I’m the real Third Force – Moghalu

…Insists Nigeria needs radical leader, experienced and competent  in managing economy and lifting citizens out of poverty.

 

Prof Kingsley Moghalu, presidential candidate of the Young Progressive Party (YPP) in next month’s elections, believes strongly that it’s time to do away with the recycled old political class that has till date been unable to change the lives of Nigerians for the better. A political economist and alumnus of the London School of Economics and Political Science; lawyer; former United Nations official and former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Moghalu, 55, is Professor of Practice in International Business and Public Policy at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Massachusetts, among other exceptional qualifications.

In this exclusive chat with The Nigerian Xpress duo of Rose Moses and EmekaOkoroanyanwu, Moghalu speaks on a wide range of issues, affecting the nation and concludes that he is the right candidate to lift Nigeria from the clutches of poverty, resulting from bad leadership that has remained the bane of the most populous black nation on earth.

You are one of the over 70 people contesting for president in the forthcoming election, even as you say you are among the top three, why do you want to be president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria?

Well, because I am tired of us talking about Nigeria’s potentials. It’s time to talk about Nigeria’s success in reality. I want to be president because I feel there is too much poverty and we need to do something about it. My own personal success increasingly means less and less to me when we see the rising poverty in this country and the social implosion that is coming, if we don’t change the current trajectory.

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When we look at population growth and the growth of unemployment, you know, and the growth of poverty, you will see that some fundamental course of correction needs to happen. And the president that will bring about that in this country is not a member of the recycled old political class. It has to be a newbreed, a new thinker and doer and a young person but who is experienced and competent in managing Nigeria’s economy. That’s what I bring to the table as a presidential candidate.

Talking of the economy, Nigeria has been described as the poverty headquarters of the world. As a one-time deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, what do you think is responsible for the negative tag?

What has taken us back is…There has always been a fundamental problem, I must confess. That problem is that Nigeria’s economy is being managed on the basis of achieving economic growth numbers. That is, our economy is growing by five per cent, six per cent, seven per cent, etc…

But anything can grow the economy. A booming oil price can grow the economy. But we have not focused on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, we have not focused on economic development, which is about quality of life, we have not focused on economic transformation, which is about the structure of the economy.

So, because we don’t have that sort of balanced or inclusive growth, you can have a lot of economic growth while poverty is also rising. This is what has happened in Nigeria. And also, in the last three years, especially in the President Buhari’s regime, we’ve gone into a massive recession which, of course, has made even more people poor. And that recession could have been avoided by better economic management.

How do you mean?

Like not fixing the exchange rate for almost two years, which brought about…It was a direct course of the recession. The fall in the oil price was, you know, the proximate cause of the recession and the foundational cause is, of course, our reliance on crude oil, as an economy. So, that leaves you exposed to cycles of boom and burst. You see what I am saying? And that’s why Nigeria has not been able to take off economically, foundationally because our economy is just based on crude oil. It is almost ninety something per cent of our exports. Foreign exchange earnings are from crude oil!

But government says it is diversifying the economy, talk of agriculture…

Cuts in….They are diversifying into yam tubers, and they are diversifying into raw cashew nuts. Please, I know economic illiteracy when I see one. Economic diversification means that you diversify the productive base of the economy so that the foreign exchange earning doesn’t come from only one earning. So, if you want to diversify into agriculture, it should be industrial agriculture. It should be value-chain agriculture, which produces finished products at the end of the day and export those products.

If you are just exporting yam tubers, or you are exporting raw cashew nuts, at the end of the day, you are exporting still a primary commodity. And that is not what brings about prosperity. So, that’s my comment on economy.

As president of Nigeria, I will diversify the economy into an innovation-based economy. An economy that is driven by inventions and innovations that are commercialised, put out into the marketplace and that becomes the basis of industrial production. That’s my own idea of diversification, which is the real diversification.

Now that you’ve mentioned the productive base of the economy, which previous governments have neglected. Specifically, what will you do to reverse the trend, if voted in as president?

