions regime that
ties such grants to certain productivity and fiscal viability
criteria. The mistaken belief is that such autonomy will
ensure that resources get to the ‘grassroots’. It is a funny
argument which proceeds from the old model of ‘sharing the
cake’. We must decide whether we want a federal or a
unitary system; not both at the same time. Are the states the
federating units or both states and local governments?
Funny enough the same constitution gives the state
assemblies the power to create local governments and
maintain oversight over them. At the same time, the
constitution lists the LGAs created by the military as the ones
to collect “allocations” from the Federation Account. I want
to see examples of federal systems in the world where the
local governments directly receive statutory allocations from
the federal government and with statutory powers to spend
as they wish without performance-based criteria attached to
such receipts. The mind-set is rooted in the past, but the
problems are unfolding in the future. When it comes to
incentives and sanctions regime for creating prosperity and
accountability, our current constitution is a funny document.
It is even worse for effective macroeconomic management.
PT: The contest is on for zoning and sharing of political
offices, and there are fears of marginalization by people
from the south east and south south because of their
poor support for President Buhari and APC during the
elections. How should Buhari assuage the fears of these
zones?
Soludo: You have raised many issues at the same time. First,
given the peculiar manner the election was done in the two
zones, it is difficult to know exactly how the people voted.
There is no question that a majority of people in the two
zones preferred Jonathan but we know what happened
during the Presidential-national assembly election. Prof.
Jega and INEC did a great job but we still have a very long
way to go. Second, the Constitution of Nigeria creates an
absurdity in the name of federal character whereby a
minister must come from every state. So, states in the south
east and south south must have ministers in the federal
cabinet. Third, and more substantively, I believe that the
clamour for offices is simply a power game by the elite,
which has only a symbolic or emotional significance to the
masses. Yes, for some reasons, people like to see someone
that shares their interests or attributes in government—it
has a feel good factor. But if occupation of such office has
any personal benefits, it is largely to the occupant of the
office and his friends and family.
Our recent history has shown that it hardly matters where
the occupant of a particular position comes from. I am not
sure how the welfare of Ota/Ogun people changed because
Obasanjo was president of Nigeria, or how the man in the
street of Katsina or Otuoke/Bayelsa prospered more than
others simply because their son became president. The
south east voted massively for ‘one of their own’ in 2011 as
president, and also had Secretary to Government, Deputy
Senate president, Deputy Speaker, Minister of Finance and
coordinating minister of economy and a coterie of other
appointments. Yet, the zone had the least capital
expenditure in the five year presidency, and there is hardly
any motorable federal highway in the south east. For me,
this bickering for sharing of positions is an elite game for
their personal rather than national considerations. What the
ordinary Nigerians want are institutionalized processes to
guarantee their security and prosperity. They want services
and don’t care who gives it to them. Our federal cabinet is
nothing but a miniature United Nations whereby each
minister represents his or her state but no one represents
Nigeria. At this critical crisis moment, perhaps what Nigeria
needs is something akin to selecting the best 11 for our
national football team: no one cares which state or zone
they come from; everyone wants Nigeria to come home with
the cup.
PT: Talking about positions in the government, there are
rumours in town, especially on social media and even in
some newspapers that you are being tipped to serve in
the cabinet of the current government. Are you likely to
serve in the government or am I speaking with the
prospective Finance Minister as speculated?
Soludo: Nigerians and their rumours! I am glad you said
they are rumours and such rumours are normal. For sure, I
wish the new government success and for the sake of
Nigeria, everyone must contribute to assist President Buhari
succeed. I will contribute in whatever way I can. However,
everyone can’t sit in government in order to serve: some will
be there on full time basis while others can contribute from
outside. For me personally and at this point in time, I am
not disposed or available for full time public service now;
perhaps in the future it could happen, but not now. For now,
my hands are full with several other experiments I am
involved with (especially abroad) in the private sector,
charity, think-tanks, and the international community. I am
part of a major initiative in Africa’s mining and solid
minerals sector, and this takes me through several African
countries, etc. I am having great fun exploring totally new
vistas of opportunity that are central to Africa’s great leap in
the 21st century. I read that President Buhari will give
priority to solid minerals. We can provide free advisory
services and perhaps assist to mobilize investment in the
sector or in any other areas if our advice is needed. In
effect, there are several ways we can assist the government
to succeed but not necessarily to take up full time
appointment. No, not now!
PT: So, who and who would you recommend to be part of
the best 11 in the cabinet?
Soludo: There are many eminent Nigerians who are not only
bold, critical thinkers but also with high execution capacity
that the president can choose from. I wish him and his team
good luck.
PT: Do you agree with the suggestion of the current CBN
governor, Godwin Emefiele, that Nigeria should sell off
its oil stakes and retain say, 25% only?
Soludo: I won’t comment on it in detail until I read the
study. From what is reported in the newspapers so far, I will
surely have many questions and I have hinted the Governor
on this.
PT: Some CBN staff are currently being tried for alleged
fraud regarding circulation of old notes, and the EFCC
says this has been on for years – apparently more
people may have been involved. Were you able to deal
with that kind of fraud when you were in charge?
Soludo: First and foremost, I can’t imagine how such a fraud
could be executed successfully given the architecture of
controls and security at the CBN. Such would require the
collusion of tens of persons from different departments and
agencies, including law enforcement agencies and
commercial banks. It is very unlikely to happen without
someone blowing the whistle or leakage of information. I
am particularly happy therefore that it was the CBN that
discovered the fraud and reported to the law enforcement
agencies. This is the important point.
PT: Years after leaving the CBN, give us your
assessment of the bank under your successors.
Soludo: I still reserve my comments for now. When I was in
office, I made it a policy never to comment on my
predecessors, and after I left office I also insisted on a self-
imposed five year gag order not to comment on my
successor. Several times I was under immense pressure to
break it but I thank God that I kept to it. The five year ban is
now over, but it is not yet time to comment.
PT: The National Bureau of Statistics recently came up
with a revised methodology for calculating
unemployment, with the claim that unemployment now
stands at about 6%. Are you as concerned as many
Nigerians who believe that claim is baseless?
Soludo: Integrity of our national statistics is a very serious
issue. I don’t comment on statistics without serious scrutiny.
Having not had a chance to thoroughly examine the
reviewed methodology, I will not comment on its veracity or
appropriateness. It is one thing to have a new methodology,
it is yet another to have a comprehensive, credible labour
market survey. I will need information on these two parts to
make informed judgment. Already, the NBS/past
government have created the baseline data for the
performance evaluation of the Buhari administration in the
areas of poverty and unemployment. According to them,
unemployment is about 6% while poverty is about 32%. If
true, then the Buhari government is challenged to beat these
numbers. The government must support NBS to be
independent and do its job without interference


