BY SAM NDA-ISAIAH

, Undoubtedly, the economy is central to finding a solution to the current state of chaos and upheaval in the north, nay the country as a whole. When leaders of any country work on the economy and ensure that people are meaningfully engaged, so many other unrelated issues are taken care of in the process.

Last week, during the inaugural meeting of the Coalition of Concerned Northerners in Abuja of which the prostrate state of the north was the agendum, Adamu Maina Waziri, former minister of police affairs, told the gathering how a simple policy by a state governor can make all the difference: Sometime ago, the Poultry Association of Nigeria met in Jos to discuss a few of its members’ challenges. The minister was part of the meeting. The choice of Jos was in order because Plateau State can rightly aspire to be called the poultry headquarters of Nigeria. The poultry business, like many other businesses, has been facing severe crisis aggravated by the Boko Haram, sectarian and sundry ethnic crises in the north lately. First, because the Boko Haram crisis has led to the closure of Nigeria’s borders with neighbouring countries, there has been a glut of eggs, especially in Plateau State, as a large part of the market for eggs produced in Nigeria is in the neighbouring countries.

Secondly, a good percentage of the produced eggs is consumed in the evenings through the enterprise of the ubiquitous mai shayi in the towns in the north. The mai shayi are the Hausa outdoor tea/coffee shop mini entrepreneurs who sell tea, coffee, bread and fried eggs to people usually between 8pm and midnight daily. Now, curfews have been imposed on most of the states and local government areas where these mai shayi operate. And even where a curfew has not been imposed, the received wisdom, by common consent in the north today, is: “the fear of Boko Haram is the beginning of wisdom”. So people keep off those kinds of gatherings these days. The cumulative result is the glut currently experienced in that sector.

At their meeting in Jos, the poultry association decided to pay Governor Jonah Jang a courtesy call since they were meeting in the state. After explaining their dilemma, the governor immediately directed that the Plateau State government should start purchasing eggs for boarding students in the state. With that stroke of the pen alone, a major economic problem was resolved and it did not cost the state an arm and a leg. By that single act also, more people were retained in their jobs and probably many more jobs were created as a result of the governor’s initiative. The boarding students in the secondary schools, who now have eggs added to their diets, would be happy and the rating of the governor would have improved. The poultry farmers made up of disparate peoples – Christians, Muslims, Birom, Tarok, and Hausa in the state, etc – will also be engaged in their businesses and would have no time for mischief. And a few of Jang’s enemies might actually be converted. The definition of leadership doesn’t get better than this and, as we can see, it is not rocket science. Adamu Waziri, the minister-turned-farmer didn’t tell us the quantity of eggs he produced or how much sales he made as a result, so that we would not ask him of our own share of his “national cake”!

Policies that leaders of a country or state make can make all the difference. Unfortunately, most of Nigeria’s leaders do not spare a thought for the people over whom they govern. What will happen if the president declares, for instance, that only cars assembled in Nigeria would be bought as official cars by all federal government officials starting from him?

That alone would put PAN, Volkswagen of Nigeria and ANAMMCO back to business. More Nigerians would be gainfully employed in Kaduna, and Boko Haram and other religious and ethnic cleansers that stalk the north would be deprived of some of their easy recruits. If the president proceeded further to impose heavy and punitive duties on imported cars and vehicles and bring down the duty on completely-knocked-down (CKD) parts to the barest minimum, Toyota, Mercedes and BMW would be forced to construct assembly plants in Nigeria. That’s the same reason why these three car manufacturers have plants in South Africa and not in Nigeria, even though Nigeria is a much larger market than South Africa for them. And with plants in Nigeria, the ECOWAS market would also be easily accessible to them. Of course, there are infrastructural problems, especially the scandalous electricity supply in Nigeria that these companies would normally complain of. But our electricity problems have not stopped MTN and other foreign investors from making a killing in Nigeria – to the extent that the Nigerian market is now the most important one for the MTN, even much more so than its own South African market. If Mercedes, Toyota, BMW and even Honda set up plants in Nigeria, more jobs would be created and, of course, the Nigerian economy would be boosted.

This will also ultimately impact on the crime level. The policies today favour their exporting finished products to us and penalizing local manufacturers as imports are cheaper than locally manufactured products.

