By Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye
Auwal Ibrahim Musa Rafsanjani, Executive Director, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), Head of Transparency International (Nigeria), Amnesty International (Nigeria) Board of Trustee Chairman, and Chairman, Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), spoke on what the Buhari’s administration should be remembered for and the pitfalls the incoming administration of Bola Tinubu should avoid to unite the country and recover the economy.
A new administration comes on stream May 29, how will you rate the outgoing administration of President Muhammadu Buhari?
While we commend some initiatives and attempts by the administration towards fighting corruption and revamping critical infrastructure facilities, however, we cannot conceal the fact that despite vast recovered and repatriated assets, Nigeria is left with a high debt profile necessitated by unattended mismanagement, diversion, re-looting, lack of transparency and accountability in public expenditure. Under this administration, Nigerians suffer lingering socio-economic inequalities, poor and mismatched response to issues at policy levels.
The administration was marked by deliberately instituted challenges frustrating independent institutions and governance like disobedience to the rule of law, partially independent judiciary, and legislatures, and discouraged anti-graft institutions. We applaud efforts of judicial staff and anti-corruption operatives in upholding justice, despite persistent political interference in their work and justice process like unchecked Presidential pardon to high-profile financial crimes which constitutes a major sabotage and threat to criminal justice system and staff respectively. The regime is also known for disobedience to the rule of law which results in public distrust in judiciary; it undermines human rights and freedom as well as civic space in Nigeria.
Again, the weak or poor legislative oversight on the executives and processes paved the way for eroded public transparency and accountability among all levels of institutions reportedly soaked in unchecked mismanagement, monumental embezzlement and endemic corruption. This includes the recent counter-productive development in the Defence and Security sector, where appropriated funds are diverted to private pockets through a secluded procurement process, impacting negatively on the efficiency of military and security operations in Nigeria. Majority of Nigerians are faced with real-time poverty, gross inequality, and injustice resulting from insensitive policies and inactions of successive administrations to peoples’ plights, expectations and aspirations. Under this government of Buhari, the education and health care system equally suffered, with poor infrastructure and unattended industrial actions have widened existing gaps in quality education and health care attainment and inequality among Nigerians especially women and youths .
The poor economic management has resulted in high cost of governance, diversion and embezzlement. The recent poorly implemented Naira re-design policy exposed the majority of Nigeria to precarious socio-economic challenges including the crippled businesses. This opacity impedes socio-economic development with negative impact on macro-economic stability, job creation and other socio-economic activities that drive growth and development of Nigeria.
How do you think the President-elect can unite Nigeria given the divisions and acrimony that trailed the 2023 elections?
Demonstrated commitment towards national unity should constitute a topmost priority of the incoming administration. The President-elect must work to develop a new policy framework with comprehensive mutual benefit to address existing communal challenges and compensate victims of social injustice and marginalisation to foster national integrity. This commitment must reflect in his appointments and policy decisions. We recall that following the general elections, some individuals or groups have embarked on institutionalising unlawful actions to undermine democratic values, inflame mayhems and public disorder as recently demonstrated in unconstitutional restriction of fellow citizens’ rights and freedom of movement, targeted destructions to lives and public property, and unguarded divisive utterances, primarily to aggravate ethnic tensions and communal instabilities. The incoming administration must work to uphold democratic values which are meant to pilot unity in diversity, socio-economic opportunities for betterment of every Nigerian, promote peaceful co-existence, secure citizens’ rights and freedom, and protect the vulnerable groups. The administration must work with Civil Society and the media to cascade appropriate policy information and citizens’ re-orientation programmes to mitigate impact of reported cases of divisive utterances, hate speeches and provocation, to complement policy effort towards sustainable peaceful co-existence.
The outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari is leaving the office with Nigeria’s debt profile of N77 trillion, how can the incoming Tinubu-led administration tackle the huge debt burden?
Without doubt, Nigeria’s national debt is growing and increasingly putting the country in a precarious situation, with significant implications for human rights, including education and health. The country’s total public debt stock as at September 2022 was N44 trillion (103 billion dollars) and the incoming administration would inherit a debt burden of N77 trillion by June 2023, if the proposed N23.7 trillion CBN loan is securitized. This will only worsen with the poor revenue generation and endemic effect of exchange rate volatility. Nigeria spent N2.3 trillion, an equivalent amount to its ESP in 2019 on debt servicing and for the first time in its history, debt servicing surpassed its revenue in April 2022, when retained earnings were just N1.6 trillion but spending on debt servicing reached N1.9 trillion, representing 118.7 percent of the total retained revenue for the period. In order to upturn the huge debt profile, the incoming administration must focus on boosting government revenue generation and improve inter-temporal budget constraints: poor revenue generation has been identified as a major driver of debt accumulation and therefore there’s a need to improve revenue generation through taxes. All over the world, taxes have been acknowledged as the most sustainable sources of government revenue, so the Nigerian government must see and explore progressive taxation as a means of boosting revenue and ensuring current and future tax revenues can meet the current and future government’s people-oriented expenditure. The incoming government should prioritise engagement and enlightenment of taxpayers to educate them on their obligations; adoption of special tax drives and campaigns; aggressive anti-corruption policies and implementation; creating incentives to increase exports.
