FROM LEFT: SENIOR ECONOMIC ADVISOR, AFRICAN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT POLICY
INITIATIVE, MRS OBY EZKWESILI; VICE
PRESIDENT YEMI OSINBAJO; MR ADEKUNLE SULEIMAN, AND FORMER PRIME MINISTER OF GEORGIA/SENIOR
ADVISOR, McKINSEY AND CO., MR NIKA GILAURI, AT A ROUNDTABLE WITH THE VICE
PRESIDENT DURING THE 21ST NIGERIAN ECONOMIC SUMMIT IN ABUJA ON WEDNESDAY
(14/10/15).
The 2015 edition of the annual Nigeria Econo-mic Summit kicked off on
Monday with an array of private sector chieftains and government officials led
by the Vice-President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, with the focus on how Nigeria
can make the tough choices necessary to over the challenge of achieving
inclusive growth and global competitiveness. In this report, Peter
Egwuatu & Emmanuel Elebeke, present highlights of proceedings from
the first day of the Summit.
The annual Nigerian Economic Summit (NES) is organised by the Nigeria
Economic Summit Group in collaboration with the Ministry of Planning. The last
two summits focused on specific sectors. For example, the Summit in 2013,
developed key recommendations and outcomes to reposition the Agricultural
sector as a business to diversify the economy, while 2014 Summit focused on
Education and was themed “Transforming Education through Partnerships for
Global Competitiveness.
Objectives of the Summit
The focus of the 2015 as reflected by the theme, “21st Nigeria
Economic Summit, Tough Choices: Achieving Competitiveness, Inclusive Growth and
Sustainability, was informed by the new challenges confronting the economy in
the light of sharp decline in crude oil prices. Key outcomes that are expected
at the end of the three days summit include
specific recommendations on how to: create jobs; dismantle the pillars
of corruption; establish and build upon pillars of sustainable growth and
development, which include macro-economic stability and growth (fiscal
and monetary policy reforms, restructure Federal Government revenues,
etc); Small and Medium Scale Enterprises, SME growth (reforms to
improve funding mechanisms and further diversify the economy); Institutional
reforms (accountability, ICT, etc) and Competitiveness (infrastructure, policy
bottlenecks, human development, etc); Align our home-grown long-term
development agenda with the UN Sustainable Development Goals that will take
effect in January 2016.
Kyari’s Opening Remarks
Elaborating on the objective of this year’s summit, Chairman of
NESG and also the Chief Executive Officer, Central Securities
Clearing System, CSCS Limited, Mr. Kyari Abba Bukar, said “This
year’s summit is particularly significant for two reasons- first because the
country has witnessed for the first time a change in administration
characterized by a party other than the traditional ruling party occupying the
central seat of government and second because of the current dynamics on
economic scene that require urgent attention.”
“Let me share with you some of the outcomes of these recommendations.
The citizen-led household survey of learning was one of five key initiatives
launched at NES 21. This was in recognition of the continued slide in learning
outputs across all levels of education in Nigeria, and the need to refocus
interventions on quality education and skill acquisition. The committed support
from various stakeholders to date has been very encouraging, and the private
sector has made progress in coordinating the effort to introduce a citizen-led
assessment of foundational competencies in literacy and numeracy across the
country through the LEARNigeria initiative.”
Continuing he said, “The summit must also emphasize the need for
strong will to execute on the part of all stakeholders, particularly the
Government.”
Vice President’s Presen-tation
The keynote address was delivered by Vice President, Professor Osinbajo,
who represented President Mohammed Buhari. The Vice-President promised that the
Federal Government will continue to work with NESG and other stakeholders in
the private sector to ensure that most of the recommendations from the summit
would be looked at and implemented to a large extent.
He said “Professionalism is being encouraged, aimed at entrenching the
culture of integrity, accountability and rule of law in the system. We also
aimed at creating the enabling environment to enhance competitiveness to thrive
for institutional reform. In terms of specific, some of the institutional
reform issues include revenue diversification issues, and efficiency of
tax collection.
“In terms of policy coordination, we are working together with the
states. We are presently trying to put together to produce the document for
economic planning in the nearest future. Nigeria being a federation, we have
initiated collaboration between the federal and states for the economies of the
states and federal government. In terms of working together, the National
Economic Council (NEC) is coordinating and in the meetings, we were able to
take on power and agriculture.
“The absence of proper coordination had created difficulties in the
past, hence the reason for this initiative for proper harmonization and
coordination of government policies. We have tried to adopt the policy of
transparency on the federation earnings, which had always been an issue between
the states and federal government. “In his address at the summit.
Secretary of National Planning Commission, Mr. Bassey Akpanyung,
described the summit as a platform to promote public, private dialogue towards
accelerated national development.
He said, “In the last 20 years the forum has become the largest policy
dialogue for policy makers and captains of industries from
Nigerian economy.”
While commending the organizers for being steadfast and consistent in
their focus, he said the task of nation building is a collective
responsibility.
He said the theme is consistent with the change agenda of the present
administration and in line with the medium term strategic plan into 2016 –
2020, which focuses on addressing insecurity in the country, fighting
corruption, initiating institution reforms, addressing unemployment, caring for
vulnerable groups and issues of economic growth and development.
The conference, he noted, was designed to make tough choices considering
present global realities bothering on economy. In particular, the continuous
reduction in oil prices, insurgency in some parts of the country and rising
unemployment rate among the youth.
