Jonathan vs Buhari Rejoinder
First of all let me restate my credentials for those of you that do not know me, I am not a public official, I have never held public office and I have been passionate and focused on one general area of National Development, with four specific focus pillars, for the past five years, and these are Leadership Development, the promotion of and the equipping of Entrepreneurs, as well as the fundamentals and the resources for the empowerment of the Nigerian Women and Youths. So I like to think that I have become an expert on these subjects in the last five years as I live and wake up every morning thinking of nothing but how to reposition our Micro, Small and Medium Businesses, how to develop our Women and Youth owned businesses and how to support our Leaders to get the right tools, the ideas and the resources they need to make things happen for Nigeria in general and for these groups in particular. You will not find me taking on our established authority because they have not done things my way or because they have made some mistakes. I believe there are better ways to get my voice heard and I have access to the certain decision makers so I get my voice heard in that way, and in some cases I write my opinions in public forums without violating the rights of those I seek to advise. I know that my way or my ideas may not be the best way and I also know that everyone and I mean every one including Prof Chukwuma Charles Soludo makes mistakes. So I seek understanding first rather than to condemn others.
When I was very young our teacher would always carry out what she called the “MINDSET” experiment. I am sure a lot of you are familiar with it. She would pour water into a glass and stop at the half way mark and ask us “is this cup half empty or half full?” I was always the half full guy in the class room. And I would hold onto that position all through my education and all through my life, and I am still now the half full guy in the room. I am an unapologetic opportunist. I see great things happening for Nigeria and those that are not happening yet I still see the positive aspects and potentials that these things will happen given enough time. So you can tell how disappointed I was when I read the article by Prof Chukwuma Charles Soludo on the performance of President Goodluck Jonathan and this administration. There were so many things wrong with that thesis, to say the least, it was the strategic way in which Prof Soludo designed it to look objective but it was full of personal attacks and petty issues, you will have to have a strategic mind or you may have to read it a number of times before you can catch what I am talking about, so I will break it down for you in this paper.

Prof. Chukwuma Charles Soludo
I must first of all confess that Prof Soludo is a great man and a very intelligent scholar. We were lucky to have him as our Chief Economic Adviser to the President and subsequently Governor of the Central Bank at the time he served. Anybody that reads my write ups will agree that I, only a few weeks ago wrote a very objective article on the performance of Prof Soludo and Hero in him that saw to the banking consolidation revolution, which ushered in a new era in Nigerian Banking and which was what was needed at that time. However the point is that times change and whereas Soludo was needed at the time he served as Central Bank Governor to drive the process of building mega Banks in Nigeria. It was Sanusi Lamido Sanusi as Central Bank Governor, currently the Emir of Kano, that was needed to clean up the mess that resulted not long after the consolidation, in which many of the Super Star Commercial Bank CEOs who now had access to monumental volumes of cash as a result of the successful consolidation policy started behaving like kids in a candy shop and went on insider borrowing sprees that nearly brought down our economy. Sometimes it scares me to think what if President Yar ‘adua had actually renewed Prof Soludo’s tenor. Considering his cozy relationship with these super star CEOs of Banks would he have had the courage or the will to rain them in? That is a discussion for another day. Let me look at his paper for a second.

Strategic Intent
I first started by asking myself what was Prof Soludo’s Strategic intent on writing that paper. And with all due respect to the Professor whom I have had the highest levels of respect for, I think his strategic intention was to misinform the Nigerian people. And this is why I say so.
There is something in military and diplomatic circles known as counter intelligence. On one hand Intelligence is when you gather information and provide it to decision makers on strategic aspects of your opponents or competitor’s plans or activities. And in this case your opponent or competitor may be a foreign Government, a competitor company or an adversary in the work place etc. On the other hand Counter Intelligence is when you deliberately misinform the other side by providing them with information that they believe to be intelligence, they believe to be true and they will go out and act on it. Prof Chukwuma Soludo’s article was an attempt at Counter Intelligence because some people who do not know may actually believe him and go out and vote based solely on what they believe to be true, as narrated by Prof Soludo. And from my analysis not much of what he was saying was credible, much of it was simply not true and in some cases he straight out lied to us.

Soludo’s Contradiction
1. Opening Statement: He started out by saying that he has been traveling the World and only on occasion does he follow up on Nigeria’s affairs. I felt that was rather condescending. He is a Nigerian and the international community only respects him because of the strategic roles he played as Nigeria’s Chief Economic Adviser and Governor of Central Bank. So I would rather see a more Statesmanship approach to his and others like him, when they write about Nigeria, especially as they call themselves our Leaders. The World will read what you write, Nigerians will read what you write so please our Leaders, our fathers, our mothers and our big brothers and sisters let us treat Nigeria with much more respect.

