File: Buhari during the 2016 budget presentation to the National Assembly.
As you are reading this article, President Buhari and the All Progressives Congress, APC, on whose platform he rode to power, would have consumed nine months, or 18.75 per cent, of the time given them by Nigerians to bring about the changes they shouted from the roof tops and everywhere during the elections. If according to Wilson’s arithmetic, a week is a long time, then Buhari and the APC have spent the equivalent of political eternity in office. That is startling enough.
What should be shocking to Nigerians is the fact they are just now getting ready to sit at another talkfest to discuss the economy. This is simply scandalous for reasons too numerous to discuss in one article. But a few will demonstrate the anguish any economist – irrespective of whether conservative, liberal or socialist — must feel when confronted with the stark naked fact that Nigerians had elected a government and political party which had no economic programme for governance while campaigning for office and which compounded that colossal error by not hastily assembling an Economic Management Team, EMT, the week after former President Jonathan conceded.
But, the most inexplicable was the fact that in the five months Buhari took to select a mere fifty-odd assistants and Ministers, it never occurred to anybody in Aso Rock that one of the cardinal functions of a President and government, if not the most important, is to manage the economy. That, invariably, means selecting those people who would be his advisers and who would develop the Economic Blue Print for economic policies. Here we are, with close to 20 per cent of the first term gone and we are being told they are just about to sit down to discuss the “way forward” – at a time when we should be undertaking the first review of the plans and policies which they have been implementing since June 1, 2015.
Whoever says “history does not repeat itself” has never heard of a country called Nigeria – where the sordid history of failures recurs almost with every change of government. When Professor Wole Soyinka, not an economist, was reported to have canvassed for an economic summit, and the government latched on to it to organize one, the first thing that should have occurred to anyone familiar with our record for economic summits is to ask the question, “Another one?”
“A pessimist is a former optimist who finally got all the facts.” Dele Sobowale, 1991. (VBQ p 186). It is quite possible that those calling for the economic summit, now about to get underway, and Professor Soyinka, don’t have a deep knowledge of the history of economic summits in Nigeria – otherwise they would not have set great store on it. On this one, blessed are they that expect nothing – for they shall never be disappointed. Below is a brief history – just from 1992.
In 1992, when military President Babangida, appointed Chief Ernest Shonekan, GCFR, as the Head of Government, the first thing, the old technocrat did was to organize the First Economic Summit and to create the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, NESG – which still functions today. NESG had not only held annual economic summits, except for two or three years since then, they have contributed several cabinet members to various governments. Buhari’s administration is actually one of the few that had been (un)fortunate to have one of their members on board. If ever there was a group that specialized in organizing annual gabfests, ending in communiqués that are widely praised by government and totally ignored, it is the NESG.
Like most intellectual masochists, it was my sad lot to attend the first two on behalf of the Nigerian Institute of Management, NIM. Five more followed, representing VANGUARD, until it dawned on some of those in attendance that, apart from being a “billionaires’ forum”, it was a bloody waste of time. For almost seven years, nothing new was added to the basic outlines of the first communiqué. And, for almost seven years none of the recommendations of the NESG
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