This, he said, had made it imperative for Nigeria as a nation to start
thinking out of the box and in particular consider issues on post oil economy.
Gilauri on Reforming Public Institutions
During the Roundtable with the Vice President on “Reforming Public
Institutions to ensure competiveness and Accountability
The former Prime Minister of Georgia, Nila Gilauri, shared the
transformation that took place in his country, saying this is the
right time for Nigeria to toe the part of transformation and
reforms.
He said his country was at one point in its history
also had a low ranking in the Ease of Doing Business Index, similar to
Nigeria’s current ranking adding that, it took conscious effort of
enthroning reforms that now makes Goergia to be ranked ahead
of Nigeria on the index.
He said for instance while it will take about 77 days to
register a business in Nigeria, it takes just a day to do same
business registration in Georgia , a country of about 4 million
population seize. According to him, while it will take an investor
about 260 days to obtain construction permit in Nigeria, it will take
just 12 days in Georgia.
He admonished the current administration to be focused on its
reforms agenda adding there is no better to do it than now.
“This is the right time for the country to take the path of reforms
and transformation, when there is significant economy down, turn
when you have lower oil price, it is the perfect time to take on reforms. In
Georgia, we experienced worse situation , we were at a point worse
off in the corruption index of Transparency International
but through concerted reforms and effort , Georgia
jumped from being one of the most corrupt nations to one of
the ten least corrupt nations . How did we achieve it? Tough
transformation “, he said.
Ezekwesili’s Contribution
Commenting on Gilauri’s presentation, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, Former
Minister of Education, noted that, the Georgian reform is a world class reform
that we used when I was at the World Bank, when it wanted to get
governments to buy necessities for reform. What it does is to tell each
country it can be done.
Citing Honkung, Australia, she said that those societies got to the
point where they realized that the cost of corruption was too high for
everybody, that even those that benefitted on net aggregate fall victim
of corruption. The clamour for change is universal, but requires leaders and
leadership to take place.
According to her, top level political commitment is
also required to achieve the needed change.
Breaking it into a tripod format, she listed political will;
measures that will prevent the occurrence of corruption and measures that
sanction corruption. In this tripod, she said lies the factors that improve
competitiveness in governance.
While lending her voice to convergence in government institutions,
Ezekwesili said ‘We must insist that anything that exists must justify its
existence in governance.
She further identified quality of leadership and quality of institutions
as another critical area that requires attention to bring change.
Citing the Georgia example, she said Nigerian government must be
prepared to assemble quality individuals with strong character and building of
quality institutions to drive the policies.
“We need to think of our productivity. There is absolutely zero
incentive for productivity for the civil servants. Incentive drives
productivity. What we have presently is that cost of bad behaviour
is high.
As a result of this, what we need is the productivity of Nigeria.
Without improving our productivity level, we cannot compete with anyone
in the world. I believe the job is for public, private sector and individual
citizens. Investment, strong institutions and good leadership is needed to do
the job.
On his part, Dr. Joe Abba, Director General, Bureau of Pubic Service
Reform, stated that, “We still have a lot of gap to catch up with
Georgia. We must have continuous reform for business to
thrive in Nigeria. We look at paying taxes, trading across border, giving
credit for business, enforcing contracts and closing businesses.
We must build environment that will enable businesses to
operate. We have to think about power, to power factories and the
problem of high interest loan from banks. These are factors that
prevent businesses from growing in Nigeria.
Contributing, Dr. Konyinsola Ajayi, Managing Partner,
Olaniwun Ajayi, noted, “ We have multi-headed form of regulation. We have
to have serious legislative action to drive change. We should consider federal
character and statism, which is the fact that, many people see it as a means of
political patronage, hence many people in government.
“We must ensure that federal character has meaning by ensuring
there is proper representation in government and also ensure we take
statism into our affairs.
What we have is a mindset of federal control, which we need to work on.
So many things are concentrated at the centre and until we devolve power to the
states, not much will be achieved. I believe that if bones can be
broken by state governments, it can as well be broken at the federal
level.
“We must ensure that the judicial system do not stand in the way of
public service. Principles of law are there to ensure public
servants enjoy the liberty to take decisions.
He faulted the constitution of some government agencies that
double as regulator and operator and called for a review of their operation.
“You cannot be a regulator and still play in the field. I
think we need to begin to look into the system that with the hope that
will address the problem. Our demographics are defective and needs to be taken
into account for a better tomorrow.”
Joe Abah on efforts to Reforming Nigeria’s public service
Also speaking, Director of Bureau of Public Service Reform, Dr. Joe
Abah, said, “We have made a proposal on how we want to carry out reforms
in the public service. Following that we have made reviews of agencies and
parastatals. Public service reforms in the last two years have
focused
too heavily on ministries but it is the agencies that are closer to the
people and that can deliver on services. We should focus very
seriously on agency reforms. There is much duplication that has to
be addressed. We should set out framework through which we can
rationalize these agencies. We need to add additional focus to what
the agencies deliver and cost of running them.
Improving the business climate, public finance and address the
dislocations caused in the past. We need to have convergence in this
process. We have got the pressure from the citizens, now we
need the power from the government as well as the willingness to
achieve rapid change. It is important we have a commonality of understanding of
understanding for reforming public institutions.”
Source: Business Vanguard