Debt sustainability is key issue that many Nigerians are worried about, what is the position of CISLAC. Any advice for the incoming administration may go the way of further borrowing and more borrowing with little to show for it?
Basically, there is a need for improved public borrowing transparency and accountability in Nigeria. The need for public debt transparency is borne out of the imminent danger of a public debt crisis as brought to the fore by the high sovereign debt figure and the roles of private creditors in the scheme of things. Public disclosure of critical information such as terms and conditions of loans, particularly those of private creditors will help the country stay alert to any hidden danger in exploring such loan frontiers. The Debt Management Office should include on its website sectors where loan terms and conditions can be proactively published including names and details of bondholders. Also, there is a need to strictly adhere to the provision of the law on maintaining concessional loans as this poses limited debt risk and incorporates a mechanism to work out effective restructuring and negotiate debt relief initiatives which are quite impossible with commercial creditors. Private creditors’ loans are expensive for a nation such as Nigeria that struggles with revenue generation and as such this frontier of borrowing should be discouraged. Moreover, it has become imperative to establish an independent committee that comprises Non-state actors representatives, the Auditor General Office, the Ministry of Finance, and the Debt Management Office to carry out an independent review of all future loan requests with the view to determine their variability and importance. Furthermore, the incoming administration must work to reduce the high cost of governance, which has hitherto impacted gravely on the nation’s debt profile and resource availability for investment into critical sectors that would have driven development. Despite the alarming recurrent expenditures with resultant high cost of governance that backpedals development of critical sectors in Nigeria, many states are caught in ill-thought efforts to institutionalise diversion and embezzlement.
Majority of Nigerians are still unhappy with INEC’s role in the outcome of the presidential election. How can people’s confidence be restored by the electoral umpire and the judiciary, now that the opposition parties are challenging the result at the Presidential Election Tribunal?
If we looked critically, we would observe that the last general elections were the first to be conducted after the amendment to the Electoral Act. There were challenges, lessons learnt and without doubt some progress made. We are hopeful that Nigerians will demand for the Electoral Body to work on the lapses in future elections to prevent public distrust in the electoral system and process. This effort and process must be credible, transparent and just. More importantly, seeking electoral justice and redress in the Election Tribunal is part of democratic governance, which should be encouraged and supported.
Fuel subsidy to stay or to go, what’s your reaction to the Government’s latest decision that it might be delayed till a later date?
Our position is clear on the fuel subsidy removal. We have been calling on the Nigerian government to yield to the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s call on the need to end subsidy by fixing the refineries and by extension prevent avoidable wastages that have continued to stymie the nation’s economy.
Without doubt, the solution to the problem of subsidy is local refining of products, which will drive down cost of products and end the corruption associated with the present subsidy regime.
What is the response of Civil Society to the debate on planned removal of oil subsidy in Nigeria? Do CSOs plan to engage the Nigerian government on this?
Well, CISLAC has been engaging the Nigerian government on macroeconomic issues including on the fuel subsidy removal and will continue to engage. We also welcome critical debate around the planned removal, as this is paramount to harness independent views and implement well-informed recommendations.
The government announced that it secured $800 million palliatives for 50 million poor Nigerians for fuel subsidy removal? There’s a report that the exercise might be postponed. Do citizens deserve accountability on the fund?
Of course, we are seriously concerned that such a huge sum has been proposed for spending without a known action plan or transparency. Some critical questions are yet to be answered like why do we need such palliatives? Who are the targeted primary beneficiaries? How will the palliatives be implemented? Is it the appropriate policy response to the planned removal? Recall that the COVID-19 donations and palliatives were dominated by unattended illegal diversion and mismanagement, which compel us to question the sincerity and accountability of the proposed palliatives.
The Nigeria’s National Economic Resilience (NER) plan launched in March 2020, do you think it delivered any results and if not, why did it perform poorly?
