WED 08 SEPT, 2021-theGBJournal- The current president of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, convener of “The New Nigeria Group”, and presidential hopeful Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa has said that if he becomes president, oil earnings would no longer be directly appropriated in annual budgets, but would be ploughed into the Sovereign Wealth Fund, invested, and proceeds appropriated accordingly.
Ohuabunwa whose presidential ambition was recently endorsed by about fifty interest groups including Ohaneze and Arewa political groups, told our Partner publication, The New Edition in a recent interview that more value will be derived from Nigeria’s oil wealth if managed in the manner he proposes.
He said that this new approach would be adopted in the third year of his presidency, using the first two years to transit from the budget regime he would meet in 2023, as well as lay the foundation for the massive adjustment.
During the first two-year period, the civil service would be rationalised with many officers moved into tangible production in industry and agriculture, even with a massive network of venture capital or star-up projects fully backed by government. Government support would not only be by way of removing unnecessarily long bureaucratic tapes, but also directly participating in industry regulatory activities.
The first budget that will be done will be towards the second year of the administration. Another year will be allowed. The period up till the second year would be to allow business ventures put in place to firm up with income and wealth-creating activities.
He said that when in the third year, oil earnings would be removed from the annual budgets, and posted direct to the Sovereign Wealth Fund, where they will be invested in carefully strategised instruments. It is only the dividends that would be reflected in the annual budgets.
In the over one-hour interview, Mazi Ohuabunwa a highly traversed technocrat who has held leadership positions in many concerns across almost all the industries of the economy as well as public sector assignments, also said his mission would include returning national prestige and international respect to Nigeria. He would also endeavour to build strong and permanent bridges across the many interests in Nigeria, as well as institutionalising a collective value system for all Nigeria.
There are usually two broad types of presidents: – the politician and the technocrat. You belong to the second type. What are your quality credentials that should earn you the office of president? We Asked-
His answer: Like you said, I am a technocrat. I have been trained to be leader of any big organisation, such as Nigeria. My training as a CEO is such that I have handled many big projects. I have dealt with people of different diversities both in Nigeria and outside Nigeria. Part of my training is in knowing this country; understanding its dynamics, because as I grew in my career, I traveled round the country as sales manager; as marketing manager.
So Pfizer, Nimeth and all the business opportunities I have had, trained me as a manager and as a leader. And I believe that what Nigeria needs is a Manager; a competent leader. Competence is in being able to conceive and design programmes and projects and in being able to harness resources and channel them to solving problems.
Of course you know that during my time as CEO of Pfizer, I was the first person to lead a large management buy-over of a multinational (from the Americans). It was a big ticket transaction that thought one how to negotiate; how to raise funds, how to frame relationships, such as between an African group and an American group like Pfizer.
Further, I went to school in Nigeria and in the United States – in Columbia, where I did executive management. That opened me up to the global space beyond the fact that I worked for a multinational. Since then, I have grown from being an employee/employer to being an entrepreneur.
I was president of the Nigerian Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA); Chairman of the Nigeria Economic Summit Group; President of the Nigeria-America Chamber of Commerce and two-time President of the Organised Private Sector, and as you know, it is rotated among the different sub-groups in the sector. And it came to me twice. This also opened me up not only in being part of fashioning out Nigeria’s future economically, because it was through these we did vision 2010, and Vision 20-2020. It was during my time at NECA that I attended the National Political Reform Conference, which President Obasanjo organised in 2005/2006.
History has shown that successful presidents are often those who come prepared, not those thrown up by fortuitous circumstances. Those who have done most of the thinking and come with a blueprint. Is he prepared to be president?
The technocrat said he done all the thinking. ‘’What is now left is implementation. First let us understand that what our country needs now can be wrapped into four items. The first is poverty eradication. What must be done is that Nigerians will be adequately psyched up with entrepreneurial education. With this, we will be able to have a good number of our youth of working age, prepared for business rather than for work. Yes, some will still work. But we do not want a situation where the majority of our school leavers would be looking for who to employ them. What we are looking at is a situation where between 30-40 percent of school leavers go into business. This will even create more opportunities for the remaining 70-60 percent job seekers whose labour would then become better priced.
How would this be done? By re-orientating our school curricular. When people get into school, they will be thought how to solve a problem and then know how to create wealth. It does not matter what course your read. Even for the liberal arts, sciences, and all, rather than the long essays as degree projects, it would be a business plan.
There would be what we call Small Business Administration Authority. It will be towards turning Nigeria into a business and construction site. Nigeria will be a huge business centre where everyone will be doing one business or the other. The idea is to produce enough for the local market, such that exports will be based on surpluses.
Government will directly support businesses. Today, government regulatory activities for instance is rather routine. There is no direct interface between the government and business in a way that will help grow the businesses.
The petroleum industry is the goose that lays the golden egg. How can we put the industry to more value? ‘’We are going to move oil earnings from our annual budgets from our third year, direct to the Sovereign Wealth Fund, and would no longer be shared as is currently being done. It will be invested in near-cash and other assets and the proceeds ploughed into our regular income. It is such proceeds that will appear in the budget, not oil earnings.
Our target would be the Africa Continental Free Trade Zone. We intend that Nigeria takes over the market. The way to go is simple. Government will directly support business, and the end result will be surplus production. This will not only reduce prices but would provide the impetus for export. And the government will also push export.
You have talked about government support for private business. How are you going to do this differently from what we see today? ‘’Nigeria will assist producers to export. We will set the standards, and once you meet these standards, we will push your exports. First, all the bureaucratic bottlenecks exporters encounter will be no more because government will be partners in the business, and therefore will have interest in the particular exports in question. A government department will be an export agent. It will navigate through the processes on behalf of the exporter and get dividends at the end of the export chain. This way, government becomes an enabler and not a stumbling block in the entire export chain. And for this, you pay a fee.
