Welcome, everyone. It is my pleasure and honour to welcome Dr. Kingsley Moghalu to the Oxford Martin School.
Dr. Moghalu is here as a guest of the Oxford Martin Programme on African Governance, which I co-directed with Professor Stephan Durcan,
and we're, as I said, delighted to have you with us for the duration of Michaelmas Term.
Many of you will know Dr Mugabe's trajectory. Dr Mugabe is the former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria from 2009 to 2014.
He earlier that is the LSC and he was also in the UN system for 17 years.
Is the author of numerous books, including Emerging Africa, and he was also in 2019, a candidate for the the.
The Nigerian presidency is also an aspiring candidate before the elections in two thousand and twenty three.
Without further ado, I'll pass on the words to Kingsley.
It will be. We're looking forward to hearing your comments. Thank you.
Thank you. So I can start. So I can stuff.
Okay, great. Just left one. Sorry. Yeah. Just for the online audience.
Yeah. If you'd like to ask a question,
there's a ask a question button and we have someone who will be taking on the questions and relay the questions to Dr. Midollo after his presentation.
There will be a Q&A session, and at that stage we'll be able to deal with comments and questions,
both from the physical audience here at the Martin School and the online audience.
Thank you. Thank you, Ricardo. Good evening, good afternoon.
Thank you very much, Ricardo. I thank the Oxford Martin School for hosting me as a visiting fellow for this McMaster.
It's been a great experience and this is part of what I'm supposed to deliver as a visiting fellow.
I did not come simply to look at the beautiful environment of Oxford.
And so I'm going to be speaking this evening about political economy of Nigeria.
I also welcome our guests on line of whom I know there are several as well.
I'm going to be speaking about the political economy of Nigeria.
Challenges and opportunities for many of us here, of course, are familiar with Nigeria.
It's a country that has big, important and matters in the world.
And, you know, it's of interest to a lot of a lot of people, 200 million people.
GDP of about 400 and 40 million estimated as of 2021, population of 200 million.
But the country is currently going through some very difficult times and it is going through economic distress.
It's going through security challenges, attacks from terrorists, especially in the northern part of the country.
It's going through challenges to state legitimacy and, of course, a serious problems of of nationhood.
While it is tempting to focus on the largely negative indicators that dominates the political and economic situation at this particular time,
admiring the problem is not an option.
As far as I am concerned, I believe very strongly that there is a path for Nigeria's transformation and progress, and we must find that path.
But, you know, to solve our problems, I think we have to understand exactly what those problems are and not sugarcoat them, but understand them.
Not because we want to be negative, but precisely because we should.
We should know what obstacles we face and how to overcome them.
And in doing so, I would recommend a political economy approach.
Why do I recommend a why do I take a political economy approach?
I take that because especially for a developing post-colonial state like Nigeria and the evolution of its economy,
questions of poverty and the possibility of widespread creation of wealth for and by
the citizens can only be resolved by looking at the interaction between politics,
laws, institutions and the market. That's how the development process actually happens.
And so that's why I think it's best to take a political economy approach to a discussion of how we can resolve Nigeria's obstacles and move forward.
There is no shortage of brilliant economists in Nigeria, you know, but of 19 million of our 200 million citizens still live in extreme poverty.
So and it is the country's politics which is focussed on power captured by the elites so that they can control and create ransom patronage.
That is what has framed this reality. And that's why we have to take a political economy approach on the foundation.
Nigeria, like most sub-Saharan African states, is an artificial creation.
It's not an organically developed state. The British colonial enterprise put together several ethnic nations in one country without their consent.
And this was done in the amalgamation of the northern protectorate and the south on protectorate in 1914,
although there was some sort of treaty, but in reality it was cast.
And you know, the creation of Nigeria came about by force many military defeats of several territories in the territorial area.
So, you know, but this amalgamation was problematic because the northern parts of the country
and the south and part of the country have fundamentally different backgrounds,
different histories, different cultures and very different worldviews. The northern part of the country is mainly Islamic.
It's it's it's feudal was even more so at that time.
You know, religion played and still plays a very important role in public life in the south.
You had a more commercial culture, mostly Christian, yes, but some somewhat more secular when it comes to public affairs and public policy.
