New York — Nigeria may be the giant of Africa and the world's sixth biggest exporter of crude oil but news on its economy is rarely reassuring. In recent years, daily reports have lamented rising inflation, a weakening foreign exchange rate and sluggish agricultural and industrial performance, even in sectors forecast to improve. Repeated shortages of petroleum products cause disruption and anger across the country and the government has barely managed to hold its own against organised labour's highly successful national strike on fuel prices and demands over pay.
In 1999, the new government of President Olusegun Obasanjo promised major political and economic reforms. For the mass of Nigerians, the key element was the promise to create two million jobs but these failed to materialise. In fact the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria reported last month that in 2001 more than 100,000 jobs in industry were actually lost, although that figure halved to 50,000 in 2002. In August this year, the National Association of Chambers of Commerce in Industry, Mines and Agriculture (Naccima) said it believed unemployment in Nigeria now stood at 70%.
Now over three months into his second term, President Obasanjo is under pressure to deliver what went unachieved in his first term. His economic team led by chief Economic Adviser Prof. Charles Soludo and Finance Minister Dr. Ngozi Iweala-Okonjo have launched the New National Economic Empowerment Development Strategy (NEEDS). Among many other things, the new plan aims to boost GDP's growth rate from around 3% to over 5%, to establish stable interest rates, reform the over-manned public services, better manage the country's massive foreign debt and its repayment, privatise key state-managed operations such as hotels, banks and utilities like the telecommunications giant, Nitel, and deregulate the petroleum industry's marketing and distribution structures. While few dispute that the plan's provisions are sorely needed, there is some scepticism that promises not kept in the past will be fulfilled this time.
While in New York for the UN General Assembly, President Obasanjo spoke to AllAfrica's Akwe Amosu on the struggle to get economic reform underway, and added his thoughts on Charles Taylor, the Liberian peace process and Robert Mugabe's chances of being invited to the forthcoming Commonwealth Summit.
Your administration recently racked up 100 days. What have you been able to achieve so far?
A hundred days in the life of a government that has four years is too short a time to be talking about achievement. But for me, what is important is that we have determined what our orientation will be, what our programme will be, so we now have a road map to take us through the next four years, a road map which subsequent administrations in Nigeria can follow. To me that is more important than saying what I have achieved.
The new economic plan sets out some pretty major goals, moving to 5% growth, stabilising exchange rates, inflation and so on; how soon will Nigerians see some signs that it's working and what will they be?
Well the reforms we are talking about are many but they are all interrelated and they are being coordinated. Let me take one, for instance - Monetisation, which means that [recipients of state salaries] will now be given money for the benefits they used to receive in kind - houses, cars, and suchlike. That will reduce a lot of waste and we have started that - we've done it with members of national assembly, with the political appointees, and we are now doing it with the civil servants. That, to me, is important. Also elimination of subsidy - deregulation is the word people prefer - deregulation of the downstream of the oil sector is going ahead apace,
Some people say, "but many of these are things you said you were going to do in the first term!" Are the critics unfair to ask why it has taken so long to get things like privatisation underway?"
Well privatisation is not a once-and-for-all thing. There are so many things to privatise and we have privatised some of them - some of them we have not achieved as much success as I would have wanted to achieve. But privatisation will not even end with my administration four years from now, it should be a continuous process.
We are trying to privatise the telecommunications. I believe to the extent that we now have GSM in private hands and all that - you can say that we have privatised that to a large extent. We will privatise the power sector which is divided into three, the generation, the transmission and the distribution. We are privatising the distribution first and I believe we will privatise to a large extent before the end of this year.
So to those who are criticising... we are doing what we say we will do. We have privatised the hotels and the banks, by and large; not all of them - I think there are still one or two hotels to be privatised but we have privatised a substantial lot of them; we've done the banks except one which we still have to do. So I'm satisfied, generally; we could have moved better, for instance, in the case of Nitel, we thought we'd privatise that but that is still to be privatised; but we did the dockyard and that type of thing so we're going on.
Much of the comment I've seen in the press has been positive about your economic plan, NEEDS, and about your choice of economic team. The one thing that keeps being asked is, how can the target level of 5% plus growth be achieved, given the high level of unemployment - NACCIMA even talked about 70% recently - and with many industries saying that they can't keep going in the current climate. What's your strategy?