Specifically, I am going to improve the skills base of the Nigerian economy. We are going to establish a skills training centre in each of the 774 local government areas of this country so that you have a more skilled and knowledgeable workforce. That is what equips you to run an industrially productive economy. Do you see the point? We will reform the educational system, including the curriculum to tilt more towards technology, more towards skills, more towards innovation and so on.

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So, that’s what you do to lay the foundation. Then, of course, you must reform the power sector by decentralising the national grid.

Isn’t that what government says it is doing?

No. They haven’t because we need to establish mini grids in various states or regions. That’s what we need. We don’t need one national grid in Kainji Dam or Shiroro, or wherever. And even those kinds of national grids we need to move the electricity from them towards industrial production in Lagos, in Aba, in Onitsha, in Kano, in Port Harcourt.

Those should be the priority for electricity in this country. And then, we create a new market for renewable energy. That is my own view, that Nigeria’s electricity should be supplied more by renewable sources like solar, like wind, you know. Because of my focus on innovation, we will be seeking to turn garbage; you know the garbage that people dump on the street? You can use it to generate electricity. That’s a scientific knowledge, and that’s innovation. So, we will bring back Nigerians, who know these things. Many of them are outside the country, but we will bring them back and put them to work so that we use what is around us to work for us.

Now, in terms of the privatisation of the PHCN, we are also going to make sure that we improve electricity transmission and that we create a proper type base electricity supply chain because if Nigerians know that if they pay the proper tariff, they will reliably get light, they will pay it because it is not necessarily more expensive than the amount of money that they spend on generators and even the ones they pay for not having the light (as a result of estimated billing).

So, making sure that this whole question of metering and reforming that whole space so that people have confidence that what they are paying is what they should be paying, and two, so that they are actually getting the electricity they are paying for.

If you do these two things also, it will lead to significant improvement. But more fundamentally, I want to move Nigeria’s power supply more towards renewable energy.

Good, sir. But we’ve heard such beautiful things in the past from politicians when they want to contest for office, but as soon as…

Cuts in…Yes, let me tell you …for me, I amnot telling you beautiful things. I am not making you promises. I have a plan, not a promise. But I have a plan to execute my plan. And let me tell you what that plan is to execute my plan. We are going to run a government of this country as if Nigeria is a corporation just with some adaptation as a government. But fundamentally as a business because if you want to employ somebody in your business, if you want to appoint the CEO of your company, do you appoint somebody based on zoning? Or your family members that may run the company into the ground? You want somebody who will generate profit.

So, you look for competence. Do you understand? Our political process must move in this direction that we actually elect people who have the ideas of what to do. Now, talk of ideas. Ideas matter because like I said, if you cannot think about it, you cannot do it. You understand what I am saying?

So, I am going to have in my presidency, the YPP presidency, we will have the Office of National Strategy, we will have the National Office of Risk Management, we will have the Office of Performance Management, and the then we will have the Office of Human Capital Development. These four units in my presidency, they are what will drive the governance in my government.

That way, we can measure success. We can measure performance and we can govern on the basis of a strategy, that is to say you begin with the end in mind. You know where you want to be in four years, big foundation’s goals, benchmarks and guidelines…We would have achieved this in the first year; we would have achieved this in the second year; third, and somebody would be measuring it and managing the risks that could prevent us from achieving it. This is a more scientific approach to governance. And we did it in the Central Bank and we were very successful. So, I will replicate it on a much larger basis in the whole country.

In the four units you mentioned that will drive your government, if elected, is there anything specifically for women, considering that they form about half of the population and yet not empowered for leadership of the country?

Yes, I was the first presidential candidate to select a woman as his running mate – UmmaGetso, 37-year-old young woman from Kano. Now, my view is that my government, part of our building a nation is that we must work with women as equal partners. That means, practically speaking for example, that I will have a 50:50 gender balance in my cabinet – one man, one woman. It means that we will go beyond tokenism or numbers to actually address the issues structurally that affect women’s participation in leadership and economy. So, we will address access to education for women, we will address access to finance for women, we will address protection of women’s marital rights, we will protect women from gender violence and we will expand the space for female political leadership participation. It’s just six per cent of members of the National Assembly that are women. We need to double or triple this within four years.