Source:
www.premiumtimesng.com/features-and-interviews/184511-interview-i-am-not-available-for-public-service-now-soludo.html

What a long story




Me tooo am available to serve.


AS A CONTRACTOR

We dont want you at the moment

Some policies you left behind while as CBN governor are still hunting us. So just stay put.

@OP your topic long die. Are you competing for the longest post on nairaland?

anywayz,wu nidz im?



nd abeg,diz post too long....95% nairalanders wont finish t

Media eehh, see how they made the topic look like Soludo has some issues with Buhari when he's actually his supporter.. Soludo made some valid points.. Really gave intelligent responses...

See the full text from where the topic was gotten;
"He sees hope and opportunities for the new Government, even though he says his current engagements will not allow him to join the government on a full time basis, contrary to wide speculations. He says he can however freely offer advice to the government if needed"..


He also said he doesn't envy Buhari and his team because they have a lot of work to do coupled with the fall in revenue as a result of dwindling oil price... which indeed is true...

Who is soludo?

maverickdude:
anywayz,wu nidz im?




nd abeg,diz post too long....95% nairalanders wont finish t

You're right bro, buh believe me, 98% won't even read it sef

Good man. Not fighting for any political post before and now as some people "Tanoids" envisage in the past. !!!

Charity begins at home. Welcome home Prof.

