State of the Nation: How Nigerians can take back their country — Utomi

Professor Pat Utomi, former presidential aspirant, a professor of political economy and management expert is worried by Nigeria’s state of affairs and wants urgent action to halt the country’s slide to economic abyss. Utomi, who is currently on Woodrow Wilson’s fellowship in the United States and won’t return till May 2025, told Vanguard why he is on a ‘light japa.’ He spoke on why President Bola Tinubu cannot be excused from the current hardship, why politicians cannot save the country, and how to move Nigeria’s economy from consumption to production among others.

You said your trip to the USA is light Japa (emigrating for greener pastures)…
I won’t say it is japa at all. I went for a fellowship which I do regularly. Every 10 years, I accept a fellowship abroad, and write a new book. That’s the routine and I have done it many times.

How many fellowships are you involved with in the US?
It can’t be more than one technically at a time, even though I’m doing adjunct teaching in many universities, but I’m basically on Woodrow Wilson fellowship.

I thought you went for medication and mid-way decided to go for a fellowship programme?
I was out here last year, I had some health challenges. So, it was suggested that I open myself up to accept fellowships and all that and I said, ‘why not?’ That is how I accepted this one.

So you’ll be away for how long?
Until next year, at the end of May next year.

What is your take on the state of the nation?

It is distressing. It is very disconcerting especially because for some reasons the triumph of politics has prevented some politicians from thinking clearly and they are almost sacrificing the country at the altar of their egos or pursuit of whatever it is that they are chasing.

Policies are not well thought-through. They are designed essentially to be political games to either gain international legitimacy with people who don’t care about the Nigerian people, who don’t care what the Nigerian people are dealing with. So they are making fundamental mistakes because they are not focusing on the people.

You predicted that this will happen in one of your books, which book is that?
The book is titled: “Why Not?” and subtitled: “Citizenship, State Capture, Creeping Fascism and Criminal Hijack of Politics in Nigeria.”

When did you write this book?
During the course of the 2019 elections; I showed increasing fascism tendencies in the way politicians think. If you go back, look at how the Bola Tinubu ascendancy came, it mirrors Hitler’s ascendancy very clearly in Germany. That was why I warned about creeping fascism.

You go back and look at state capture, I was on the board of some South African companies for years. The South Africans were really out to check state capture after the Guptas and what they did with Zuma became an issue. But we see how the Eko Atlantic people, the Chagouris and several other people have more than been captured, we can’t even talk about state capture. I warned about this coming, now it has gone beyond capture.

The Nigerian political system is now a complete criminal enterprise. People don’t have any faith in the electoral process. The judiciary is captured. Institutions like the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, police and military are captured, so it feels like Nigerians are in slavery and the only option is either violent revolt or somehow do what they did in Sri Lanka or bangladesh Unless the political class can wake up, look at their country and trace back their steps, we are in a finished state

Supporters of President Tinubu said he is less than two years in office and that he did not cause all the problems they are ascribing to him. How do you see that?
I’m not into who caused or did not cause. I can say publicly that part of my departure from Asiwaju Bola Tinubu was that I went to him in 2019 and told him that President Buhari was leading us to a dangerous place and that we should speak up, we should act as his so-called party members, but he was more strategic than concerned about Nigerians.

He kept quiet through Buhari’s starving eight years. So, I cannot absolve anybody, they all saw it coming and compounded it, and the policies that they were taking so abrasively, and unthinkingly have compounded the problem.

Some attribute the current hardship to President Tinubu’s removal of fuel subsidy removal and floating of the naira. Do you agree?
Because of the way people have created Nigerian politics of we versus them, between us and them, people stopped thinking, I wrote a piece which was published about a few weeks ago titled: ‘The Danger of stupid idiots.”

I just went into philosophers, economic historians and how they defined stupidity and how the Greeks defined idiots. Because we have a pervasive culture of stupid idiots in the country you cannot have a public conversation, people will be saying I’m for this man, you are against this man, people have stopped thinking.

Let me speak on the fuel subsidy. I have always been against subsidy quaso, that is subsidy that is about encouraging consumption and subsidizing an elite, because that is what Nigeria’s subsidy is majorly about, subsidizing the elite. It has no major impact on the average person but subsidizing the consumption patterns of an elite that is not very thoughtful.

If you are going to remove subsidies as we have all over the world, focus on subsidizing production. How can you use access to that price of fuel to stimulate people producing? But subsidy policy does not support production and so if you just say we are removing subsidy without putting thought to its impact then you are going to compound the matter.

We need indigenous intellectual class that will look at how to move Nigeria from consumption to production.

How long do you think it will take us to recover?
I don’t know what they will do next, they might do worse.

There was another book you wrote, Power, Policy, Politics and Performance…
I discussed these issues in that book. I looked at how we tried to reform, even when Dr Ngozi Okonjo Iweala and co came back under President Olusegun Obasanjo as Finance minister, one of the problems was that they were jumping in from outside, trying to fix something using the textbook of Washington.

Their ideas were a good template but you have to understand where the problems of Nigerian policies are coming from. What do you do to make them realize that the future of the country rests on their back rather than instructing them? So they were playing games with her.

Obasanjo’s sagacity did some good but generally if you talk to people like Yayale Ahmed and co, as I did, you will find out that the civil servants were just playing games with the reforms that Ngozi tried to introduce. So, we need to rethink how we reform, we need to give ownership of reform processes to critical stakeholders who will sit down and look at it critically.

Going back to Malaysia when Mahathir Mohammad wanted to begin the reform processes in the 70’s, he created what was called the New Economic Policy and essentially brought everybody into the loop using a statement that was essentially Lyndon Johnson’s statement, who was the President of the United States of America in the 60’s. He made this statement that its better for everybody to be inside the house pissing out instead of some people outside pissing in, because if it’s that way the house will be smelling, you will not enjoy it. So if everyone is inside the house, you’ll get the kind of cooperation that you’re looking for that will make it work.

Our reformers did not get that depth of understanding. We didn’t get that support from the high horses in the civil service under Ngozi and we are worse off for it. They destroyed our structural programme, educational system, etc.

We are supposed to be a learning system, returning on experience, but we are repeating the same mistakes we made in the past. I couldn’t figure out the choices Emefiele made but these were things that took us years to finally get the foreign exchange market to become stable. All we had to do was manage our proclivity to consume what we did not produce especially when we relied on only one source of foreign exchange and quickly diversify the base of the economy so that revenues can flow from other sources in foreign exchange.

Our economy was dependent on rent rather than production, Emefiele then compounded it to give them more opportunities for more rent and this is where we have landed ourselves.

What is your advice to Nigerians?
Nigerians have to recognize that the politicians can’t save them, politicians don’t even understand what they are doing and they don’t care, they are all looking out for themselves.

This became clearer to me when Kayode Fayemi was speaking at Prince Emeka Obasi’s lecture. He was asked by Eniola Bello why he didn’t do much when he entered government, Fayemi said the way Nigeria is structured today politicians cannot save the people. The people must take their country back and save themselves. That is the truth of the matter. We don’t have a political class, they don’t know what they are doing, they are too greedy and self-centred to be able to make the country progress. So the people must take back their country.

How can the people take back their country?
There are many ways to do it. You can chase them out like they did in Bangladesh or you make sure that there is due electoral process.

People see something wrong going on and just look on. No. You seize the process and make sure that elections count, that people’s votes count. You sue them everywhere in international courts.

So people must focus on what can make the country work, if they do they’ll force these people out.