How will you do that because Nigerian politicians, it would appear, have perfected the art of making the political stage very difficult for women participation in politics?

Remember that as a president, you are a political leader. You have political authority, even in your party, right? So, if everybody knows that this is the policy, that the president is driving this agenda, people will have to key into it.

Do you mean what they term as body language of the president?

It’s not about body language. Well, people have misused the term body language. Body language can be a good thing if it actually means something. If it is used as some fake projection of what is not real, then that’s different. So, yes, my practical life as demonstrated in my choosing a woman, as my running mate demonstrated my commitment. And when we govern, it will be the same way. So, it’s concrete outcome, not just body language. Body language is a speculative thing. You can be speculating about what my body language means but we will actually have policy and actually deliver it in reality.

So, what’s your reaction to APC government?

The APC government has been a total and utter failure. Life is worse in Nigeria now than it was in 2015 when they came into office. So, my view is, of course, they do not deserve a second term. The economy is terrible, security is terrible, corruption is still rife. And those were the three things they promised us would improve when they were coming to power and that’s why people voted for them. And then I argue on the other hand that PDP is not an option. PDP, you know, they are the two faces of a bad problem. So, Nigerians need something new, something different and something bold. And my candidacy and my presidency will represent that.

However you look at it, those two – PDP and APC, are very powerful, very desperate, have tasted power and know what it feels like to be in power. How do you intend to price power out of them?

This is not a job just for me. It’s a job for you and every citizen in Nigeria because it is the people themselves who must decide that they want to liberate themselves from the hostage status in which recycled politicians have held this country by asking themselves: ‘What is the quality of our lives since these politicians have been misruling?’ And if the answer is not a positive one, then you vote them out because you have the PVC. You have power but you don’t know that you have power.

And one of the reasons people don’t know that they have power is because of poverty, which the politicians have inflicted on you so that you can continue to rely on them. It’s a very deliberate system. And that’s why a lot of my campaigns have been about political education to empower the citizens, mentally and psychologically; to free themselves by voting for the right person as president.

We know you’ve been around, both within and outside the country but politics in Nigeria require a lot of money. Do you think you have the financial muzzle to play the kind of politics that is played in this country?

We are playing disruptive politics. We must not play the game the way that…Yes, we are going to disrupt the established political order and establish a new one. And one of the lessons of strategy is that strategy is differentiation. You must not do things the way the competitor is doing it. So long as you can achieve a result that you want, you must differentiate yourself. So, if you want to say you must have as much money as the APC or PDP, you are joking, you are deceiving yourself.

So, you must find another way of reaching the people that is not solely determined by how much money that you have. But you need some resources to do politics, even at its most basic. You need to travel around the country, it’s money. You need to advertise, it’s money. Those are the basic political cost.

So, people are funding my campaign. The Nigerian people are contributing to my campaign. People who want something new and different are chipping in. And, of course, I have invested a lot of my own financial resources. So, it’s a combination of the two. We don’t need the amount of money the PDP and APC have to beat them. No!

Talking about playing a disruptive politics, can we say a group of you, new politicians, came together to agree on this disruptive brand of politics, because over 70 presidential candidates is actually so huge?

Well, I mean we are all seeking the same outcome. But we haven’t all been able to come together in terms of, may be, having one consensus candidate. There was an attempt but it was not well managed and so it failed. If the young politicians, the new politicians want to have a very good chance of winning the presidency, my view, honestly and objectively is that they should all step down and support me.

The reason is this, of all the candidates, I am the most prepared to be president. All these ideas I am giving you, have you heard of them from the PDP and the APC?

These are things that will transform this country. They are not prepared in the way that will really change your life. So, when I say that I am the most prepared, I mean it. I wrote a book: Build, Innovate and Grow, setting out a very clear vision for this country. I am the only presidential candidate who has done it.

I started early. I announced in February; I’ve been all over the country and we have awakened the consciousness of millions of people in this country that a different type of president is possible other than the recycled old politicians. I am the most popular alternative candidate outside of the APC and PDP. All the polls have established that fact that YPP and Kingsley Moghalu candidacy is the Third Force.