2. Savings: Prof Soludo went on about how ineffective saving as a Government is when people are hungry. He said His Excellency Peter Obi missed the point in his savings approach to Governance. However the same Prof Soludo in the very same article says that he did a great job by saving Nigeria $45 billion when he was Governor of the Central Bank. Fellow Nigerians as Governor of the Central Bank you are also an economic adviser to the President and the Federal Government, if Prof Soludo by his own admission says that Governor Peter Obi did wrong to save money for future Governments of Anambra State, and by definition Soludo does not believe in saving then why did he not advise President Obasanjo to spend all our foreign reserves? His Excellency Peter Obi can defend himself, however I know that with the exception of Governor Fashola, Peter Obi is still considered one of the most effective performing Governors in the history of Nigeria’s State Governments. And Soludo can NEVER take that away.

3.Price of Crude Oil: Prof Soludo talked about the price of crude oil when he was Governor of the Central Bank and I have checked, prices stood at about $46 a barrel in May of 2005, climbed to and hovered around $60 to $70 for most of 2006. Prices fell below $60 early in 2007 but climbed to an unprecedented $80 by November 2007 and then all the way up to $140 a barrel by early 2008 which it maintained that price a while before it fell again to the just above $45 in late 2008 and it subsequently rebounded in early to mid-2009. There are a lot of reasons for the oil price to be bouncing up and all over the place and none of those reasons have to do which the skills of the President or his Economic Managers. In actual fact the present oil price fall is as a direct result of four major issues. First of all there is over supply coming from mostly OPEC countries especially Saudi Arabia, UAE etc. and the Shale Oil fracking companies in the United States, this over supply is putting a lot of pressure on the international price. Secondly there is so much investment going into alternative energy with the German Government investing over $1.4 Trillion, yes you read it right, $1.4 trillion dollars in the largest energy project in the World nicknamed the “Stromautobahn”, which is a combination of wind turbines that will harvest power from the winds out in the sea and supply it to the heart land of the Germany’s industrial base. In addition the European Union has called for a 35% target for all NATIONS of the EU to get their Energy from renewable resources by 2020. German has set a more ambitious target of 80% of its energy to come from renewables by 2050, and they have put their money where their mouth is, with the $1.4 trillion Energiewende (German Energy Revolution) project which has been nicknamed Stromautobahn. Thirdly there is so much pressure on Russia from sanctions being imposed by the west that Russia is willing to sell its crude at any price. And finally the only growth market for crude oil in the World today is Asia, especially China and India and both Nations are slowing down their consumption of crude oil due to the slowdown in the demand for their products and services from their European customers. I believe Prof Soludo should know all this, so why does he pretend that he doesn’t? The exchange rate of our currency will continue to depend on our ability to earn more foreign currency and so we need to expand our ability to earn by expanding our exports, as long as we depend on oil for foreign exchange our naira will rise or fall in relation to the price of the crude oil.

4. Rebasing of the Economy: Prof Soludo made a caricature about the efforts to rebase Nigeria’s economy and said in his article it amounted to nothing. He made bold to say that on all the indices used by international reviewers Nigeria’s economy is showing poor results, he went as far as to score the Administration an “F” on the economy. On this I cannot be more ashamed of Soludo, than to say this. Prof Soludo lied to the Nigerian people. Hear him; “First, my friend was educated that re-basing the GDP is no achievement: it is a routine statistical exercise, and depending on the base year that you choose, you get a different GDP figure. Re-basing the GDP has nothing to do with government policy”. First of all he is full of contradictions, he says we have failed to make progress on any of the economic indices, then he says in the same thesis that our over $510 billion GDP economy is not progress, (he used $540 billion in his article). He even went as far as to say that the rebased figures of the economy is NOT as a result of any Federal Government Policy in the statement above. Again he is dead wrong. The figures that gave the Nigerian economy a boost after the rebasing came from the fact that new industries have been created and have grown in Nigeria since the Administration of President Goodluck Jonathan. The Entertainment Industry that is presently employing highest number of young people in Nigeria outside the Agriculture sector is a big one. It has never featured in the calculations in our Gross Domestic Product before the rebasing. And for the benefit of those who do not know, our GDP is calculated by summing up or totaling all the goods and services bought and sold in financial transactions in the economy in a given year. So is Prof Soludo saying that the millions of naira that are being earned by Don Jazzy, Banky W and P square, by Omotola and Ramzy Noah are not real? That the N120 million earned by “30 days in Atlanta” the Movie is not real? That the hundreds of United States citizens especially their young people I have personally heard singing along to the tune “Dorobuci” after they have purchased the song on iTunes is not real money? The fact that Radio stations in the USA, and I have personally witnessed this, are playing Nigerian music to their American audiences, and stimulating purchase orders, for Nigerian music which in turn is fueling a new export industry for Nigerian entertainment, is no longer a fact? What about the Internet and the Telecommunications industry which is an economy into upon itself. It also was a major part of the rebasing of the GDP, as this industry did not exist as a basis for previous calculations of our GDP. And whereas the Telecommunications Revolution was started by President Obasanjo as even I have pointed out in previous write-ups, it was President Goodluck Jonathan that has consolidated the Telecommunications industry and provided additional policy support for it to keep growing, there lies the justification to include it in the GDP calculations, hence the need for rebasing the GDP. So is Prof Soludo saying that the over $6 billion that the four GSM telecommunications firms are earning every year is not real? Or that the Value added services industry which was built on the back of the GSM industry and is presently worth over $1 billion a year is also not real? Is Prof Soludo saying that over one million recharge card resellers that are presently in every village across Nigeria are not real and that the money they are earning and using to feed their families does not exist? I think Soludo should rethink his position on the rebasing of the GDP, as he is misinforming the Nigerian people and he is being disingenuous.
•Nicholas Okoye is the CEO of ANABEL GROUP, Founder of EMPOWER NIGERIA and the convener of the Nigeria Leadership Summit