And, you know, economically even today, but certainly at that time,
the South protectorate was economically far stronger than the northern protectorate.
So what was the reason then that Britain decided to merge these two very dissimilar colonies again?
Mostly economic, mostly economic.
The whole colonial enterprise was driven by an economic worldview, and that was to, you know, the industrial revolution,
as we know, created a need for new sources of raw materials and new markets for finished products.
And this was what drove the colonial enterprise.
So a such of the historical archives makes it very clear that the British colonial masters matched the Colonial,
the South and the modern protectorate for economic reasons,
mostly to utilise the budget surplus of the South to offset the budget deficits that they were running in the North.
And as well to to create a network of railways that would connect the two and bring
even more raw materials for the industrial projects back in the United Kingdom.
So this was a major reason. And in doing so, the British colonial officials described the moth, which was described the moth as the poor husband.
And described the South as the wealthy lady of Means, so the motive was very clear.
If you go to the archives and I myself, I've researched these things,
so I've seen the original records of these phrases used by British colonial officials in that memos back to London.
So and yet the British colonial officials, perhaps out of a sentimental attachment to a shared feudal culture,
had always had a stronger political, cultural and strategic alignment with nothing in Nigeria's political and religious elite,
far more so than with the largely Christian south of Nigeria,
which was home to the vociferous campaigners for independence from colonial rule such as the nom de Azikiwe Obafemi Awolowo, Anthony Enahoro.
So the tripartite regional structure in Nigeria, which was the northern region, the western region, the eastern region at the time in the 1950s,
combined with the parliamentary system of government instituted by Britain as a colonial power,
led to the development of a politics that was based on ethnic affiliation.
Although there were attempts at Cross, you know, cross campaigning and mobilising support across ethnic groups.
But the three dominant parties had regional basis.
You know, the Northern People's Congress, the NPC, the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons, the ANC and the Action Group.
So one of the implications of this trajectory was that Nigeria had no single founding father, you know,
around whom a national identity and consciousness could cohere in the same manner as, for example, Susser.
It's a of Botswana, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya or Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana.
Rather, we had multiple founding fathers. We had at least three.
And that was Nnamdi Azikiwe, who was premier of the East, Ahmadu Bello,
who was premier of the North, and Obafemi Awolowo, who was premier of the South.
Now, although anecdotally, Nnamdi Azikiwe was considered as the primal of powers in the context of the nationalist
struggle because he was clearly the leading light of the nationalist struggle.
But in reality, they were all in charge of their regions, and so they were all Igbo.
So this is a very important understanding of the background of where Nigeria is coming from.
Now we must recognise these unique, difficult foundations. Like I said, not because we cannot make Nigeria a truly great country in spite of them.
I believe that we can't personally, but because, like I said, we must know consciously the roots of the obstacles that we have to overcome.
So having said that, the strategic challenges that face Nigeria today.
If you take a poll of Nigerians, they will come up with him myriad issues, but I have tried to synthesise it down to seven.
And the criterion that I have used, in my view, is systemic influence and consequence on the country's security,
on the country's politics and the country's economics.
In other words, what are the the the causes or the issues that have causative rather than symptomatic impact based on their knock on effects?
And like I said, mention seven one the decline of national security and a sense of nationhood.
Two week political order formation.
Three. The decline of state capacity and the elite class.
For the curse of oil. Five corruption.
Six uncontrolled population growth. Uncontrolled population growth.
Seven loss of global influence. So these are the seven issues that I have identified as the most important systemic and strategic challenges.
Yeah, that's that face Nigeria. So and I repeat the claim of national security and a sense of nationhood, which political order formation,
decline of state capacity and the elite class for the cost a curse of oil,
five corruption, six uncontrolled population growth and seven loss of global influence.
I will not dwell too much on these things, but I have a written paper that can be shared.
I want to dwell a little bit more on the path to resolution,
but I would just skeletal in mentioning one or two things on each item the decline of national security and nationhood.
Today, Nigeria is beset by terrorism.
The territorial integrity of the nation of the country is under assault from Boko Haram and an assortment of other terrorist groups.
In the past 10 years, about 50000 people have been killed by terrorist attacks, mostly in the northern in the northern states.
