please find below the link of an interview of renowned economics professor Pat Utomi by tobi aworinde of the punch where he also backs professor soludo who accused this administration of plunging the country's economy into severe crisis. this is not meant to discredit one person in favour of another but completely issue based so we can do away with religious and regional sentiments.

http://www.punchng.com/feature/interview/jonathans-biggest-economic-mistakes-pat-utomi/

sorry for the earlier link

sick and senseless

to be very candid i never took time to read lengthy write ups or interview but i actually did take time to read this one, and my question was what percentage of the Nigerian citizens actually own jets? or did he mean to say private cars??

I wonder what bishop oyedepo go talk

excerpts:


Do you think former Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Prof. Charles Soludo’s argument, depicting the Federal Government as incompetent, was factual?

[b]Absolutely. [/b]There are things I want to disagree with there, but there are many things I agree with. And this is really the nature of what political campaigns should be: to raise strong ideas that affect polity, in terms of the quality of life of the citizens. The truth is that there is no one solution in this world; perspectives on that issue can then allow society to find a more robust response. I do think that it is demeaning of the democratic process for people who are responding, instead of looking at the issues he has raised and providing facts to dispute or support, to then embark on ad hominem and personal broad fights against him. By making the whole thing emotive, rather than rational, they take away from quality democracy and this is part of fanning the embers of violence that is going on in this environment.

On the general state of the economy, I agree completely with Soludo. The economy is inchoate as it is. Even more importantly, I agree with him that we have showed no learning (desire), because what is happening now is a complete replica, as he suggested, of 1982.

I have, in fact, given at least five lectures on this subject within the last couple of months, and I said exactly this. Thus, he was not saying anything new. One of the things that strikes me is that in this age, we lack institutional memory to the extent that we repeat so completely mistakes of the past. If the (Shehu) Shagari administration (1979-1983) is blamed for not knowing, surely that mistake should not repeat itself later, because we should have learnt from it.

now I believe it's true,

he truly bribe those private jet owners with 6billion naira...

more excerpts:

What are some of these mistakes?

I’ll give you a good example. When oil prices began to rise, we had a visit to Nigeria by the former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to President Reagan, Joseph Stiglitz, who is also a Nobel Prize-winning economist. He gave a lecture at the Lagos Business School, which was attended by a significant part of the Lagos business community. I was a discussant at that lecture, at which I made the point that the way we were going about managing our economy in the face of this oil price rise was dangerous, unsustainable, and showed that we had not learnt from the past. I then suggested at that lecture that under no circumstance should we use more than $40 a barrel for our budget process.

[b]Because the price of oil in those days was so volatile—rising and falling drastically—my argument was that if oil prices rise to $70, everything from between $40 and $70 should go into a stabilisation fund and not be budgeted. Whenever oil prices fall, we have all kinds of abandoned projects, so I said, ‘We don’t want to continue this kind of foolish way of doing things.’ Using that stabilisation fund, when oil prices fall to $10 as in 1998, our budget would remain funded at $40, even though oil price is as low as $10.

The reason is that we would have been saving $30 in the stabilisation fund when it was $70. If it were to then go above $70, as it did go to $130 and more, my proposition was that everything above that should go into a future fund and that this fund can be invested abroad so that future dividends will flow in or in long-term infrastructure because all the children that will be born in Nigeria even 500 years from now have the same right as us to the oil that is put in the ground by God for all of us.[/b] Unless some of that money is being used for infrastructure, which they (unborn Nigerians) can use in their time, then we have cheated them out of their own heritage.

Have you made these recommendations to government?

The Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, was present at the lecture, and she made her remarks when I finished. She said she agreed with me, but that even the small excess crude that they were struggling to release, the politicians were fighting against it; that even after warning them to save for a rainy day, the politicians kept saying, ‘Look, it is already raining torrents.’ I then said to those sitting with me, ‘We are missing the point. We have a duty to educate and teach these politicians. In ignorance and greed, they want to share everything immediately and cite as their basis the constitution that says it can be s hared.’