So, why would they not come around and let us go together? I offer myself to them. Let’s do it!

You cannot say to somebody who is making electoral progress on the ground to step down for you when you are not. Do you see the point? There has to be political will.

Can you throw more light on that because there was said to be this agreement by a set of young politicians, of which you were initially part of, to produce a consensus candidate amongst you, an agreement you reportedly walked away from when you were not named winner of that process…

Yes, I walked away from the process because the process was not transparent. There are ways that things can happen. There are people who at the end of an election, they go to court and reject the result and they may have a point.

President Buhari lost election in 2007 and went to court. Did he not run election? So, you cannot use this type of logic. You see, some things become apparent to you at the end of the process. It may not be very apparent at the beginning. So, it doesn’t matter when it became apparent to you, whether at the beginning or at the middle or at the end but as a matter of principle, if you feel there was no transparency, you have the right to say: I’m sorry, my principles do not allow me to accept this outcome.

From what you’ve said so far, looks like any such arrangement that does not produce you as the winner of the process is not acceptable to you. Is that correct?

At the time in question, that was not my thinking. Right now, the electoral reality is that I am the best placed to deliver a victory for the alternatives, as a consensus candidate. And why would I step down for people who are weaker than I as candidates? Why? They haven’t written a book of a vision that I have; they have not travelled the country the way that I have. They are just busy on the Internet making noise.

Do you understand what I am saying? You have to be fair, you have to put yourself in my position and then the polls show that you are making progress. There is just another poll that is being run now. It’s Buhari, Atiku and myself. All the others are not registering on the poll in reality.

So, you must distinguish between noise-making and electoral…some people are very good at running around the media and making a lot of noise, activism… that is a different thing from electoral relevance.

So, I am operating both at the level of concept, I’m operating at the level of strategy, I’m operating at the level of political progress on the ground because my campaigns are going down across the country. So, that’s why I am a bit different from most of these other candidates. You know, I may not be the person you may see most in the newspapers, although you will see a lot about me but also I’ve been at this for one year!

There’s something to be said about being consistent over time. When I came out, we were nowhere, politically. Today, I am the third force in Nigerian politics. That is already an achievement. If some people come out in the last minute and start making a lot of noise, do you really think they have the strong chance/structures?

Well, it all depends on…

It all depends, I know. But you see, in politics, we have to see….What do you put in and then what do you bring out, of course, depending on the society, yes.

Again, it depends, because in the Nigerian society, as you rightly pointed out earlier, poverty has taken over almost everything, people are ready to sell…

Cuts in….I understand that. So, if you talk so, you are saying, for example, that if you come out at the last minutes and you have $2 billion, you are…

In Nigeria, doesn’t that look like it?

Well, it’s possible; I suppose it’s always possible.

You come from the south eastern part of the country and the political arrangement right now doesn’t appear to favour a South-east candidate for president. Do you really think you have a chance in this election?

Of course! It depends on your vision, what you are bringing to the people. People are increasingly realising that all that zoning and…it hasn’t helped them, it hasn’t brought them a government that can manage the economy.

And tribalism?

Tribalism….it’s always there, but I am offering a vision that rises above tribalism. Many people are tribalists because the kind of leaders that we’ve had has encouraged tribalism. But you see, my own candidacy is not based on tribalism. I’m not an Igbo candidate for the presidency, I’m a Nigerian president for the Nigerian president. So, I’m talking to people across board in this country, addressing their concerns…in KauraNamoda, in Minna, in Abeokuta, Ado Ekiti, in Onitsha, Abakiliki…you know. So, that’s the kind of candidate I am. Also, understand that there are a lot of young people now, who are in the voting population. Many of them have not grown up with that tribal sentiment that a lot of the old Nigerians may sometimes have. So, all these factors, plus the fact that they also realise that the old politicians have failed…all these things will bring about a surprise outcome.

We seem to be at this level of talk now because of the level of education of an average Nigerian. Meaning we have a very serious problem in education, especially in the far north. What’s your plan for education, if elected president?

