Mr. President: Welcome Back From London November 25, 2013 By Abimbola Okulaja Mr. President. Welcome back from London. I trust you’re well rested. By the way, happy birthday Sir. Now let us get down to business. I have often asked myself why waste precious time writing when you don’t give a damn about reading. I guess it is due to the love we have for our beloved Country. Mr. President, I have this crunch that you seem not to carry us along while navigating the complex task of running the Country. You must be overwhelmed judging by your hospitalization in London. That is not the stuff which Markel, Obama and Cameron are made of. We keep pulling back the hand of the clock, when a clock is not designed in such a manner. Mr. President, you will recall that in my previous article to you “This is your decision moment,” which was published shortly after your inauguration, I had counseled that you couldn’t do something over and over again, in other words you can’t follow in the footsteps of your predecessors and expect to obtain a different result. Sadly this is what we have continued to witness. Don’t let anyone deceive you; things have gone from bad to worse. Can it be worse than this? I don’t think so. Let me tell you this story as recounted by my friend to illustrate my point. In the days of President Obassanjo, he made an official trip to the USA, and as it was customary his advance team went ahead to negotiate to attract direct foreign investment, with this Telecoms giant in Chicago. (We have been attracting this investment forever and we are yet to see the end result). Back to my point. This telecom company requested for all workers of Nigerian descent where my friend was earning his income at that time to gather to receive their President. I was told that when Obasonjo eventually arrived and it was time to sign the contract, which his advance team had negotiated, Obasanjo in his wisdom requested everyone to leave the room for a private audience with the CEO at this telecom company. Looking at the executive eyeball-to-eyeball, Obasonjo told him that. “I know the people who came ahead of me are thieves and he was sure that they already added 10% to the deal, he is about to sign”. He then requested for a discount of 10% in the over all best interest of Nigeria or there is no deal. The CEO did not confirmed or denied but wasted no time in granting the 10% plus more. Now let us fast forward to the present moment, and giving a similar scenario, I am told, that what happens nowadays, is for your advance team to negotiate for 20% for themselves and negotiate a separate 20% on your behalf? That in what you mean when you granted an interview and claimed that “what people usually referred to, as corruption in Nigeria is just petty thief”. It means you permitted the act. Lawyers will say you have both the “Actus and Mens rea constituting the major element of the offence of corruption in Nigeria. In other words not only are you aware, you permitted, condoned and tolerated it. I listen to a panel of discussion on CNN recently on the latest FORBES list of top 10 billionaires in the world. Sitting at no 10 is one of your own big boys. You know whom I am referring to, but the CNN discussants stopped the discussion at No 9. They didn’t waste time discussing No 10. Out of curiosity I goggled to check why the omission. Why did they not move on to No 10? Is it because they could not pronounce the name? This is what I found out. Nobody made the list trading. Rather on that list you find inventors and money managers. Even Mike Zukkerburg the FB guy made the list as an inventor of idea. If my idol Steve Job were alive, he would have been on top of the list as someone who came in a flash ahead of his time. You must generate fresh ideas and take it to the next level to make the list. In Nigeria, your predecessors deliberately anointed candidates for the local Forbes list of Billionaires, by stifling competition, and you sustained it by taking it to another level. Mr. President, let me run what I will call the Orange juice theory. Once upon a time, we had this craze for imported juice. Can you imagine anybody importing juice into Nigeria at this period? It wasnt by force, but by putting the right policies and strategies in place and gradually the craze for imported juice fizzled out. I hang out in a County in NJ. (Like Etti Osa Local government, in Lagos). Within the stretch there are numerous Toyota dealers, and in between them at least just few of these dealers will sell 17,000 units of assorted brand of Toyota in a year. That is just One County, not the whole of NJ. Now look at the bigger picture, the units of Toyota that is sold in NJ every year, now think about USA. Let us come back home, why should Toyota or Honda of Japan invest in an economy that sells 17,000 assorted brands per year, judging by our population of 160 million. Their plant in Japan will probably roll all that out in couple of weeks producing at full capacity. That was what BMW told Choscaris, that the units sold in Nigeria annually, do not add up for them to even think of setting up a plant. What Choscaris sells in BMW in a year even with the infamous duty waiver, ET all, one dealer will sell in one month in one County in the USA. I mean one dealer. So how do they justify investment in an economy that has no infrastructure and zero security, and inconsistent government policies? Once you fire