There was a policy during the good old days of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) that boosted the local economy and propped up the middle class. The PTF’s policy was to buy everything locally. Thus, all the medicines, drugs, hospital beds, mattresses and bed-sheets must be purchased from local manufacturers. In recent history, that was the period when the pharmaceutical manufacturing sector operated at maximum capacity. Ditto for local printers, book manufacturers, paint manufacturers and school bus manufacturers such as ANAMMCO at Emene in Enugu State, makers of Mercedes Benz buses that supplied buses to all Nigerian universities and polytechnics.

Government policies would make all the difference but this will only happen if leaders think them out. Chinese leaders, for instance, found out in 2011 that China was losing more than $200 million in annual income in the sale of luxury and designer items such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, Calvin Klein bags, shoes, etc. Because of the very high taxes on such brands in China, Chinese citizens who are some of the most fanatical patrons of such items buy them overseas when they travel. So, last year, the Chinese government reduced sales taxes and made the items more competitively priced. By that policy alone, the government has increased the GDP of China.

Nigeria desperately needs leaders who would spend their time thinking of how to better their country and their people. Of course, we all know that leadership – or, more appropriately, good leadership – has been Nigeria’s bane. A typical example of how Nigeria’s leaders think against their people was Obasanjo’s policy on black oil (LPFO) which effectively killed the textile industry. NNPC used to supply directly to the textile factories and that kept them in business. But, for selfish reasons, Obasanjo made his business friends the middlemen in the supply of this all-important fuel, and these middlemen collected the products at local prices and preferred to export them and make 10 times more profit. By that policy alone, Obasanjo destroyed the Nigerian textile industry and all the jobs and dependants that went with them.

Another case is the fuel subsidy issue. In spite of the fact that the massive corruption – running into trillions of naira – in the subsidy payment to marketers is painfully being exposed, we have not seen any outrage from anyone in government. But the mindless thievery is not even my point here.

During the apartheid struggle in South Africa, successive Nigerian governments granted a small allocation to the African National Congress (ANC) for its efforts against the apartheid regime. This has continued long after the collapse of apartheid. But the Jonathan government, which has turned the removal of fuel subsidy into a business, cannot think out a way of selling crude oil cheaply to investors in local refineries in Nigeria as an incentive to lure them in. The government keeps insisting that investors would not invest in local refineries because the selling price of petrol is low in Nigeria. They insist on this as an excuse to continue increasing fuel prices. Well, what about selling crude to local refiners at concessionary rates? If the government can donate crude oil to weaker countries in special circumstances, why is it impossible to give to Nigerians at special rates? By the way, Indonesia, a country which has similar challenges, is a producer of crude oil, but almost all the nearly 1million barrels/day of crude it produces are consumed within the country because of its huge population of 240 million people.

Nigeria currently produces nearly 2.5 million barrels per day with a population of 168 million but cannot cream off 500,000 barrels daily for its own people at concessionary prices. The Nigerian government insists that Nigerians should buy their locally produced oil at international prices.

That’s the tragedy of the relationship between the Nigerian government and its people. By the way, Indonesia is the largest economy in the very prosperous south-east Asia and it is one of the foremost emerging market economies of the world and a member of the G-20 major economies. The government plays a major role in its market economy by owning and running more than 150 enterprises and administering prices on major goods including fuel, rice and electricity. It has a GDP of $1trillion (one trillion US dollars) and only 13% of its population is living below the poverty line. Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of palm oil, accounting for 44% of the world’s output. Malaysia is second, accounting for 43% while Nigeria which was once the world’s largest producer currently accounts for a world record of – wait for it – 2%. The Nigerian government needs to start working for its people.

Having said this, the northern state governors should start making policies that would generate income from their vast land and human resources not to talk of the vast mineral resources. They should stop sulking about the large sums that go to the Niger Delta. They cannot just sit in their states lazily waiting for the federal allocation to get to them every month to share and then complain of poverty. Of course, slothfulness breeds poverty.

Having said all that, President Jonathan must initiate and implement policies to ensure public order and security, tackle corruption seriously, and bring down interest rates which currently hamstring entrepreneurship. Today, he is not absolutely doing that.