Professor Francis Ogbimi of the Technology Planning and Development Unit (TPDU), Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife rubbishes the recent altercation between Olusegun Aganga, the Finance Minister and Professor Charles Soludo, the erstwhile CBN Governor, accusing both of being responsible for the mismanagement of the country’s economy…

The quarrel between Professor Charles Soludo and Mr. Olusegun Aganga is laughable. It is laughable because it amounts to the kettle describing the coal pot as a black thing. Mr. Aganga, the incumbent Minister of Finance, is behaving the same way Professor Soludo, the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and other economists and accountants do while in government. They merely talk of money and changes in the quantity of money in the economy without being able to manage the economy to achieve sustainable economic growth and industrialisation (SEGI).

It is the economists and accountants who have mismanaged the Nigerian economy into its pitiable state. They have one theory. To them, money is life and life is all about making money; economic management is all about sourcing money because money is the primary source of economic growth; foreign investments and loans is all Nigeria needs to solve the myriad of problems confronting her. **Q**Rather than acknowledging their lack of understanding of how to manage our economy, they divert the attention of the illiterate citizens to trivialities. The press is very active in assisting economists, accountants and bankers who mismanage the economy to focus citizens’ attention on irrelevant things.**Q** It is the press that tells us that our revered economists and accountants attended Harvard, Oxford, London School of Economics (LSE), etc. It is also the press that writes that somebody worked in all the firms in Wall Street, New York. It is the press that sustains the senseless campaign that all we need is foreign investments.

A short while after Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was elected the President of Nigeria in 1999, he appointed Professor Soludo as the Chief Economic Adviser to the President. Later on, Prof. Soludo was appointed the CBN Governor and Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was appointed the Minister of Finance. It was Prof. Soludo and others who introduced the programme they named NEEDS - National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy in May 2004. Professor Soludo and his men and women who constituted the economic team claimed that NEEDS was Nigeria’s homegrown poverty reduction strategy, a medium-term strategy(2003- 2007) which derived from Nigeria’s long-term goals of poverty reduction, wealth creation, employment generation and value re-orientation. The Structural Adjustment Programme(SAP) which Nigeria and many other African nations had adopted in the 1980s had been implemented for decades in Nigeria. NEEDS did not add anything to SAP. NEEDS was SAP re-named by Prof. Soludo and his co-team members.

Prof. Soludo and Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala were the experts who brought the concepts of right-sizing and down-sizing, claiming that Nigeria needs to retrench workers for the economy to start growing. Retrenchment and privatization had been the two central programmes in the SAP package. The SAP package adopted by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, the military President of Nigeria, encouraged by SAP-apostles economists (Chief Olu Falae, Dr. Kalu Idika Kalu, Dr. Usman, Dr. Pascal Dozie, Mr. Atedo Peterside, others) had sapped Nigeria and Nigerians for about 18 years before Prof. Soludo introduced NEEDS-1. SAP continued to sap Nigeria and Nigerians all through the period 2004-2007 while the National Planning Commission reported a high growth rate without impact on employment.

The Yar’Adua-Jonathan administration which proposed a 7-point agenda added nothing to SAP (or NEEDS-1). That explains why Mr. Aganga, the Finance Minister is still measuring high growth rate without development today. What is quite surprising is that our economists do not think that it is not proper that a nation should merely achieve growth without development.

In a news item entitled: Economic growth not robbing off positively on Nigerians - Aganga, in the Daily Independent newspaper, Tuesday, December 7, 2010, p.5, the Hon. Minister of Finance while speaking in a public hearing at the House of Representatives put together jointly by the House Committee on Finance and Aids, Loans and Debt Management, for the justification for bilateral and sovereign loans by the Federal and states, was quoted to have said, “Our economy as of now regardless of what anyone says, is doing well, this means that the level of growth which we have experienced this year is much higher than most other countries in the world. We are in the top 10 in the world in terms of growth---but our level of unemployment is high--- So, we have growth without job creation and employment, therefore the impact is not felt well enough in the life of the average Nigerian--- the focus of government now is on measuring our success by measuring the jobs we create; making sure we are focusing on job creation.” Mr Aganga thinks it is just a matter of setting up a committee to count jobs created. He should first explain the relationship among employment, productivity and inflation. This unfortunately is beyond economics as a subject.

Again, in a news item in the DAILY INDEPENDENT newspaper, Friday, December 10, 2010, p. 21, entitled, Nigeria had no economic blueprints for 28 years, says Usman, the Hon. Minister of the National Planning Commission, said that until the introduction of the Vision 20: 2020 by the present administration, Nigeria did not have strategic national development planning or economic blueprints in the last 28 years of her nationhood. Dr. Usman made that claim at the meeting of the National Council on Development Planning (NCDP) and the Joint Planning Board(JPB) held in Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State. The minister represented by the Secretary of the NPC, Professor Sylvester Monye, also said that Nigeria has been wobbling and fumbling over the years in terms of development due to lack of culture and discipline of planning.

Usman as the incubent Minister of the National Planning Commission is the Chairman of the Vision 20:2020 Implementation Committee. The Vision 20-2020 is based on growth projection of 13.5 percent. Is it 13.5 percent growth without development? It cannot be! No nation achieves its goals by merely achieving trivial growth or growth without development – the type Nigerian economists have been rejoicing over for about 50 years. Nigeria has always had plans. Nigeria had four National Plans in the period 1960-1985. The SAP-apostles economists including Dr. Shamsudeen Usman, encouraged Gen. Babangida to adopt SAP and its 3-year rolling plans. Nigeria is still implementing SAP because all the elements are still with us. The main elements of SAP are: 1) the mandatory foreign exchange market, now the Dutch Auction System, 2) privatization of the economy, 3) deregulation of the economy, 4) senseless campaign for foreign investments and loans, 5) neglect of education and production. Vision 20:2020 has nothing different from all the other plans Nigeria has adopted.

In terms of substance, Nigeria has not been planning. That is because the plans have always lacked growth elements. This also means that the so-called Vision 20:2020 is not a plan because it lacks growth elements. All economists believe that capital investments promote sustainable economic growth and industrialization (SEGI) but they are wrong; mere capital investments do not promote SEGI. Learning – education and training, is the primary source of SEGI. Employment in quantity and quality is the blood of the economy. Nigeria’s mass unemployment is the cardinal proof of its stagnation.