Rebasing of the Economy: Prof Soludo made a caricature about the efforts to rebase Nigeria’s economy and said in his article it amounted to nothing. He made bold to say that on all the indices used by international reviewers Nigeria’s economy is showing poor results, he went as far as to score the Administration an “F” on the economy. On this I cannot be more ashamed of Soludo, than to say this. Prof Soludo lied to the Nigerian people. Hear him; “First, my friend was educated that re-basing the GDP is no achievement: it is a routine statistical exercise, and depending on the base year that you choose, you get a different GDP figure. Re-basing the GDP has nothing to do with government policy”. First of all he is full of contradictions, he says we have failed to make progress on any of the economic indices, then he says in the same thesis that our over $510 billion GDP economy is not progress, (he used $540 billion in his article). He even went as far as to say that the rebased figures of the economy is NOT as a result of any Federal Government Policy in the statement above. Again he is dead wrong. The figures that gave the Nigerian economy a boost after the rebasing came from the fact that new industries have been created and have grown in Nigeria since the Administration of President Goodluck Jonathan.

Mynd44:
I don't think people remember that this administration was there in the most profitable years. This administration saw go prices go as high as $140 and still they could not save as much money as the administrations who were in charge at sub $70.

Does anyone else find this ironic? What has been done with the money?

Rebasing of the Economy: Prof Soludo made a caricature about the efforts to rebase Nigeria’s economy and said in his article it amounted to nothing. He made bold to say that on all the indices used by international reviewers Nigeria’s economy is showing poor results, he went as far as to score the Administration an “F” on the economy. On this I cannot be more ashamed of Soludo, than to say this. Prof Soludo lied to the Nigerian people. Hear him; “First, my friend was educated that re-basing the GDP is no achievement: it is a routine statistical exercise, and depending on the base year that you choose, you get a different GDP figure. Re-basing the GDP has nothing to do with government policy”. First of all he is full of contradictions, he says we have failed to make progress on any of the economic indices, then he says in the same thesis that our over $510 billion GDP economy is not progress, (he used $540 billion in his article). He even went as far as to say that the rebased figures of the economy is NOT as a result of any Federal Government Policy in the statement above. Again he is dead wrong. The figures that gave the Nigerian economy a boost after the rebasing came from the fact that new industries have been created and have grown in Nigeria since the Administration of President Goodluck Jonathan.

emiye:
The GEJ administration should be ashamed celebrating an output of a rebasing that was last done over 20 years ago, in the early 90s, during the military era.

dridowu:
Just because Soludo says his mind people are now attacking him left and right, i tire for this kain government oooooo. The only thing government want to hear is praise no criticisms at all. Anyway, thank God Sanusi is no more the worst CBN gov according to the government, once Emefiele criticise the government spending also he too will be insulted left and right.

biafranqueen:
Why would Soludo, a so called professor of economics use 2010 and 2011 to judge macro- economic performance in 2014?
Does it mean that he could not access recent data to work with a whole Professor?
It is clear that he deliberately and conveniently ignored the most recent statistical information from CBN, NBS, World Bank and other reputable international organizations because they don’t tally with his objective which clearly is to discredit the President Goodluck Jonathan administration and his economic management team lead by Dr Ngozi Okonjo Iweala. Whose errand is Soludo running? Must one resort to cheap lies to be relevant?

biafranqueen:
Prof Soludo verbatim: “…poverty incidence and unemployment are also simultaneously at all-time high levels. According to the NBS, poverty incidence grew to 69% in 2010 and projected to be 71% in 2011, with unemployment at 24%. This is the worst record in Nigeria’s history, and the paradox is that this happened during the unprecedented oil boom …”

Is this the truth?
Hell no!
Recent figures from the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, current poverty figures stands at 33.1% and not 71% like Soludo boldly claimed. Unlike what the professor said in his much-publicised essay, under the Jonathan administration, Nigeria is experiencing her lowest incidence of poverty in history.

