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Seven Years Of Reforms: Is This Not Progress By Terkura Aku
When state coordinators for the Campaign organisation of IBB were inaugurated a forth night ago in Abuja, Barr Vincent Ikem, the organisation’s National Director of Media and Publicity was a very pleased man. In his excitement, he made some uncharitable assertions about the current reforms that cast the legal luminary in poor light, diminishing his status as a learned colleague.
The assertion appeared in the story ‘Obasanjo’s Regime: Seven years of Reforms without progress’ in the Leadership newspaper edition of 9th November 2006. It is this assertion that this article sets to address.
What is even more baffling is that such views are coming from a supposed learned colleague, a barrister, who should have an ample ability to distinguish between reality and delusion. But this is not the end of the sad news. Before he joined the IBB Campaign organization, Mr. Ikem was at one time the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, the party running the government and the reforms he is condemning.
I do not wish to go into the rhetoric of what prompted Mr Ikem to leave his position of publicity Secretary of the party. I simply want to contest Mr. Ikem’s claims and straighten some of Barr Ikem’s deliberate distortions of facts. It is sad that people like him, who should be concerned more about helping people make the right choices by placing before them things in their proper perspective, have rather abdicated those roles for paltry rewards that will immediately vanish with the demise of their progenitor’s dreams.
No sector in Nigeria has benefited the benefits of and reflected the desirability for reforms like to telecom sector. Before 1999, NITEL, the national telecom carrier NITEL was a monopoly characterized by inefficiency and poor service delivery. Between 1975 and 1999, NITEL received over N30million in government subsidies to provide Nigerians with the world’s most expensive network comprising only 400,000 lines. The Private Telephone Operators (PTOs) charged as high as N100,000. Is this not progress?
Today, however, mobile lines, which sold for between N60,000.00 and N70,000.00 between 1996 and early 2000, for analogue services, are available in the market for less than N500.00. Similarly, the cost of acquiring fixed lines have crashed from over N100,000.00 in 2000 to an average of about N13,000.00 today. Is this not progress?
Fixed lines subscriber levels increased from 473,319 in 1999 to 1.4m in Mar 2006 while Mobile line (GSM) subscribers increased from 266,461 in 2001 to 21.5m in Mar 2006. What this has translated to is that the sector has generated an estimated 10,000 direct and 1.5million indirect jobs (Indirect job here refers to people selling recharge cards, GSM handsets, Accessories, Dealers, repairing handsets, printing recharge cards etc). Is this not progress?
Today, Nigeria posts the 9th largest market in the world and easily the first in Africa it is also the fastest growing telecoms market in Africa with triple-digit growth rates every single year since 2000. Currently, Nigeria has surpassed Egypt and Morocco to become the second largest mobile market after South Africa, with one of the highest rate of return on investment. Cumulative investment in telecoms sector since 2001 is over $4bn (N140bn). Is this not progress?
Before 1999, one of the characteristic features of our petrol filling stations was perennial long queues of cars. Petrol prices were low but the commodity was not available in the stations. Instead it was selling in the black market at cut-throat prices and Nigerians were buying. In the stations, queues were long and unending, riots and fights were rampant and common occurrences, resulting in the loss of lives and damage to property.
But after 1999, things began to shape up. The product became available in the stations, though at high prices, which are still soaring, and black market is increasingly becoming less attractive. Is this not progress. Would people like Ikem prefer we still live in the days of long queues, no fuel, rampant fights, riots, high black market prices (sometimes more than N65)?
The bank recapitalization programme has reduced the number of banks from 89 weak banks to 25 stronger and bigger banks, three of which are rated among the top 1000 banks in the world. As a result, the bank consolidation programme has attracted massive foreign direct investment to Nigeria. According to the August 2006 report of the Economist Intelligence Unit, London, the net foreign direct investment to Nigeria as at 2005 was about US$2.3bn while portfolio inflows rose to US$2.9bn.
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) is a specialist publisher serving companies establishing and managing operations across national borders. For over fifty years it has been the source of information on business developments, economic and political trends, government regulations and corporate practice worldwide. The EIU forecasts a 5.6% growth of GDP in 2007. Is this not progress?
In 2005, the Nigerian economy recorded a 6.2% growth of GDP compared to the high double-digit inflation (20 – 25%) and loose fiscal policy with fiscal deficits averaging 3.5% of GDP before 1999. This performance was in line with the 6% target as articulated in the NEEDS document, Nigeria’s blueprint for economic and social development.