your Minister of trade, his successor will dismantle everything he labored for. That is the way it operates in Nigeria. The right hand does not communicate with the left hand and everybody is just busy doing whatever caught his or her fancy. This Minister of trade is so obsessed going about signing the so-called memorandum of understanding and foreign direct investment” (Whatever that means) all over the place, forgetting that of course it takes nothing to sign a document that the foreign countries considers just a piece of “s…. t”, sorry a piece of paper. Your Ministers should not be deceived; Toyota or Honda will not set up now or in the near future. We are not a serious nation, and they will rather invest in Ghana and truck it to Nigeria. No serious business will invest in plants in Nigeria at this period. Aganga is just wasting his time, and I am not sure if he is aware that the so-called foreign investors are laughing at him behind his back and waiting for him, as Donald Trump will say, “ You’re fired”. He should have been fired alongside Ngozi. Even in Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Stanford or all these prestigious business schools when they drill you for 2 years, on the last day you are handed a one-paragraph summary of the entire event of 2 years. “Use your common sense out there”. We should look at the bigger picture, dismantling all Monopolies, by requesting Toyota and Honda Japan to appoint more dealers in Nigeria to compete and we should be removing all no “compete clauses” in our statute. NBL, and Guinness should have serious competition, etc. Energies are been dissipated protecting few individuals. Some of these your precious jewels on the Nigerian local Forbes list, if they do business abroad will all be cooling off behind bars, for tax evasion, import duty waivers and scams. They are the real scammers and 419 in Nigeria. We should put them in a cage and pay to view them. Mr. President, let us dissect your budget for you. It is an open book exam, so we know the end from beginning. This is how it operates. You simply instruct Deziani to pump oil equivalent for the amount you plan to send next year. So why bother to go to the National Assembly to confuse the members with figures prepared by Ngozi and Aganga. They have been preparing similar figures since the time of President Obasonjo, and nothing has changed, it just gets worse. So there must be a problem with either the messages or the messengers, or both. We can condense all your budget preparation into one page of a foolscap paper. For instance in a budget of say 4.5 trillion, you just steer (Yes steer) 1 trillion in the direction of your favorite Forbes man of the Century, by way of unprecedented Monopoly, government protection, import duty waiver and patronage. Other local champions on your Forbes list shares 1 trillion in a dog eat dog manner. Members of the National and State Assemblies share another 1 trillion. Civil servants, by way of recurrent expenses shares .5 trillion. The Presidency takes .5 trillion for, security vote, food and to settle the boys to ensure that they remain loyal. Whatever that is left is budgeted for capital expenditure. That is a one-paragraph summary of your budget. Mr. President, if we are a serious Nation you don’t have to step out of Nigeria to look for investors. If they consider us serious they will look for us. Most of the investors you met in London came from all over the world, but they are more comfortable meeting with you in London and not Abuja. The question the foreign investors ask, is with the amount we budget annually, we should be doing far better than this. With our population we should be the ultimate investors destination in Africa. They should be lining up looking for us and not the other way round. The investors should be meeting you in Abuja and not you going to London. Mr. President, the election in Anambra is a prelude to what is in stock in 2015. When governors could not elect one person among themselves, of course the state will not and by extension there will be no election in 2015. There will just be an installation, and you will tell us to go to court if we are not satisfied. Crude oil are been lifted illegally and proceed are been used to stock pile arms by a section of the Country all in preparation for 2015, because either by fire or otherwise the son of the soil must win the election. That is why we have this level of impunity in the Country at the moment. One of your foot soldier even reminded us that “Monkey no fine, but him mama like am”. When did you become a Monkey? I pity, whoever will take over from you, in a truly free and fair election, because the first task before the Country is to restore Law and Order in Nigeria. We are not at war, but even at war it can’t be worse than this. There is a complete break down of law and order. Governors meet in the privacy of their room and Police barged in to ask them to dispatch. When the people don’t have freedom to express themselves they pullulate underground, and I am not sure you will fancy the end result. The whole machinery of the Federal might is been let loose on a state governor, in a federating unit, because the Governor will not turn over the state to your wife. Mr. President Wahala dey! Thank You. Sincerely,
Posted on: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 20:34:29 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015