We should educate them that when you have these kinds of funds, it does not take away the share of any state government, because they will own their exact proportion of that fund and the management of the fund will be made up of people that will ensure that their portion is not abused. I also further said there that many of our technocrats that are going into government are missing an important point: the power of resignation, to send a message to politicians. I began to give the example of Malaysia. Malaysia would not be what it is today if one young technical medical doctor in government called Mahathir Mohammed did not see something wrong in the prime minister’s policy, which was then referred to as the give-and-take policy.

When he complained about it, he was not only thrown out of the government, he was expelled from the ruling party and he went to write a book titled ‘The Malay Dilemma’. His book literally generated uprisings in Malaysia and the prime minister had to resign. Eventually, he was reabsorbed into the party, became the prime minister and the story of Malaysia changed permanently. Malaysia, which was once worse than us, is now far better.

Why are our technocrats in government not realising this power of resignation to mobilise the public to learn the right thing and to force politicians who are adventurers to behave appropriately? This happened at the LBS. Half of Lagos’ elite business people were there. It is not a secret. All the things I predicted would happen have since happened. So, why should people attack Soludo for saying that it is like 1982? I have said this many times.

more excerpts:

Are you saying that Okonjo-Iweala, Fani-Kayode and others in the Federal Government are in denial with their outright rejection of Soludo’s argument?

What do you expect? Some friends and I used to have a gathering around the late Dr. Stanley Macebuh in his house and Patrick Dele Cole would be drinking good brandy and be laughing at me for drinking Fanta. I would raise an issue about government and public office holders, and they would reply, ‘If na you nko?’ That’s my question to you: What do you expect them to do?

Soludo scored the Federal Government an F on economy. What is your assessment of this government?

I don’t want us to get into emotive discussions. I don’t think the management of this economy by this administration is worthy of praise. [/b]I believe there is a complete misunderstanding. Because they are not sensitive to people, there is something that has developed in Nigeria;[b] I call it the new mercantilism. One of the biggest mistakes this President has ever made is to suggest that the ownership of private jets is an indicator of Nigeria’s progress. It is a terrible thing. I was praying hard after he said it the first time that he should realise he made a mistake; but he repeated it several times during the World Economic Forum and I was so embarrassed. I said, ‘Oh my goodness, we need help.’ That has been their orientation, they have not noticed that the Nigerian people are actually (poor).

The dynamic question during elections in the US is: Are you better off than you were four years ago? Forget the statistics that anybody may throw at you, because as they say about statistics, there are three things: lies, damn lies and statistics. Anybody can generate statistics to look good. The simple question to the individual citizen is: Is your life better today than it was when these sets of policies were put in place? My submission to you is that, as an individual, I am worse off today than I was four years ago. And I think most Nigerians who examine their consciences would say they are worse off today than they were four years ago. Forget about grades of A or F.

How do the issues you raised about economic mismanagement affect the electorate and the masses?

They are doing Nigerians a disservice by preventing the people from discussing the issues and learning, with this emotive abuse of anybody whose view does not eulogise them. The numbers are there. Soludo points to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics’ poverty incidence figures. There is this nonsense going around now; I think it was (Femi) Fani-Kayode that said Nigeria was given an award of the biggest economy in Africa, as if it as an award that is being bestowed on them.

The size of an economy is a function of the number of the people in the economy and the productivity of those people, that is, output. If there is a huge population like Nigeria, and the people are producing seriously, it is only logical that the size of the economy of Nigeria should be bigger than the economy of South Africa, which is producing more per person with a much fewer number of people. But because there are more of us, our general output will be bigger than South Africa’s. So, what is the big deal about it? It is simply ignorance that is making people celebrate what they don’t know. I heard President Goodluck Jonathan two days ago (Tuesday) saying, ‘Is there anybody in Nigeria who understands economy better than the people at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund?’

It is disgraceful for the president of a country to speak like that. He should be the first person to be proud to say his people are better than any other, even if they are not. But in this case, many of our people have worked in the World Bank, and we know that the boys in those places were not half as smart as us in class. So, why should the President make that kind of statement?

zheroes:
to be very candid i never took time to read lengthy write ups or interview but i actually did take time to read this one, and my question was what percentage of the Nigerian citizens actually own jets? or did he mean to say private cars??

A very pertinent question, one has to even question the sanity of the people who even say such baseless things.