(INTERVIEW) How Nigeria Can Work –Senator Kaka

We thank God for it.

I think that is the question for the electorates and the citizenry. Individual differences are there. Whether the expectations are being met should be measured by them.

But if it is just to give objective assessment, I think it is too early because it is not yet a quarter of the tenure. All those things that are being put together are yet to start yielding results.

So, by and large, we should be patient and rally round those at the helm of affairs to be able to deliver the good dividends to the people

Of course, yes. You cannot set on a journey without setting a target as regards your vision and mission. The national assembly is working towards getting a good result.

And indications are there that we are going to achieve good results. What is really happening is something like policy summersaulting, which must be curbed to avoid detraction in the polity.

It is neither here nor there. That subsidy is so removed, is no news. All along, my personal belief is that it is the inefficiency of government that is being called subsidy.

The masses, all along were being made to subsidise the system’s inefficiencies.  And it is that inefficiency that should be targeted so that by the time we block all the leakages then we can now plan specifically by having our own refineries, apart from the almost obsolete ones currently in existence. Competition should be encouraged, and public corporations must be made to work efficiently and effectively.

At this point in time in our lifetime, we shouldn’t be dreaming of monopoly or even oligopoly, but rather be emphasising cutting edge competitions.

So, in a situation where we will be talking of only one solution, I think that is not fair. It’s only the “one-handed economists” that can be reasoning in such context.

What we perceive to be the only solution may, after all, not be the best solution. So, the best thing is to give all options opportunity. Let us develop modular refineries.

The money we are throwing at problems can best serve us if we close our eyes and pump the money into electricity or energy generations and effective distribution generally. When I talk of energy generations, it is inclusive of electricity, oil and gas, and solar, bearing in mind the multiplier effects.

A good blend of fossil and clean energies would be compounding in the ultimate yields. And it is bound to deliver the goods.

And that would have answered the question you asked me. If we can be able to concentrate on those, then I can beat my chest that, yes, we are going to perform, exceptionally well. But until that is done, we have to continue to give the government the latitude to put their acts together.

It is a beautiful question. Agriculture was the backbone of Nigeria economy before the advent of crude oil. Now, the crude oil has turned us into lazy people who want to make quicker money and who are concerned about sharing money that is coming from the rent collection.

The rent mentality has overshadowed virtually all of us. And can you blame the people? If it is possible for me to make easy money in multiple than going to say I am breaking the stone, at quarry making granites, importing machines to do what I am not even sure I would make money from it or not, naturally I will jettison that area.

And for agricultural practices, from inputs supplies to the farm centres and to the marketing outlets for the outputs, the situation where the rural areas are not motorable, a situation where there is no opportunity for value addition in terms of necessary machinery that could be used to convert whatever we are producing, a situation where the market is not predictable, is making a mess of any pro-activeness in decision-making. Instead of having a price pool for production as an incentive for improvements in productivity, the forces of demands and supplies are just not as responsive as they ought to be. So, at the end of the day, there is no way we can leave the people to market forces.

When there are no necessary supports for productivity to be enhanced, there are bound to be problems. Agriculture is the ultimate, though with longer gestation periods; we simply cannot run away from it.

For example, if you look at what is happening in the poultry industry and the drains in the multiplier effects, in terms of value addition  chains there, we will be talking in terms of tens of trillions of naira.

From those grinding the corn and other ingredients like oil extractions from soya beans, groundnuts, to the processing of the oil seeds extraction, down to the production of the feed, storage, marketing and distribution of products; each of these components are in trillions of naira investments.

So, from there, we now talk of those who are rearing the birds both for meat,  table eggs, hatching  eggs production and hatcheries management under the  circumstances whereby the animal protein intake as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), is such that we should be consuming at least 35-50grams of animal protein per day per head.

But now, our people are taking less than 10 grams per head per day. That is, we are being predisposed to diseases by the shortage in meeting up with the set minimum intake requirements.

So, when we look at the yawning gaps, then you will agree with me that the ultimate is agriculture. And when we promote agriculture, apart from feeding, in terms of energy, protein, fats, vitamins, minerals, and everything apart from those components, we are talking about producing in excess that we can export to generate the much needed foreign exchange.

Well, the purpose of the ban is being defeated because some of the items we have banned were banned, so the local production can be protected. Unfortunately, the leakages in the system do not allow that protection to be effective.

That is the policy summersault I was talking about. You ban today, you unban tomorrow. Then you say you want to make purchases into silos. Our leaders would be buying those products during off-seasons rather than during on-seasons giving room for “air delivery” by the unscrupulous middlemen so that, head or tail, the middlemen are reaping what they did not sow, thereby conveniently raping the producers.

They are raping those who are adding values, and ultimately, they are making all the profits at the expense of the producers.

By the time we are off-season, you see them putting pressure on the government again, who will naturally bulge to say, let us grant some relaxation for importation. As I am talking to you right now, it is easy to relax the ban on rice as a consumption item. What is relaxed?

There is no assurance that it is not going to be the old rejected products, weevils infested, or poisoned with preservative chemicals from abroad that would be imported for our people to be eating.

Unfortunately, items like rice are direct consumables. Whereas when you talk of maize, soya beans, and others, they are inputs for other value addition processes before you can convert them and make possible the achievement of the intended purposes. We are talking about low import content for our industries.

Emphasis should be given to low import content but not under a circumstance that whatever support being given will be cornered by the same set of people who are beneficiaries of the subsidies on stake.

