17102019 - FG cuts travels, estacodes for ministers, other officials

Vanguard, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2019—31
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P
R E S I D E N T
Muhammadu Buhari
recently constituted a highcalibre
Presidential Economic
Advisory Council, EAC,
chaired by Dr Doyin Salami,
former adviser to the IMF and,
for eight years, a member of
the Central Bank’s monetary
policy committee, with other
members, including Professor
Chukwuma Soludo, former
CBN governor. For a president
who largely shunned economic
technocracy in his first term,
and who only recently appointed
an entirely political
cabinet for his second term,
this was a pleasant surprise.
So, how did we get here?
Well, given the president’s
long standing antipathy towards
economists, it’s difficult
to say that his decision to establish
what he calls an “independent
body” of economic
advisers was borne out of a
Damascene conversion to economic
technocracy. Surely, he
hasn’t suddenly fallen in love
with the use of technical economic
knowledge and analysis
to address policy problems,
rather than reliance on personal
predilection or ideological
whim as it’s his wont!
Therefore, the only plausible
explanation for President Buhari’s
decision to constitute the
EAC is that it was forced on
him by the harsh reality of
Nigeria’s continuing economic
decline. As the president
himself said when inaugurating
the EAC, “our reported
growth rate is still not fast
enough”, although in other
climes many would be
alarmed that after more than
four years in power he’s still
blaming “the mess we inherited”
for Nigeria’s anaemic
economic growth rather than
his poor management of the
What Buhari’s eminent economic
advisers should tell him
economy.
Furthermore, it’s a massive
understatement to say that the
economy is not growing “fast
enough”. Truth is, it has flatlined
at under two per cent!
The president said his government’s
“goal is to lift 100 million
Nigerians out of poverty
in ten years”. But to achieve
that, the economy must be
growing productively and consistently
at about seven or
eight per cent annually. Yet,
short of another oil boom,
which creates jobless growth,
there is little possibility of that
happening because of Nigeria’s
anti-growth economic
model.
Notwithstanding that reality,
President Buhari has tasked
members of the EAC to “come
up with home-grown ideas” to
turn the situation around. But
can they pull off that miracle?
Well, it’s a tall order!That
said,it’s their job, as economic
technocrats, to judge which
institutions and policies are
needed to turn Nigeria’s ailing
economy around. But to
succeed in that task, they must
start by telling the president
some home truths.
Indeed, as a first task, the
EAC must organise tutorials
The eggheads in
the EAC must tell
the president that
economies do not
respond to good
intentions, or
presidential wishlist,
but to specific
incentives
for the president on economic
fundamentals or what you
might call “Economics 101”.
And the first module should be
on the universality of economic
principles. They should tell
President Buhari that there
are no “home-grown economic
ideas”, but universal economic
laws. They should let
him know that economics is
based on theories that, while
not perfect, have strong predictive
powers.
Take, for instance, the simple
law of demand and supply.
If a country doesn’t have
enough supply of foreign exchange
and yet faces a high
domestic demand for foreign
exchange, the value of its currency
would fall relative to other
currencies. And if that country
then decides to fix or peg
its exchange rate, rather than
allow it to adjust to its marketdetermined
level, the country
would haemorrhage foreign
exchange as investors take
money out of the economy or
refuse to bring money into it.
So, the EAC members must tell
the president that there is wisdom
in having a flexible exchange
rate system rather than
operating multiple foreign exchange
windows, which distort
the market and discourage
foreign investments.
Another thing the EAC members
should tell President Buhari
is that a good economy
must promote business and
jobs while also protecting the
most vulnerable. To date, his
government has only prioritised
supporting the most vulnerable
through social interventions.
But unless an economy
is generating growth and
creating jobs, more people
would fall into the “most
vulnerable”category and the
government would never have
enough money to protect
them. So, it’s absolutely important
that the government
creates a hospitable environment
that boosts business confidence,
investment and jobs.
Sadly, Nigeria’s economy is
asphyxiated by excessive state
control rather than oxygenated
by openness and competitiveness,
which are needed to
attract significant private capital
and investments, both local
and foreign. Few foreign
investors think of Nigeria as
one of the best places in the
world to do business because
its economy lacks the institutional
and policy incentives to
attract a significant amount of
foreign capital.
Think of it. President Buhari
has repeatedly said that the
“underlying philosophy” of
his government’s economic
policy “is to promote importsubstitution
and self-sufficiency”.
But the policy tools for
achieving such objectives are
exchange controls, import
bans, prohibitive tariffs and
excessive regulations and interventions
– all elements of a
closed economy that stifle innovation,
productivity and
competitiveness. The EAC
should tell the president that
these are recipes for economic
disaster. They should tell
him that import-substitution
industrialisation destroyed
the Latin American economies
in the 1950s and 1960s, and
that collective or state-led agriculture,
designed to achieve
self-sufficiency, proved in the
old Soviet Union and elsewhere
to be catastrophic experiments.
In sum, the eggheads in the
EAC must tell the president
that economies do not respond
to good intentions, or presidential
wish-list, but to specific
incentives. And the best incentive,
the best model, for creating
wealth, reducing poverty
and raising living standards
is free enterprise capitalism,
based on strong institutions,
market reforms and
the rule of law.