Going back to the issue of government involvement in private ventures- How would he end such involvement? ‘’The civil service is full of many hands duplicating duties. It will be rationalized. Many will be redeployed to directly oversee government interests in private ventures in line with the model I am talking about. Others may be financed in different other business ventures. There is also full commercial agriculture. This could be fully mechanized all through the massive arable lands in all the north and south of Nigeria. Machinery can be easily procured from China both for primary production and for processing.
On Corruption he said ‘’our main approach to fighting corruption is to first kill the impetus for it. The first thing to do is to change the wage structure. We are going to pay living wages. We will do this by indexing the wage (structure) either to inflation or to devaluation; whichever is the greater problem.
This is such that when there is devaluation there is an automatic adjustment in salary. Government would not wait for agitations, protests or strikes before adjusting wages. This way, the purchasing power of the worker will remain relatively adequate. This will greatly reduce the tendency to steal or commit fraud.
For the ethnic question, for example, there would be two questions, and each one will have a follow-up question. Question one: “do you want us to continue to live together?” The follow up question if an agreed majority answers in the affirmative, would be “how?”. Here the basis of co-existence will be amicably agreed. If on the other hand majority says “no”, then the question that follows would be how we want to separate such that everyone is protected. There are good examples where this has happened, such as the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and so on. God did not create Nigeria. What He created were ethnic groups. And they existed before Nigeria was formed.
Next is insecurity of which insurgency is the most culprit. How would he address insurgency? ‘’Insurgency is in two categories. There are the religious ones; those that want to form a caliphate. The second are the marauders; the kidnappers. The insurgents will be given an ultimatum; a period within which to lay down their arms. When they do this, there will be rehabilitation through vocation camps. The others that may refuse to lay down arms, will be dealt with frontally. We will not be ashamed to seek external help if we have to. Next we will reform both the police for a more effective internal security and, of course the military.
President Nelson Mandela said that Africa will not be respected until Nigeria earns such respect. How would you help put Nigeria on its appropriate position in the world map?
The first way to earn respect from other nations is to produce and to strengthen your earning power. When you produce and become less dependent on others, you will earn their respect. Next is acquire the capacity to export. Next is to get things working and orderly. By the time we go into production as I have already said, and pay living wages, we will complement these with adequate private-public-partnership-driven infrastructure. This will further drive the orderliness needed for others to respect you. Where you have to pay for infrastructure, there will be differential pricing such that those that cannot afford the right prices will get some subsidy. It will not be subsidy across the board. And don’t forget, all these things I have just mentioned will also help reduce corruption which is another factor that brings disrespect to us.
In sum we will impact on all the indices that drive respectability: corruption perception index, human development index, life expectancy, maternal and child mortality rates, and so on. In four years, Nigeria will be respected.
We asked-Your primary constituency is the pharmaceutical industry. Our on-going experience as Nigerians, Africans, regarding poor access to COVID-19 vaccines has brought yet again to the fore, the “Big Pharma Conspiracy” question. How do we take our fate in terms of access to essential medicines in our own hands? ‘’The issue is to create these differentials. Why do we not have access to medicines? There is the issue of cost of production, the brittleness of the industry, investment climate, funding, and then the regulatory system. There is for instance the very serious issue of copyright infringement.
When people indiscriminately copy your work, it becomes difficult to sustain your production. We need to ensure that cost of production is manageable. We need to ensure that the tax regime encourages production. When these are done, people (outside Nigeria) may even come and produce here.
There is also the issue of R&D where we are not present. Yet it is the engine of growth for any science-based industry. But now we at PSN are doing something about it. We have even engaged the CBN (Central Bank of Nigeria) which has agreed to help drive the process (of R&D). A percentage of our national income will be devoted to research by law when I become the president.
Another thing we will do is an adequate and compulsory health insurance scheme. A lot of funding for medicines will come from the scheme. Don’t forget that this thing we call healthcare delivery is mostly about drugs. With such a scheme, essential medicines will be more readily available.
TNE: Please tell us briefly but precisely about “The New Nigeria Group” ‘’The New Nigeria Group is a political movement. It is composed of all those who are unsatisfied with the way things are going and want to change the trajectory of Nigeria and who are determined to change the narrative. The vision is to grow a new Nigeria from its present underdevelopment, into a first world country. A country that will be respected by the rest of the world.
A country that is globally competitive, and a country that is at peace with itself. A country where people live like human beings; a country where the dignity of man is restored. A country where the office of the citizen is higher than the office of the president. A country where the Nigerian citizen will have a mandate.
If (in the new Nigeria) a citizen writes a letter to a government office and does not get a reply within say one week, it will be an offence. Today one writes and no one cares. No one replies. There will be a law to take care of this. Nigeria will be a country where people live happily together as equals. It will no longer be a question of tolerating one another. We will build a Nigeria where the value system will change. It will be a knowledge-based nation. A nation of people with integrity.
A nation with manufacturing capacity. A nation that initiates and completes an industrial chain. Who plants cocoa and manufactures chocolate (for example); who plants rubber and manufactures tyres; who drills oil and produces PMS (prime motor spirit), diesel and all the other aggregates that go with crude petroleum. A country that has adequate capacity to export. All these will happen in Nigeria again.
Above all, Nigeria will be a nation that fears God with no sacred cows. We have today, established units in 34 of the 36 states of the federation. We will either join an existing political party or morph into a new one.
Twitter-@theGBJournal|Facebook-The Government and Business Journal|email: govandbusinessj@gmail.com