Well I don't think... The figure that you are touting - 70% unemployment - where do they get that kind of figure from? If you quote that kind of figure to me, it will annoy me! Yes, there is unemployment, but I cannot tell you that it is 70% or 50%; so if anyone says that, I don't accept it - to put it mildly - and if you quote that to me you will annoy me. And I mean that. If 70% of the working population of Nigeria were not working then there would be a disaster in the country. So I wonder why you even quote that.
But I know there is unemployment in the country, there is in fact under-employment which is almost as bad as unemployment. But then, how do you deal with unemployment? Government must provide conducive environment for investment so that jobs can be created. I believe that government should deal with unemployment. If I have an office clerk and then, to create employment, I take another clerk, I'm creating redundancy rather than employment and that is not the way to go.
So I believe the major areas where employment can be created are the areas that we have targeted, agriculture and agriculture-related industry, solid minerals, areas of manufacturing, of tourism, these are areas that can really create jobs in large quantity. Oil and gas, for instance, are capital intensive and it doesn't create as much job as one will want to say.
What's your reaction to calls from the unions for more protection for industry?
But we're doing that, we're doing that. We are looking at what I belive we can produce. Take the poultry industry for instance. Because I talk to my colleague and brother in Ghana [President Kufuor], I know that the poultry industry in Ghana was almost completely destroyed because of dumping and all that. We cannot allow that. I saw that what was done in Ghana was about to be done in Nigeria and we put a stop to it.
Today, the poultry industry in Nigeria is thriving, in fact the Poultry Association saw me only less than two weeks ago and they said to me, "by third quarter of next year we will be reaching saturation point." And I said, yes, then this is the time to start thinking of export - to your neighbours first and then, going afield. There's no reason why we can't do that. And the good thing also about poultry is that you can have small-scale, medium-scale and large-scale, you can have a backyard poultry farm where you raise 200 or 300 broilers or layers and it works.
Looking at current events in Liberia, it looks as though the regional West African endeavours to get a peace process off the ground has been successful so far and the UN Security Council has supported the request for 15,000 troops. Is that decision the result of your efforts?
Well, if the Nigerian troops in the first instance and the Ecowas troops that joined later had not been there by now, the death toll in Liberia would have been getting near a million. So if now, after we have established separation between the combatants and the combatants have cooled off, the UN takes time to move in when they are ready, yes, of course.
There's a saying in my part of the world that it's when the soup is cool that a person who has a sore tongue can taste it. The soup is now reasonably cool and calm so the UN is welcome to begin peacekeeping in Liberia...
And you've taken the pepper out of the soup by removing Charles Taylor...
Well, yes, the pepper has also been taken out of the soup!
...is Mr Taylor under any restrictions in Calabar?
We gave him terms and conditions for his asylum and he has to abide by it but we didn't say, "you cannot move from A to B." Of course he should know that he has to watch his own security... but beyond that we did not say, "you have to remain in one room" or whatever.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
But can you imagine a situation in which he might misbehave to such an extent that you would say, "OK, no more protection, I'm handing you over to the war crimes court in Sierra Leone?
I think he's sensible enough not to allow that to happen. I believe he's sensible enough. He's not a fool.
While the indictment is in place he's only vulnerable if he leaves Nigeria, is that right?.
It's entirely up to him, I cannot guarantee his safety or security outside the borders of Nigeria.
But while he's there, nobody will interfere with him?
Well I made that a condition and I believe the international community tacitly agreed to that. I believe that we needed to get him out of Liberia... but I do believe that he, himself, will know that the eyes of the world are on him and he has to behave.
What about this issue of the money that he is alleged to have stolen? He's said to have taken $3m dollars that the Taiwanese had donated for humanitarian uses... and press reports suggest he has stolen $100m altogether; is there any legal process which could reach him in Nigeria regarding that claim?
I believe they can. Just as I've been going round the world looking for Nigerian money stolen and stashed away, and as I find it, I request the countries where it has been stashed to help us with repatriation. I believe his country can try to find out - if truly he has stolen money - where he has taken it and it's their right to recover the money from him.
Turning to Zimbabwe, Mr Mbeki has lately said it would be appropriate to invite Mr Mugabe to the forthcoming Commonwealth Summit in Abuja. Are you going to do that? He says it's a decision for you to make.
Well, it's a decision for me but it's not really a decision for me alone. It's a decision for me with the Commonwealth leaders and for now, after appropriate consultation, I believe that there should be a sea change in Zimbabwe for an invitation to be sent.
And closing down the only independent national newspaper, as the Harare government has recently done, presumably does not suggest a sea change?
I will say that if it qualifies as a sea change at all, its a negative sea change!
