Samuel Iyapo is the Financial Director of the Nigeria Diaspora Network based in the United States. In this interview with Tobi Soniyi, warned the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration to reduce the cost of governance and reduce its appetite for foreign loans. Excerpts:
Nigeria faces a number of challenges, one of which is youth unemployment and restiveness. How should the government tackle this problem?
One of the reasons for youth unemployment is urban migration, whereby everybody moves to the cities looking for white collar jobs and because the cities cannot cope with the number of people migrating to the cities, there is a blowout of population in the urban centers.
To reverse this trend, I will suggest a restructuring of the economy by giving local government areas autonomy to enable them generate more revenues and create jobs. The councils in return should engage the youth by introducing school to land programmes.
Economy should be diversified from over reliance on the oil sector to agriculture. There should be programmes by local government allocating lands to the use and supply them with high-yielding crops. The government should give a monitored soft loan to any youth ready to go into agriculture. Monitored loan in the sense that such loan will be directed to the purpose for which the loan is given.The government also should make available free rentals of tractors and other farming tools to assist the youth farmers.
Nigeria’s economy is seven times bigger than that of Ghana, but Ghana attracts more Foreign Direct Investments than Nigeria. Why is this so?
It is a combination of factors. First is the problem of insecurity in Nigeria. People, including foreigners, are kidnapped on a daily basis. People can not travel from one state to another without fear of possible attacks or kidnapping for ransom. In these circumstances, it will be very difficult for foreign investors to come to Nigeria, where the safety of people is not guaranteed. Several investors have been kidnapped or killed. No foreign investors will establish where they are not able to get returns. Instead, they must pay ransom to free their workers, who are kidnapped.
There is also the challenge of inconsistency in policy. Today, the government can make it easy for you to bring your money in only to wake up tomorrow and throw in another policy that will not allow you to take your money out. Policy summersault scares investors. There is also the challenge of multiple taxation. Local government, state, federal and even non-state actors will tax you. This discourages potential investors. They will look for a country where they face minimal challenges.
Nigerians living in the Diaspora send billions of naira home as remittance every year, yet, they have no role to play in elections. What roles should Nigerians in the Diaspora play to stabilise Nigerian politics and elect good leaders for the country?
It is long overdue for Nigerians in Diaspora to be given the opportunity of voting in Nigeria’s election. It is one of our goals to work with the federal government so that we can vote in any election through electronic voting including local government elections. In the meantime, we have resolved to put in place a fund to support honest Nigerians, who can make positive change when elected into office.
Our findings show that many credible people cannot participate in elections because they lack the resources. We will identify such people, interview them and support them.We are also calling on the authorities in Nigeria to discourage godfatherism so that more qualified Nigerians can vie for any elective position.
There are various ethnic groups seeking to declare independence from Nigeria. Do you think this is the right way to go?
In my opinion, restructuring would have been a better alternative, the reason every person is yearning for independence is the lopsided appointments by the federal government and the none-fair distribution of the national cake. Nigerian is recognised worldwide, because of our numerical strength. We can make the country work for everyone, if it does, no one will be asking for independence. In fact, our neighbours will seek to join Nigeria. We should make the country work for all of us.
No doubt, Nigeria is bedeviled by bad leadership, but do you think the followers have done well too?
There are enough blame to go around. We all as citizens have faults and cannot exonerate ourselves from the issue of bad leadership. We all encourage corruption one way or the other. Our constitution gives room for censuring of non performing leaders, but because of the love of money, we have mortgaged our rights to our rulers. The people’s reactions to prosecuting corrupt officials have been mangled. It is very difficult to prosecute a corrupt Yoruba man, because of the response from his people, who think he or she is being prosecuted, because he is a Yoruba man. The same goes to the Igbo and Hausa/Fulani. We are all guilty because of the love for money. As a matter of urgency and priority, can you suggest steps President Muhammadu Buhari should take to stop the country from drifting into a failed state?
As a matter of urgency, the President should address the nation and state the efforts he is making towards solving the security challenges confronting the nation. He must realise that his economic policy isn’t working. He should form an economic team that will steer the country in the right economic direction.
The president should stop digging Nigeria further into debt. It is worrisome that the Buhari administration continues to borrow instead of reducing the cost of governance to generate the needed resources. They say when you are in a hole you should stop digging. You cannot dig yourself out of the hole. Nigeria will sink further, if Buhari continues to borrow.
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