Posted by Pinni Jason on
There is a way the Igbos rebuke jaundiced criticism. They liken it to a man who was totally blind to a bushy, un-kept and overgrown hair, but who immediately begins to criticize the hairstyle as soon as it is cut! That is the way I see the barrage of criticism that has assailed the news of possible debt relief to Nigeria by the Paris Club.
There is a way the Igbos rebuke jaundiced criticism. They liken it to a man who was totally blind to a bushy, un-kept and overgrown hair, but who immediately begins to criticize the hairstyle as soon as it is cut! That is the way I see the barrage of criticism that has assailed the news of possible debt relief to Nigeria by the Paris Club. I am the first to admit that every Nigerian has a right to question and the freedom to express his or her views on the management of our affairs. But such a right, we all know, does not include shouting fire in a crowded cinema hall.
Most of what is going on now amounts to sounding off or a me-too craving to be heard. I say so because people are beginning to misrepresent facts and misquote others, thus unnecessarily prolonging and expanding the frontiers of a needless bellyaching.
Take for example, my colleague here, Dr. Dele Shobowale in his Sunday column wrote: 'My usually perceptive colleague, Chief Pini Jason, even attributed this ‘‘marvelous achievement'' to the ‘‘dollarisation'' of the Finance Minister's remuneration package. Indeed, if ‘‘dollarisation'' of minister's salaries is all it takes to achieve results in government, perhaps the President should consider paying ministers in dollars especially the Minister of Works who still cannot get even the fastest moving vehicle to cover Lagos to Benin City in ten hours on a rainy day."
I am shocked that Dr. Shobowale could simply take the title of my article and run off like that without reading the entire article or even a substantial portion of it, and proceed to draw a terribly flawed conclusion. He has no right to mislead the reading public by any imputation that I could infer that the debt relief was achieved simply because the Minister of Finance is paid in dollars! I hope I have not, myself, misunderstood Dr. Shobowale!
Now let me reproduce substantially what I wrote concerning the debt relief debate and the debate about the denomination of certain ministers', not just the Finance Minister's salary: 'My humble intervention then was that we should rather focus on the value we could get from these experts and also ask ourselves if what we are paying public officers and civil servants is realistic, especially at a time we are fighting corruption. Rather than quarrel about the salaries of the Okonjo-Iwealas, I said we ought to call for a realistic review of public officers' salaries in order to attract quality manpower. Look at the pedigree of the Obasanjo economic team again. Their success shows the value we could get if we got more of them home at the right cost. Nigeria is the only country that has been inexplicably shy of using her experts that litter international organizations and multilateral institutions. Prof Richard Joseph has raised this issue many times. One of the inhibiting factors in attracting Nigerian experts home is the poor condition of service here and the kind of petty jealousy Dr. Okonjo-Iweala's terms of appointment precipitated." It is hard for anybody who read the entire article to make the banal summation my friend Dr. Shobowale did.
Anybody who says that, perhaps, the excitement in government quarters should be restrained till we cross the final hurdle in this delicate negotiation in September may be absolutely right. But to imply that we have been hoodwinked is the unkindest cut. Of course, it is no great discovery to state as Dr S.P. Chu Okongwu did, that 'nothing has been concluded for now", and nobody, including the Minister of Finance said so. In all her interviews that I read on the matter, she harped on a 'framework" having been agreed. And Dr. Okongwu's criticism was based on this framework whether it is 'on Naples term" or 'up to Naples term." If it is that, then those who are asking where was it written in black and white that we have been given debt relief of US$ 18 bn are simply being unserious. If you are owing US$30 bn and the Naples term is 60 to 67 per cent, simple arithmetic ought to tell us where the $18 or $20 billion came from. So what is all this pedantic ballyhoo about? Oh! I forgot! The minister has not shown us the physical cash!
This debate is fast assuming the character of IBB's IMF debate, which was reduced to personal attack on then Minister of Finance, Dr Kalu Idika Kalu. Some journalist even called him kalokalo! Now we are being told that some people in government probably personally benefited from the debt management deal! All manner of know-it-alls obfuscated the IMF debate and hassled Gen Babangida into taking a tragic policy option that aggravated our woes, and thereafter they all took cover. Nigeria's debt problem did not arise today or just because the government reached a framework of exit strategy with Paris Club. It has always been there.
It was there when Onalapo Soleye was Minister of Finance under Gen Buhari. He tiptoed around the matter but nothing was done. It was there when Kalu Idika Kalu was briefly Minister of Finance and we chased him out over the IMF and Dr Chu Okongwu took over. What was the level of our debt during Chu Okongwu's tenure? How did it balloon to $30 bn? What did Chu Okongwu do? Why is he now particular about the hairstyle? What was Abacha's response to the debt?
This is international finance and not a debt from an esusu club. When we went to borrow we exposed ourselves to the conditions and the manipulations of the creditors. What is wrong in some of the very laughable suggestions some people are vending is that they invariably focus exclusively on the moment and do not think of what happens tomorrow. Paying $12 billion to the Paris Club is not the only way we can part with such money but it is obviously not the worst way. We have had cases of blown Gulf war windfall. So the money we refuse to pay to exit the debt trap could end up tomorrow in some private foreign bank account. Oil price could plummet tomorrow and we may not have another opportunity to release ourselves from the debt. And let's face it. The creditors have no reason to quarrel with us if we decide to continue having the debt overhang. The $12 billion we are to pay now may appear too much in the short term, but I want to be told how we can escape a long-term repercussion and greater financial loss if we fail to exit now.
Dr Shobowale, pursuing his argument based on a clear misunderstanding of my drift said: 'Countries in Africa whose ministers are paid far less than Dr Okonjo-Iweala and whose Presidents did not live permanently in their official Boeing 727, as Obasanjo had done since 1999, received debt relief on more favourable terms than Nigeria.
So what is the bid deal?" I will tell him. Nigeria is not Niger Republic or Benin. That is one. The big deal is that Nigeria's case was more daunting than the other African countries'. Nigeria, in the eyes of the world, was a rich country. But the corruption of our leaders reduced us to a rich poor country. Money stolen by Nigerian leaders sit in many vaults in Europe and America and our creditor knew it. So to convince them that we are really poor in terms of our population vis-ŕ-vis our income from oil was difficult. Our creditors were witnesses to our ostentatious and scandalous lifestyle of the pseudo-rich and our mismanagement of our national resources. These made our negotiating debt relief rather daunting! Anybody who does not appreciate this is unlikely to appreciate the troubles the minister went through and why she was elated!
One thing we urgently need to do is to learn to accept and appreciate our modest achievements. If we don't, we are unlikely to recognize progress if we see one. What we should be debating now is how to keep out of future debt, and how to keep the hands of our leaders out of our till, and not to romanticize our debtor status as if it never worried us as a nation. And we must try to keep our criticism factual, serious, informed and not casual and reckless.