Agriculture is subsidised anywhere in the world. Ours shouldn’t be an exception. But in a situation where it is the political farmer that is subsidized rather than the bonafide farmers, there will continue to be a problem.

Well, it is sad that it is the common man that is being further pauperised! The elite are the ones creating viral demand for the dollar, not necessarily that they want to import to cushion the hardship being suffered by the common man, but to satisfy their tastes for foreign goods and services and to act as stable stored value in exchange.

At any price, they buy the dollar, they stash it abroad so that any time they decide to bring home any little stuff, it is just like bringing huge money back to the country.

Nevertheless, there is always hope alive. The hope is that let us use part of the money on those items that will have a multiplier effects like the energy sources.

Let us use it for promoting transportation, be it air, rail, road, or water. When we do that naturally, it will ease the burden on the cost of production.

Then, the local people, the downtrodden, will be given space to breathe. We continue to talk about the small-scale industry, but I don’t know what we are doing. We get to micro finance bank; the interest rate is about 40%.

That means the down trodden will be working for the banks! You get to money deposit banks; the interest rate is around 30%.

So, we are not helping until we bring the interest down to about one digit rate. It is then we can say we are encouraging local production and small-scale operators. Whatever the value of the naira, let us encourage the indigenous people to go back to local production to learn how to add value to whatever we are producing.

Then let us orientate our people to tame their tastes. Our taste for foreign goods is becoming alarming! When we are not producing and our taste is for foreign goods, there is no way we can channel our little foreign exchange we are generating into productive use. So, this thing is so simple.

It is a simple economic issue. They talk of demand and supply, fine. Let us produce more of every item, and we will witness how good we can be. Money we are throwing about is the problem.

Let us close our eyes and throw the money at procuring at least two bulldozers each per state, especially in the southern states. Go to all the fallow lands, remove the trees. And when you clear the land, bring the rhome ploughs to remove all the stumps.

You can then make tractorisation possible rather than saying we are waiting for people to go and use hoes and cutlasses to farm.

After clearing the land, allot it to the previous owners. Those who don’t have access to land accommodate them. Let them go and produce. It is speakable and it is doable. The problem is that enough encouragement is not forth coming! Then reorientation is not being carried out deep enough. We need to re-orientate ourselves to realise that what we are not producing we don’t consume and what we are consuming we produce. By the time we do that, backed with virile extension services, you will see us moving as expected. It is a matter of a few years, and we will cross the Rubicon.

Yes. But talking about democracy, it is a shame because I don’t know whether it is democracy that something is wrong with or it is those of us that are pseudo-democrats that are making it difficult for the workability of democracy.

If you look at it and compare and contrast, one would be tempted to reverse the belief that the most benevolent military dictatorship is inferior to a democratically installed government. In democracy, it is supposed to be participatory.

In some respects, our civilian leaders are more dictatorial than even the military! It is an adverse reasoning, but we need to talk the truth to ourselves if we want to move forward.

In situations where you install an executive and he becomes an Alpha and Omega, dictating who is going to be in the legislature, dictating who is going to be in the judiciary and on top of it all, monitoring to the minimal appointments, dictating everything, then something must be wrong somewhere with us. You cannot call that democracy because people are not involved in the decision-making processes.

So, I would rather prefer to say the presidential system we copy is not serving us well. And we don’t have absolute confidence in the parliamentary system of governance, which many people are acknowledging to be the most economical, to be the most representative and something that could be managed to the acceptability of everyone.

We can as well, blend and incorporate even our indigenous mode of administration so that it could be amalgamation of the three to make it acceptable to all,  because democracy they practise abroad is alien to us in Africa. It is alien.

We are bad copiers. It is not being practised the way it should be practised to serve us. The constitution is there, but we breach what is supposed to guide us with impunity. What do we do?

We put a lot of lacuna in the constitution and make it unworkable! And by the time our hands and legs are tied and we are expecting to move in terms of performance, it would be a tomfoolery act at the end of the day.

Well, let’s get one thing clear, in the United Kingdom (UK), they have an unwritten constitution. In America, their constitution has been sustained for more than 200 years now. In our own case, our leaders are not sincere. They know what is right. If we want to practise federalism, let us practise it the way it is being done from the sources.

Let us give respect to the various components so that elements of interdependence of the executive, legislature and the judiciary must not be thrown overboard, neither must we say because there must be separation of power, each of them should be an island to themselves.

So, the moment you give modicum of autonomy to each of the three, then strengthen the interdependence for unity of purposes, bearing in mind that we are pursuing the same goal of the growth and development of a nation. It will give room for complementarity of efforts.

And at the end of the day, we will be talking of right hand washing the left hand and left hand washing the right hand. I think that is just it.

Well, much as I would have loved to retire, the environment is so bad that the past efforts would be in vain if the fairly good political players exit further deplete their ranks and files to the benefits of the growing population of charlatans taking solace in politics now.

So, the sustainability of quality participation and the need to mentor upcoming politicians, if they would listen and make themselves available for mentoring, would not allow retirement now.

I hope that “the falcons will continue to hear and obey the falconer.” Mentoring the younger ones is so important that even if one is not contesting, in any election, if one is not taking any appointment, one just has to be patriotic enough as to remain in politics once the energy can still carry one.

So, I may not be too much in a hurry to quit, but I can assure you, however, that I will easily throw in the towel whenever I consider that the ovation is the loudest or the falcons no longer hear the Falconer.