Last week, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), in its Economic Report for August 2006 disclosed that non-oil export earnings measured by the nation’s top 100 exports, amounted to US$76.34million representing an increase of 47% over the preceding month. A breakdown of the report explains that the proceeds exported during the month showed that agricultural, manufacturing and other sub sectors of the economy, rose by 81.3%, 22.5% and 101.7% US$36.39 million, US$37.39 million and US2.56million respectively. This means that other sectors are growing and hopefully, will in time to come, lead to a reduction on dependence on oil. Is this not progress?
The Federal Executive Council approved the new National Health Policy, in September 2004. The Policy, which was developed to promote a comprehensive health care system that is promotional, protective, preventive, restorative and rehabilitative, aims to achieve Health for All Nigerians.
The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) is a product of this policy. The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) is a social health insurance programme designed by the Federal Government of Nigeria to complement sources of financing the health sector, and to improve access to health care for the majority of Nigerians.
Under the scheme, beneficiaries do not need cash to access treatment when required. This eliminates the problem of converting assets to cash especially in catastrophic illnesses. Furthermore, the benefit package is among the most comprehensive in the world.
So far, there are 4,651 Accredited Health Care Providers and 26 Accredited Health Maintenance Organizations across the country. As at date, all federal civil servants are registered in the NHIS. Is this not progress?
In 2003 Government made provision for the construction of 200 Ward Health Centres (WHC). A total of 154 have been completed and are fully functional, while contracts for additional 380 PHC centres were awarded in 2004 to bring the total to 580 PHCs nationwide.
Similarly, in 2004, the government invested 100million Euros to equip and upgrade 8 teaching hospitals in Ibadan, Jos, Enugu, Zaria, Maiduguri, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Ilorin, to Five Star status. Five Star status implies that each of these hospitals would have the best of equipment, personnel and services. In other words, they would be made world-class hospitals. Is this not progress?
On the issue of debt repayment, Barr Ikem presented a very interesting and ridiculous opinion – he said it is the only credit this government clings to. Perhaps Barr Ikem needs to be reminded that General Babangida, for whom he campaigns, used SAP to plunge this country into this state of reversed development before the return of Democracy. Is that what he refers to as progress?
The implementation of the SAP had the following results - it was damaging to state sovereignty, social cohesiveness, and the material well-being of the majority of Nigerians. State sovereignty was eroded due to four factors.
First, the state loss its autonomy in policymaking and the domination of external forces over the process of determining state goals and objectives. Second was the active involvement of technocrats from both the World Bank and IMF in the policy implementation process in both monitoring and keeping the Babangida regime faithful to the spirit and letter of SAP. Third was the subordination of the domestic social contract to the payment and servicing of external debts; and fourth, was the lack of a consciously and independently determined and articulated national interest. Is this progress?
Social cohesiveness was eroded because several social problems intensified and proliferated in the era of SAP. These included religious and ethnic conflicts that arose out of the struggle for scarce resources; increase in crime, including armed robbery and drug trafficking, which became the new avenue to instant prosperity; declined standards of living and increased polarization of society into the few wealthy, the shrinking numbers of the middle classes and rapidly increasing ranks of the impoverished.
Social services were eroded to the point of non-existence. In consequence, many diseases, which had been under, control in the pre-SAP period wreaked havoc on society. Secondly, the educational system was besieged by problems arising from lack of funding and the after-effects of the struggle by students and the intelligentsia against the state for an improved educational system. Demonstrations and strikes were frequent and the tertiary institutions in consequence, were closed more often than they were open. Is this progress?
SAP did considerable violence to the social fabric in Nigeria. The standard and quality of life of the majority of Nigerians deteriorated with the fall in the value of the naira. Contrary to projections that SAP would benefit rural dwellers, the devaluation of the naira increased the prices they had to pay for goods and services, thus whittling any increase in the income of even commodity farmers. The speculative activities of merchants who used commodity exports as a means of facilitating capital flight, initially drove up the prices of some agricultural exports such as cocoa, but by 1989, the cocoa market slumped, causing the incomes of cocoa farmers to diminish precipitously. Many committed suicide. Is this progress?
The consumption of food, health and social services declined due to the inability of the majority of Nigerians to afford these necessities. The level of social volatility was such that frequent mass demonstrations were sparked off to protest SAP policies. Many lives were lost due to the state's indiscriminate use of force against these protesters. Is this progress?
Now our learned colleague, Barr Ikem, wants us to vote for this same man, because he believes IBB has change and will change things. What he could not do as a dictator, under military rule where an order is easier to be carried out without question, I don’t see him doing it under a civilian government where every decision has to be debated and approved by a majority.
I guess Barr Ikem simply has to look again at the definition of progress.
Terkura Aku, Esq 32 Busa Buji Street, Jos
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