The Nigerian government has operated on what I call after-thoughts in the last one month. Top government officials made pronouncements without thinking of their consequences only to retract or deny them shortly after. Consequently, Nigerians were subjected to avoidable embarrassment which also dented the image of the country. Such government officials have refused to obey the age-long maxim of thinking before talking or looking before leaping. This state of confusion has put investors within and outside the country perpetually on edge not knowing what next to expect from government’s inclination to talk now and think later. 

President Goodluck Jonathan acted first and thought of the implications of his recent ban of Nigeria from international football competition later. Jonathan failed to weigh his action and come out with a most effective way to deal with the recalcitrant and errant Nigerian Football Federation officials without making Nigeria lose face. One would have expected that there were programmes mapped out to deflate whatever action the football loving community including FIFA would take once the ban was made public. But no, there was no concrete plan B. The country was buffeted in stormy waters once FIFA gave its ultimatum to Nigeria to reverse the ban. Our president had to look for a face saving device to defuse the tension he unwittingly generated by not thinking his actions through.  He had to turn into a listening president overnight relying supposedly on the advice of his 76,000 face book friends and apology from NFF officials, who had earlier removed their leadership, to reverse a ban, which was totally unnecessary. If the president had thought things through, nothing would have stopped him from unleashing the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on the corrupt NFF leadership. After all, FIFA cannot stop Nigeria from fighting corruption once we can prove our case. 

Shortly after the banning episode, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, now famous for gaffes, retracted his statement that banks and the capital market were gambling centres and casinos. Such a pronouncement by Sanusi was bound to jolt the financial system. The stock market has been bearish for a long time now and many investors have lost confidence in it. Nigerians are equally weary of depositing money in the banks because of low interest rate and high inflation. An opinion that should further undermine the sector should not come from the CBN governor. Even though CBN, as an after-thought, published an advertorial, explaining that what Sanusi said was “misrepresented and sensationalised” the damage had already been done. 

As if that was not enough, on July 15, Dora Akunyili, information and communications minister, and Olusegun Aganga, minister of finance, mounted unconvincing defence of the financial status of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, the nation’s cash cow. Their action came in the wake of the statement by Remi Babalola, minister of state for finance, that NNPC was insolvent. The ministers didn’t deny that the NNPC owed the federal allocation and accounts committee, FAAC, N450 billion and that the federal government equally owed NNPC N1.5 trillion as Babalola said. This brouhaha would have been avoided had Babalola been more circumspect in his opinion and avoided the provocative word “insolvent” in describing the NNPC. Of course, Sanusi Barkindo, former group managing director of NNPC, had previously described the NNPC as “technically insolvent.” Never mind that Hamman Tukur, former chairman of the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, RMAFC, had, in May, opened the Pandora’s box when he pointedly said that Nigeria was bankrupt. According to Tukur, “all the money the country makes from crude oil is signed off to multinationals” which repatriate it to their home countries.

This is what government should be focusing on instead of perennially living in self denial and lying to the people that the country is not broke. One is not altogether surprised at this because living in self denial is one affliction which many Nigerians are suffering from of late because they are always expecting miraculous solutions to their problems. But let me get back to why government swiftly defended Babalola’s “wrong headed opinion.” If Babalola had weighed his words carefully, he would have realised that admitting that the NNPC is insolvent publicly invariably means that the federal government is equally broke. This could elicit ugly chain reactions both from within and abroad because our business partners would, no doubt, be wary to do business with us since we may not be credit worthy. But denying that there is a problem will do this government no good.  It would have paid it better to admit that there is a problem and look for concrete solutions.  Akunyili and Aganga appeared to want us to believe that everything is okay. Of course, everything is not okay, especially in these days of global economic crisis. Other countries are telling themselves the home truth and taking measures to solve their problems.

Here, we are embarking on an unbridled profligacy; warming up to spending N6.6 billion  to celebrate 50 years of dilapidated infrastructures, social amenities, joblessness, insecurity and corruption in every sphere of our national life. The lifestyle of members of the executive and that of the National Assembly with the latter spending N700 billion in 10 years, testifies to this unacceptable profligacy. Whereas other countries like the United Kingdom, Greece and Italy are all embarking on austerity measures to solve their financial problem, our government is still living in a fool’s paradise.

The problem goes beyond the NNPC. It has to do in a large measure with the huge deficit government is running because of over bloated recurrent expenditure with little investment in regenerative ventures, oil subsidy and the corruption in the partnership agreements we have with joint venture companies as was reported in the cover story of this magazine entitled: “Nigeria is Bankrupt” of May 10.

The earlier we admit that there is a problem with our finances, the earlier we can take well thought out measures to solve it. Let someone save the country from being run on after-thoughts.

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