I wish I could talk to the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Nigerian government about the plan to create the “Eco” by merging the Naira with four other West African currencies.  The first time I heard about it, it’s initial three-year timetable sounded amateurish.  One did not have to be an economist or financier to know that the three-year timetable was impossible.  I was not surprised when the debut of the Eco was postponed, and since the second start date was just as unrealistic, I was equally unsurprised when it was postponed again.  If they want the process to have credibility, it should not be handled in such an ad hoc manner.  I wish I could remind them of the danger of letting politics and wishful thinking get ahead of economic reality.

I wish I could tell our leaders that fiscal waste is an impediment to reform.  It is difficult to sell citizens on the need for rational fuel pricing, when the head of the NNPC describes a lavish lifestyle at public expense as a “sacrifice” he is suffering in the national interest.  The Finance Minister talks about rationalizing the size of the civil service to save money; but the Finance Minister is paid through a special arrangement that is a transparent and unjustifiable waste of public funds.  The arguments for the excessive pay arrangements do not stand up to logical examination.  Other appointees could do exactly what she is doing at the regular pay scale, and the Nigerian public is not obliged to adjust it’s fiscal outlays because a public official feels the regular pay will not cover his or her private liabilities.  Ultimately, the government will remain unable to convince people to give up subsidized petrol or to support the elimination of surplus civil service jobs as long as people see top officials enjoying the good life at public expense.

Children died in Kano after the Pfizer drug trials, and many foreign researchers come to Africa to run experiments that would never have been approved in their home countries.  Successive Nigerian governments ignored food and drug safety; the Dora Akunyili-led NAFDAC has gained respect for attempting to redress this problem.  Given this history, safety doubts over any drug are understandable in Nigeria.  But as I think about Nigerian children paralyzed for life due to polio, a preventable disease, I wish I was rich and the judicial system was trustworthy.  Given the risk of polio in northern Nigeria, the political decision-makers should have secured an alternate, trusted supply of vaccine before banning the one in use.  If no such supply existed, we should have made it ourselves, like the Indians and Brazilians.  In the absence of either option, there should have been immediate, emergency tests to determine if using the vaccine was an imminent danger, or if the risk was low enough to continue using it until an alternate source was found.  They have since tested the vaccine and decided to resume using it, and several children have been paralyzed for no reason.  I wish I had the financial resources to gather the families of the paralyzed children to launch a class-action lawsuit against the responsible decision-makers.  In a country where the disabled survive on their own ingenuity and hard work, with no worthwhile public assistance, some of these children could end up as beggars on the streets – the men who paralyzed them might throw them a few coins.  The punitive and damage settlements from a lawsuit (garnished from the defendants’ private incomes, and not the public purse) would pay for wheelchairs and other tools the children will need, including education at the best schools so they can compete in the workplace as adults.  I wish we made better choices when selecting leaders.  These men would probably win if they ran for election again, though they are likely unpopular in countries like Indonesia, to whom we exported our new polio outbreak.

I really do wish I had financial resources and could rely on the legal system.  Without these tools, we are forced to sit by and watch while the agencies and leaders do not address glaring issues.  Lawsuits to compel action from responsible local, state, and federal agencies would have been a benefit to Anambra State, or to the people of Zaki Biam, or to any number of Nigerian communities.  Lagos State could do with a judicial ruling that bypassed the feuding federal and state politicians.  The politicians do not own the federal or state ministries and agencies, and there is no reason the bureaucrats and civil servants should not do their jobs because politicians are fighting over inanities.

I wish I knew how much has been spent on ceaseless foreign travel by the president, vice-president, cabinet ministers, federal assemblymen, state governors, state assemblymen, local chairmen, local councilors and their girlfriends, retainers and general entourage.  They say they are looking for investment and ‘learning democracy’, and point to each new foreign investment as proof of their success.  It is unlikely that all of these trips, by all of these people, contributed to all of the investment.  And one would think that the size of the investment would need to be greater to justify the size of the collective travel budgets.  President Obasanjo has said that the federal budget is smaller than the budget of the New York City Fire Department, but must stretch to deal with the needs of 130 million people.  With such constraints, sensible people would adopt a streamlined and coordinated approach to traveling for investment (assuming such travel were necessary) — a specific team of professionals (who never travel) in an agency; one federal cabinet member; and five representatives of the states, each one representing seven or eight neighboring states.  These six could travel four times a year (i.e. quarterly) to talk to groups of investors.  We would save a lot of money.  I wish I could tell them, but they might not listen because the real reason most of them travel is to have a nice holiday at public expense.

I wish Prof. Charles Soludo, the Central Bank Governor, had visited the non-profit micro-credit organization I worked with briefly.  The organization was fiscally sound, did not depend on public sector funds, and made a direct, measurable contribution to wealth-creation and poverty alleviation in several communities.  It’s clients were the poorest of citizens, people considered risky investments by the banking industry.  Understanding their work might make Prof. Soludo and his team put further thought into their plans for banking reform.  The Central Bank is pushing many reforms, the most noted of which have been regulations designed to force banks into mergers to create bigger banks.  There is nothing wrong with any of the reforms.  But there is a difference between forcing the banks to do what they are doing now better, and making the financial sector as a whole become an engine for an economic takeoff that unlocks the full potential of the economy.  The one facilitates the sort of growth we have had for decades, the latter facilitates the sort of growth that brings us to the threshold of the world’s fifteen largest economies.

I wish Nigerians treated the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) and the National Political Reforms Conference as retreads of every other national plan and conference every held before.  We do this every few years.  They say pretty much the same things each and every time.  A few years pass, and we do it all over again.  The current administration started writing NEEDS five years into their cumulative eight-year term.  From the first day in office they should have started implementing the plan they made when they decided to run in 1999.  And if they did not have a plan, they shouldn’t have run.  I don’t think they had a plan, as they seemed to do things (even good things) in an ad hoc manner.  In any case, a new constitution is not needed so much as a commitment by leaders to actually obey the constitution and the laws, and a commitment by citizens to force them to do so.  Whether soldiers or civilians, we govern ourselves in a way that makes nothing permanent, not even constitutions.  In the last year, we have witnessed a totally unnecessary political struggle over the creation of new (equally unnecessary) local government areas; this after decades of constantly rearranging our map with new states, new local governments, new emirates, and new autonomous towns.

I wish we citizens understood that there are many issues to deal with, questions that need to be asked, and answers that must be demanded.  I wish we didn’t focus all our energy on the silly issues that dominate our political discussion. The fifteen largest economies in the world did not attain their wealth by laissez faire economics.  Their political and economic leaders made chose specific goals, undertook specific actions, and rallied their citizens together for national pushes for rapid growth.  It takes more than privatization and calls for investment.  It takes more than NEEDS.  And it definitely takes more than simply raising the amount of crude oil exported, even with today’s higher prices.

I have many more wishes.  Every Nigerian has many wishes.  Perhaps those of us who wish for a better Nigeria should stop wishing, and should band together to make it happen.  I wish that happens soon.

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