Mynd44:

Wait, what economic team? Is there an economic team? In case some of you don't know Soludo is saying that data from the NBS is being falsified for the benefit of the government. I wonder why people think that rebasing does any good to Nigeria sef.

You said reputable organizations? The same ones that have been downgrading our economy since third quarter last year? Do you wonder why we are being downgraded? Maybe it is because they know we are a bunch of liars

biafranqueen:


Nigeria according to Wall Street Journal, “has emerged as the frontier-market economy that is attracting the most attention from American and European multinationals.” The same report went on to state that “Nigeria is joined by Argentina and Vietnam as the frontier markets that multinational corporations are most interested in, according to a new index of corporate sentiment.”

Frontier Markets Sentiment Index do you know it? It is created exclusively for the Wall Street Journal by Washington DC-based advisory firm Frontier Strategy Group.
This tracks the level of interest shown by major European and American multinational companies in countries across the frontier markets world. Is Soludo saying that investors from America and European multinationals would believe falsified records and advise investor to go to an F-grade economy? Can you and Soludo be this ignorant and petty?

Mynd44:

Data from the NBS is being tampered with. It is not accurate lady. That is the point of this whole thing.

You claim the poverty rate is 33.1% do you really believe it? Be honest

biafranqueen:


Nigeria according to Wall Street Journal, “has emerged as the frontier-market economy that is attracting the most attention from American and European multinationals.” The same report went on to state that “Nigeria is joined by Argentina and Vietnam as the frontier markets that multinational corporations are most interested in, according to a new index of corporate sentiment.”

Frontier Markets Sentiment Index do you know it? It is created exclusively for the Wall Street Journal by Washington DC-based advisory firm Frontier Strategy Group.
This tracks the level of interest shown by major European and American multinational companies in countries across the frontier markets world. Is Soludo saying that investors from America and European multinationals would believe falsified records and advise investor to go to an F-grade economy? Can you and Soludo be this ignorant and petty?

biafranqueen:
Is it also falsified and unbelievable what CNN reported? Soludo’s “F-grade” economy has witnessed an unprecedented growth rate of 7% in the last couple of years according to CNN Money, or are they also lying for Auntie Ngozi?
Nigeria’s economy in the years under review is witnessing the third highest growth in the world behind China, 7.3% and Qatar 7.1%, so all these reputable agencies like CNN are being paid like Sahara Reporters?

biafranqueen:
What are you talking about? I thought you people want change? Confused group of believers.

obi4eze:
It is a shame to note that NOI has been lying to us since. She should tell us what happened to the audit report concerning the missing $20 billion?

How is it that she cannot actually explain what actually happened to our depleted foreign reserves?

She is not fit to be Minister any longer. Both her and her incompetent principal will be sent packing come FeBuhari 14.

#ihavedecided
#buhariosinbajo

emiye:


I suspect you are the confused fellow, the last time Nigeria conducted rebasing exercise was over 20 yrs ago, so if another one is done in 2013 and showing that the economy now has 510 billion usd, it is a cumulative effect of the new sectors that emerged after the early 90s that the last rebasing was done The new rebasing of GDP took in to account , telecoms, nollywood, e,t,c It is the goal scorer that matters, not the score keeper. GEJ became president in 2010, and can not take glory of what he had virtually zero input in.

BTW, i care little about GDP but HDI (Human Development Index)

reborn1:
[s][/s]

Kellene, stop insulting people. You have now turn to something else cos you are defending GEJ. Take it easy little sister

biafranqueen:
Which insult?

Ignorant- lacking knowledge or awareness in general; uneducated or unsophisticated.

Petty-of secondary or lesser importance, rank, or scale; minor.

That is just an honest observation. When he was running for Governor I was against him for his total destruction of the banking system and his aiding and abetting the biggest criminals ever in financial theft. My respect and why you have never heard me go against the Emir, is because I was his fan until he started messing up with APC touts, and misinforming the public to a panic with supposedly missing money.
What is Soludo really up too?
He is a hater of of the best economic management team lead by Dr Ngozi Okonjo Iweala. Like he said he is traveling the world so he has not kept up with the countries economics.

Mynd44:

I have raised that question on this thread too. What happened to our foreign reserves? Even in the middle of a boom in oil prices, dafuq happened?