Education is foundational for me because my government’s vision is based on an innovation economy. That requires skills. And that requires an educational system that produces skilled labour. So, we will reform education in the following ways: One, we will move the budget of education away from a very low seven per cent or so, to a minimum of 20 per cent in the first year. The 2020 budget will be minimum 20 per cent to education. But that 20 per cent, we will not invest it in the wrong things because you can increase the budget and still not achieve the outcome. So, we will invest it in, one: teacher training. We will retrain and recertify teachers throughout this country. If you don’t have the skills that make you fit for the purpose to educate my child to be compatible with 21st century, why should I feel that I am getting the best from such an educational system?

So, we are going to make the public school system…return it to its former glory so that people stop breaking their backs to send their children to private schools that they cannot afford. So, we are going to retrain the teachers, we are going to change the curriculum; we are going to reform the curriculum leaning more towards vocational skills entrepreneurship, science and technology. You know, those kinds of things will be more available and taught in schools.

We are also going to change how our children learn, not all these cramming and…I’m a professor, you see, so, I come to education with a practical knowledge of how a good university, for example, should work.

I will establish academic autonomy for universities in this country so you won’t be having all these ASUU (Academic Staff Union of Universities) strikes. And the amount of money that has been agreed to be used to revitalise education, the one trillion that they agreed with the government many years ago, we will pay it because it is a priority.

So, you don’t want to have …. We’ve had 13 university strikes since 1988. That’s an average of one every two years. So, what that tells you is that we are in a system that every two years, there is a strike and schools are shut down. How can that kind of system produce a well equipped economic workforce? You will have to address the foundational problems. Give universities autonomy, bring out the money that was agreed, fulfill…the Federal Government must fulfill its part of the agreement.

Any plan for free education at any level in your plan?

Of course, primary and secondary, we will be aiming for free primary and secondary education. It is not possible to make university education free. Financially, I don’t think it is realistic at this point, but we can subsidise it, at least, the public universities. So, that is,…then we will, of course, invest in educational infrastructure, like all primary and secondary schools that are government owned; we must make sure they have laptops for children, you know, modern learning aides. So, those are the kinds of things we have to do.

Which brings us to the 2019 budget presented by President MuhammaduBuhari. What’s your take on that?

Well, I look at the budget, it’s eight point something trillion, right? About two point something trillion goes to servicing debts, two point something trillion goes to capital expenditure and about four trillion goes to recurrent expenditure. So, you see that this type of budget is misconceived, it’s already failed and the budget implementation of this government is a total failure. Every time, the budget is approved several months into the year. So, how will you make it work? Budget implementation is very weak.

And I feel that the whole emphasis on foreign borrowing by this government is mortgaging our future because that emphasis on foreign borrowing comes from intellectual laziness and lack of political will to generate resources locally. And this is what constitutional restructuring will do because the regions will manage themselves more and generate their own revenue and pay a tax to the centre.

So, this will help for a better budgetary management in this country. So, restructuring is necessary. Rather than the Federal Government carrying every burden and when the oil priceis down, they are down, which is the way the economy is managed today, the regions will have the incentives to develop economically using their own strength. So, unless you devolve power away from the centre down to regions in this country, you are not going to make any fundamental difference.

This issue of restructuring has been thrown on our faces by every politician when campaigning, only for them to deny or trash it when they get into office…

But I am the only one that has put out a clear and comprehensive plan and I am one person that is guaranteed to restructure this country or to lead the restructuring. See why? If you go and look…Atiku, for example, promises restructuring, go to his document, it’s just one paragraph. How? Does that look to you like people who can seriously…do you understand what I am saying? That’s why I am the candidate for Nigerians because I have the political will to restructure Nigeria and I am giving you a clear plan – the why, the what, the how and the when. I can send you, later, my speech on restructuring where I laid it out in detail.

Somewhere along the line, you mentioned subsidy. Now that we are in an economy that continues to subsidise petroleum products naturally given to us by God, what do you think of subsidy, even when costs of the products right now, are so high?