When PMB came to power there was pressure on him to set up Presidential Economic Team to rescue Nigeria's economy from collapsing especially aftermath of recession. Immediately after he was sworn in in 2019, he set up Presidential Economic Advisory Council in which Prof. Soludo is a member untill recently, I don't even know if he has resign toward his Governorship campaign. [/b]The Economic Council will report direct to President Muhammadu Buhari but [b]unknown to many people when this committee started their work they advised PMB to remove all subsidies which he not only removed fuel subsidy but extended it to Electricity which is still lingering and may possibly take effect June next year.
I want Nigerians to know that people like Soludo and other paper economist don't have good understanding of masses situation, all they know is to enhance govt revenue and copy and paste Western style which doesn't conform with our culture and traditions. Anambra people should expect low from Prof. Soludo otherwise they'll regret too much expectations from him just like how some people expected much from PMB.
PMB's Economic Advisory Council members:
Prof. Doyin Salami, who is a former member of the monetary policy committee of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and senior lecturer at the Lagos Business School is the Chairman of the Council.
The other members of the committee are:
Mohammed Sagagi as the vice-chairman
Ode Ojowu — member
Shehu Yahaya — member
Iyabo Masha — member
Prof. Chukwuma Soludo — member
Bismark Rewane — member

During GEJ's administration Nepotism was not in Nigeria's dictionary. His kinsmen were in his Govt occupying all sensitive positions but nothing positive can be shown in the region throughout that time:

1. SGF: Anyim Pius Anyim.
2. DG, DSS: Ita Ekpenyong.
3. CBN: Sanusi Lamido Sanusi(Replaced with Godwin Emefiele)
4. COS: Mike Oghiadomhe.
5. Acct Gen. Fed: Jonah Ofunia.
6. Chief of Army Staff: Azuibike Ihejirika.
7.NIMET; Anthony Anuforom.
8. NNPC: Andrew Yakubu.
9.NIMASA: Patrick Apobolokemi.
10. PENCOM: Chinelo Amazu.
11. FERMA: Chukwu Amuchi.
12. DPR: George Osahon.
13: BOI: Evelyn Oputu.
14. Nig Content Dev. Agency: Ernest Nwampa.
15: CPA: Dupe Atoki.
16. NCC: Eugene Juwa.
17. NAMA: Nnamdi Udoh.
18: NCAA: Engr Akikuotu.
19.FAAN: George Uriesi.
20. NCAT: Capt Chinere Kali.
21. SEC: Aruma Otteh
22. Sovereign Wealth fund: Uche Orji.
23.NAFDAC: Paul Orhii.
24. FIIRO: Mrs G N Elemo.
25.Maritime Agency: Joshua Ekpo.
26: NRC: Seyi Sijuade.
27.Nig Tourism Dev Corp: Sally Nbanefor
28. Budget Office:
Bright Okogwu.
29. NERDC: Godswill Obioma.
30. NEXIM: R R Oriya.
31. SON: Joseph Odumodu.
32. NBC: Emeka Nkem MBA.
33. ITF: Longmas Wapmuk.
34. NUC: Prof Okojie
35. NESREA: N. S Benebo
36.MDG Office: Precious Gbenro.
37. Surveyor Gen.: Peter Chigozie
38. Statistician : Yemi Kale.
39. Acct Gen Fed: Jonah Otunla.
40. Auditor Gen Fed.: Samuel Yonongo.
41. NOA: Mike Omieri.
42. NAN: Oluremi Oyo.
43. NEPC: David Odelugba.
44. Emeka Eze.
45. IGP Police: Solomon Arase.
Etc.

GEJ'S SERVICE CHIEFS WERE:
1. Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshall Alex Badeh; 2. Chief of Army Staff, Major General Kenneth Minimah;
3. Chief of Naval Staff, Rear Admiral Usman Jibrin; and
4. Chief of Air Staff, Air Vice Marshall Adesola Amosu.
Elites are truly using masses to echoe the noise of Nepotism, lopsided appointments and ethno-religious sentiments in their favour because there was never a time when in Nigeria appointment benefitted poor masses from their state of origin, Religion, region, zone or location.