The EAC members certainly
have a historic task, but unless
they succeed in changing
President Buhari’s economic
world view and altering his
government’s dirigiste policy
direction, they can’t revive
Nigeria’s comatose economy.
Good luck to them!
Of our tertiary schools and their sexually-transmitted degrees
BY PETER CLAVER OPARAH
Against the background of the recent
sting reportage of sexual harassment in
Nigerian universities, with special focus
on the University of Lagos, I am
surprised that many Nigerians are feigning
ignorance of the ravaging scourge
of sex-for-mark practice which infests
our tertiary institutions. There was nothing
new or too salacious about the BBC
report. There was nothing more fundamental
revealed in the report than what
we had all been noticing and what had
been hitherto reported in both the mainstream
and social media for a long time
now. Sexual harassment is as old as the
university system itself and awarding
grades for sexual gratification has been
an age-old reality that had dogged the
university system in Nigeria. So there
was nothing new revealed in the sting
report by BBC. There was nothing to
elicit the kind of societal commotion the
BBC report elicited.
Lest we walk away with a façade, sexual
predation is not restricted to the
university system alone. It is not a malaise
that happens only in the tertiary
institutions. In fact, increasing predilection
to trade sex for one favour or the
other traverse all human sectors. It is a
disease that does not select its victims.
It inflicts every sector, every age range,
every gender, every strata of the society
and it is not restricted to Nigeria alone.
What becomes abhorrent and the reason
why its debilitating effects in the
tertiary sector of the country’ educational
system is generating so much furore is
that it goes to churn out graduates that
hawk what someone derisively calls sexually
transmitted degrees and these
hawkers go on to seize the critical sectors
of the country’s life and permeate
such decay and rot that have plagued
the Nigerian society.
But there are so many misnomers about
our most recent concern about sexual harassment
in Nigeria’s tertiary institutions.
Apart from the mistake we make
by thinking that sexual harassment is
restricted to our educational sector, we
are collectively misled into thinking that
it is about male lecturers preying on female
students. That is a gargantuan
mistake. Female lecturers also prey on
male students and most importantly,
with the upsurge of same-sex relationships
sweeping through the country,
female lecturers also prey on female students
to curry sexual favour in exchange
for marks. Even at that, in many cases,
it is the students that hawk sex to get
grades from lecturers and this is very
important in trying to deal with this
anomie. The tertiary institutions in Nigeria
are heavily padded with students
who ought not be in the university but
who, one way or the other, find their
ways in our institutions and depend on
hawking sex for grades. So in most of
the cases, female students generously
trade sex for marks and we should take
this into cognizance in dealing with this
issue.
Again, it is surprising that, because the
University of Lagos was employed for
the sting reportage, many Nigerians
wrongly feel it is a scourge restricted to
UNILAG. That is a naïve reasoning. The
malaise is much more entrenched in
universities that do not hug the kind of
exposure and limelight UNILAG enjoys.
We also note that many parents are
aware and encourage this dastardly act
from their wards as they share the noxious
belief that the end justifies the
means.
Then also, the sex-for-grade vice operates
alongside cash-for-grade monster
where students are equally required to
trade cash for unearned grades. Both
combine to deal ruthlessly with the quality
of the academia and the emergent
products of tertiary schools in Nigeria.
The attendant calamitous damage this
deals with the society where these products
are unleashed is there for all to see.
Having said these, we, as a nation,
A situation where illqualified
students and
lecturers predominate our
schools makes trading sex
for marks inevitable
must take the challenge the BBC sting
reportage presented us to start putting
down durable measures to curb the menace
of sexual predation in our tertiary
institutions, even if it is for the purpose
of safeguarding our degrees from being
rightly seen as sexually transmitted degrees
with its attendant deleterious effects
on our educational system and the
corrosive damage to our nation. It is apt
to say that sexual predation where lecturers
prey on students and students
prey on lecturers has become an accepted
norm in Nigerian tertiary schools
because there had been literally no measures,
laws or statutes trusted to deal
with this. With time, university authorities
have come to accept this as normal
and have been lax in dealing with the
very few cases that get reported. This
has made this vice to flower to the extent
that a lecturer makes indecent proposition
to someone he is meeting for the
first time, as the BBC sting reportage
revealed. Denying that it is exists or that
it is widespread is the hypocritical way
authorities and staff employ to trivialize
the issue.
If we are desirous of dealing with this
cankerworm, it is my honest opinion that
the government must come up and enforce
stricter laws and back it up with
institutions, present n all campuses
where cases could be reported, investigated
and quickly prosecuted to ensure
that culprits; both lecturers and students
are adequately punished with strict sentences
that involve rustication and jailing.
An agency should be created for
the purpose of tracking such cases and
this agency should have presence in all
tertiary institutions.
Also, there should be greater attention
to the quality of academe that prevail in
our tertiary institutions. Both lecturers
and students need to go through rigorous
examinations both at the point of
entry and in the course of their duties to
ensure that only those who qualify to be
at tertiary institutions both as lecturers
and students find their ways to these
instructions. A situation where ill-qualified
students and lecturers predominate
our schools makes trading sex for marks
inevitable.
*Oparah, a public affairs commentator,
wrote from Ikeja, Lagos.