But that is madness. That is why I am telling you that Nigeria needs a totally different type of leadership outside of the current political class because that’s all they know. They are just into…they want to drink oil! I will move the economy away from oil towards innovation because that is the secret of the wealth of nations. If you go to Japan or America or Europe, what you see on the shelves are the products, inventions of citizens that are commercialised. And those inventions solve human problems in the society. So, they sell them. This means that things become obsolete quickly because there is a lot of competition. That’s where we are moving the Nigerian economy to.

We have a lot of young people who invent and innovate. But you never see their inventions on the shelves in the market place. My government will change that.

So, for example, you see, when you talk about restructuring, my plan to restructure is very specific. I say that Nigeria has to return to a constitutional federation. There is real restructuring and there is 419 restructuring. If you go and establish state police, make a constitutional amendment to bring state police; that is only a part of what restructuring…and that in itself is not restructuring. You have not reestablished Nigeria as a federation. That must happen, constitutionally, so that there is a division of power between a central government and a sub-national government. Period!

You will not have local government areas, as a constitutional tier of government. It doesn’t happen in any federation. The only place I’ve seen it is in India and that’s a special deviation. And you have resource control, that the regions own their natural resources or their revenues and pay a tax to the centre. Those are the things. Right now, the Federal Government owns natural resources, everything! That’s an anomaly and for as long as that is the case, the competition for power in Abuja will always be about who will control access to those natural resources.

So, it becomes a politics of rent, you know, who gets the rent from crude oil or other natural resources. So, we must change this. And that’s why I am the candidate that will restructure Nigeria. I will lay the foundation for a totally new country.

Are you sure of beating the incumbent?

I believe we will beat the incumbent because the people are tired of the failed leadership of the APC. So, we are going to encourage them to have the courage to vote along the line of how they truly feel and resist the temptation of their votes being bought because they are poor. So, that’s why we are educating people about vote buying and those types of things. We will beat them. You will see what will happen. Like I said, I will win the election like Donald Trump won it. It will be a shock, but it will happen.

Although  so many young people believe, based on what is on ground, that you are a good candidate, some still think you’re coming way ahead of your time, that you should have started as a governor or from the National Assembly, etc… What do you think of this line of thought?

They said that about Obama, that a black president is too far ahead, not now, but Obama became president.

But don’t you think if you started from any of those points, your chances would be higher, as like they say, you will get used to the ways of playing Nigerian politics?

No, that is just the usual thinking. No, you don’t need to. You see, the level of my experience automatically recommends me to the presidency. I’ve been a deputy governor of the Central Bank of this country. That’s a very high level of economic management experience. I’ve been a United Nations official for 17 years, from entry level to the highest career rank. So, I have been a leader in the world and in this country, economically, nation building-wise and international diplomacy and foreign affairs.

These are the three functions of a president. Why would I not run for president? Having all these, I will go and run for local government chairman, I will not be able to use my skills that I have got, just to be politically correct? But I don’t believe in political correctness. That is what has kept people in bondage. We must think differently now.

What would be your programme on health, especially on the issue of maternal and child mortality, where Nigeria, embarrassingly, is still rated low despite the natural and material resources that the country is endowed with?

Yes, yes, yes, that is a focus for us because…and the way to do that is through primary healthcare. That is where we need to strengthen the skills and the human capital available. I have a Diaspora return programme that would heavily focus on healthcare, bringing back people. And I am going to have a fund that will pay them 70 per cent of what they were earning abroad. We are going to use this to develop healthcare and the education sector a lot. We have many Nigerians that want to come home and help out. Some have actually tried but they got frustrated. So, we are going to have a real programme that manages that engagement. So, we are going to invest heavily in primary healthcare. We are going to improve the performance of the National Health Insurance system to make sure that it goes from 70 per cent coverage now to not less than 50 – 60 per cent coverage in four years.

And then, we are going to build a world-class-health facility in each of the six geopolitical zones – one per zone so that in every zone you are not too far away from a world-class treatment for cancer, a world class treatment for other diseases, so we don’t drain our foreign reserves on medical tourism. That’s my approach to health

Do you have any other thing you would like to share with Nigerians, more like, what’s your last word?

My last word to Nigerians is this: Be brave. Have courage. Let us come together and set this country free from the cabal, from the recycled politicians. Vote for the YPP. My candidacy is for the liberation of this country.