Presidential monologue – Part 38

Howdy Mr President. I speak to the issue of debt forgiveness which Nigeria broached at the 79th United Nations General Assembly Summit in New York. The matter is in Paragraphs 10 and 31 of the speech read by Vice President Kashim Shettima. The paragraphs read among other things: “The global debt burden undermines the capacity of countries and governments to meet the needs of their citizens. Creeping trade barriers and protectionist policies are destroying the hopes for prosperity of peoples and nations.

Unbridled competition rather than cooperation is discouraging incentives and driving away investments…Similarly, we must ensure that any reform of the international financial system includes comprehensive debt relief measures, to enable sustainable financing for development. Countries of the global South cannot make meaningful economic progress without special concessions and a review of their current debt burden.”

In 2012, I addressed the debt question in ‘Themes and Issues in Nigerian Governance and Politics’, a publication by the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPPS). My chapter titled ‘The Political Economy of Debt Peonage and Management in Nigeria’ focused on the dynamics of the debtor-creditor relationship, Nigeria’s debt dilemma, and the management strategies adopted. I revealed that the debt burden was a function of the recklessness of the country’s leadership. On account of leadership irresponsibility, development matters took offstage.

Mr President, we have not left that trajectory of imprudence. Therefore, I doubt we have the moral credentials to speak to that issue apart from merely ‘covering the field’. Obasanjo administration, whatever the discontent of that process, freed Nigeria from its external debt burden and gave Nigeria a second chance in 2005.

Then and now, the Nigerian tactless and gluttonous ruling clique has doubled what we owed creditors before the debt redemption in the famous debt buy-back transaction that gave Nigeria a lease. By present weighting, our external debt stood at about $42 billion. The current indebtedness is the outcome of the blatant bleeding of the country by those responsible for its well-being. They have done so with stunning impunity as there are no sanctions but laurels for looting the national treasury.

In particular, Mr President, your administration has no record of prudent financial management to win the ears of the major creditors. Which country will listen to a sermon from a government that is spending N21 billion to renovate the residence of the Vice President, another N4 billion for the renovation of the State House in Lagos (Dodan Barracks), N90 billion on Hajj for a country that is secular as enshrined in section 10 of the 1999 Constitution as amended, a N5 billion yacht to the president fleet of mobility, as well as the soaring cost of governance?

Mr President, I yearn for the good old days of Nigeria’s financial buoyancy and inclination to invest judiciously while playing big brother to tottering sister African countries.

For refreshment of our memory, declassified information of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency approved for release on May 17, 2001, captured the state of our economy as of 1975.

The piece of information titled “Nigeria Lagos Emerging as a Modest Aid Donor”, reads: “The Caribbean Development Bank has become the latest beneficiary of the modest aid effort that Nigeria has mounted in recent years to advance its claims to leadership in Africa and its international prestige.

General Gowon announced a $2.5 million loan to the bank upon his return from the recent Commonwealth heads of state conference in Jamaica and official visits to Barbados, the Bahamas, and Guyana.

Since 1972, Nigeria has extended approximately $380 million in known loans and grants to individual governments and international financial institutions. Of this total, Nigeria has lent $240 million to the World Bank, and $120 million to the International Monetary Fund’s special oil facility that makes loans to countries to help cover their oil import requirements.

The remaining $20 million has been distributed largely in Africa, particularly to the countries of West Africa and to regional organisations such as the Organisation of African Unity and the African Development Bank.

Nigeria, black Africa’s most populous country, is using the bulk: of its oil wealth—oil earnings totalled $8.9 billion in 1974—to finance domestic development programmes aimed at improving the lot of its own citizens whose per capita income averages less than $300 per year.

The military government is determined not to let its aid activities become a drain on the treasury.

In the future, General Gowon has said that Nigeria will emphasise loans to development banks rather than bilateral assistance. The Nigerians probably feel that development banks are in a better position to ensure that the loans will be used for the purposes given and that they will be repaid.”

Mr. President, take us back to those good old days and your name will be written in gold.

Prof. Akhaine is with the Department of Political Science, Lagos State University, Nigeria. He can be reached via: [email protected].