The National Economic Resilience (NER) Plan was a robust and well-articulated plan launched on March 30, 2020, as Nigeria’s National Economic Resilience (NER) plan in response to the outbreak of the pandemic. It aimed to inject a stimulus package of N2.3 trillion into the economy with the view to preventing businesses from total collapse and retain employment in the country; create jobs using agriculture, manufacturing and services; invest in infrastructural facilities such as roads, bridges, solar power and information technologies as well as invest in the poor through social investment schemes. While the ESP was noted to have helped Nigeria exit recession in record time with more than 5 per cent growth in the economy, saved over one million jobs and forestalled the closure of over 150,000 small businesses hit by COVID-19, there were huge gaps for improvement. Despite efforts to deepen the wide variety of Social Intervention Programmes (NSIP) to help those in poverty, its attempts were clearly affected by the high presence of corruption, mismanagement, poor accountability and unemployment that aggravated existing inequalities. The nation’s programmes are failing to adequately lower the rates of poverty and the programme has been characterized by allegations of politicization and corruption.
The outgoing Administration of President Buhari embarked on several Social Intervention Programmes (NSIP) aimed at tackling poverty. How would you rate these interventions?
Recall that the NSIP was at the centre of the 2019 presidential election and the subsequent judicial litigation process as its Trader Moni scheme was alleged to be used as a tool for voter inducement. Being the poverty capital of the world is not only impacting Nigeria, but it is also impacting the whole world. At the end of the ESP implementation period in 2020, 33.3 percent of the labour force in Nigeria were unemployed. There was an inflation rate of 13.25 percent, growing by 1.85 percent from the previous year and prices escalated with food inflation at 19.57 percent, an increase in electricity tariff, and increase in the price of Petroleum Motor Spirit (PMS), amongst other growing financial obligations. These figures are currently higher. Nigerians across various disposable income brackets, were financially pressured and strained. Nigeria’s economy grew by 3.6 percent in 2021 from a 1.8 percent contraction in 2020. In 2020, Nigeria’s GDP per capita stood at just about two thousand dollars, ranking 17th on the list of African countries. In the same vein, Nigeria’s Gross National Income (GNI) per capita for 2020 was $2,020, a 1.46 percent decline from 2019. According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Nigeria dropped three spots to 161 in 2019 from 158 in 2018 among 189 countries in the 2020 Human Development Index (HDI).
What lessons should the incoming administration take to avoid the pitfalls of the past?
Firstly, the incoming administration must strengthen accountability around public procurement and public finance. We are not unaware that public procurement is one of the government activities most vulnerable to corruption and embezzlement. Over N300 billion is lost to public procurement fraud annually, as reported by Chartered Institute of Forensics and Fraud Examiners of Nigeria in 2021. This is enabled by the inability of Nigeria to establish the National Procurement Council in line with the Public Procurement Act of 2007. Secondly, we also recall that the Federal Government has recovered assets worth billions of dollars but without proper accountability for who manages the assets, how they are utilised and how to prevent the re-looting of looted assets. We expect the incoming administration to revisit the high cost of governance that backpedals meaningful progress in adequate financing of the critical sector and amplifies excessive public debt.
The incoming administration must promote transparency, accountability and citizens’ participation in socio-economic and political decisions as they affect the country. This includes upholding social equity and justice, respecting the sanity and sanctity rule of law, demonstrating sincere support for independent judiciary and criminal justice institutions. More importantly, we encourage the incoming administration to intensify focus on economic diversification to revamp the ailing critical sector. Such effort must give serious consideration to diversification across agricultural and industrial sectors through targeted public-private partnership to discourage mono-economy, enhance human capital development and employment creation; as a complementary strategy to reduce over-bloated civil service at all levels.
We anticipate that the incoming administration will engage in a radical reform of the security sector, especially the Police Force, to prevent recurring cases of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, intimidation, abuse and other degrading treatments. We encourage the incoming administration to create an enabling environment to boost businesses and attract private sector investments through widened economic integration involving security, removal of tariffs and trade barriers as well as policy and regulation harmonisation in the areas of investment, competition policy, digital trade, quality of infrastructure among others. Strike actions by Nigerian universities have hitherto resulted in death of academic staff, sickness, psychological-stress, dwindling academic performance, wastage of manpower and reduction of morale of academic staff, stoppage of staff development programme, brain-drain, suspension of teaching and research programmes. We are hopeful that the incoming President will give adequate attention and priority to put an end to recurring strike actions in the educational sector through constructive dialogue and sustainable resolution. Lastly, the incoming President must constitute a well-informed Economic Management Team to formulate and drive targeted policy to curb the rising inflation and price regulation of goods and services to ease socio-economic burden on common Nigeria and tackle inflation-induced corruption across spheres.