So that's a very, you know, important challenge because there are risks,
the distinct possibility if we are not careful that Nigeria can unravel as a result of terrorism.
So that's a systemic problem right there. And along with that, of course, is what I identify as the decline of nationhood today in Nigeria.
A lot of people would much prefer to identify themselves by their ethnic group before they would say they are Nigerians,
and many of them would consider the Nigerian identity an imposition.
Now, this has led to a challenge against the legitimacy of the states where you now
have secessionist groups or separatist groups such as the new Biafra movement,
such as the Niger Delta Liberation Movement or Republic of Niger Delta, such as the year about Oduduwa movement.
So you have these movements under a very loud.
But don't confuse that their minds or the decibel of their protests to mean that the majority of people from
those areas identify or believe that that is the solution to the challenges Nigeria has having to nation.
Most people from those regions will tell you, yes, there are problems, but they will identify a different solution,
which is one of the things we will discuss as the path to resolution rather than to break up a country.
So, so that's yeah. So so today.
The absence of nationhood reveals itself in three important ways. One.
The rise of separatist groups sudden upsurge of second.
Another way you can see is that even in the response to terrorism,
one of the problems we face in Nigeria is a perception that there is a divided loyalty in some parts of the architecture for national security.
And some people may actually have that divided loyalties not by choice, but by the fact that some of these terrorists have taken some territory.
Whether or not the state authorities accept that or not is beside the point.
We know for a fact that some parts of the North have been overrun and many people have been displaced.
And so you have a lot of internal refugees. The third evidence of an increase in absence of nationhood lies in the fractious
controversy over the rotation of the presidency between the North and the South.
Whether or not you accept or you believe that power rotation is a way to stabilise Nigeria,
the very existence of that informal tradition since 1999 is a recognition that there is a problem.
So, you know, but without fixing the challenge of the decline in nationhood,
I think it will be very difficult for Nigeria to make real progress on any fronts, including the security front.
The second problem is distorted democratic development.
We've been a democracy since 1999, but in reality, what we have is civil rule.
It's not a real democracy, it's not a democracy in which the people have a voice.
It's not a democracy in which people are an informed electorate.
It's not a democracy in which people can afford three square meals.
And so if you come to them to buy their vote, what's wrong with you? You need to go to a hospital.
But no, we see sometimes videos of people standing and just distributing money to poor people in the villages.
And this cannot be democracy as as we know it anyway.
So the political elite are so powerful and they have changed the minds of the people,
and the people have fallen into something that we might describe as Stockholm Syndrome,
where they know there's a problem, but they feel a bit powerless to escape from the clutches of the people who they know are causing the problem.
And so, for example, it's been difficult until, you know,
up till now to have the people vote for candidates who have substance or who have solutions to their problems,
but they prefer to give their vote to people who they believe will win.
So there is a subtle psychology of women being on a winning bandwagon.
But in reality,
it's a bandwagon to nowhere because you're voting for people who have the ability to win elections but do not have the ability to govern.
So in some, in some instances, they don't even have the interest to govern.
So and yet people will say, Oh, the APC or the PDP, so.
So this is this is where we are. But that problem is the decline of state capacity and the elite class.
Now, state capacity is measured mostly in three ways.
You know, the ability to defend territory, territorial integrity, the ability of the state to extract taxes and revenues for fiscal operations.
The ability of the states to deliver administrative services efficiently and effectively.
So each of these measurements is it's in decline.
And you may even say in some instances that they don't exist alongside that.
You have the elite also in the planning before.
Yes, years ago, the evidence was influential in society.
Who are the people who went to school? You know, maybe they were teachers.
Maybe they were professors. Maybe they were professionals like doctors and lawyers.
Today, it's not quite the same. They're not necessarily the people that a lot of people look up to.
You know, so there's been the elite is in retreat first.
It's economically emasculated because of the economic problems in the country.
And so increasingly, people are either rich or poor and you don't have much yet and middle class.
Secondly, they're absent from the national discourse. And then thirdly,
that they've abandoned their their responsibility to mediate between the political
leadership and the poor by being the ones that guide people on how to vote.
Or you vote for Sadhana or you vote for ZIK or you vote for power and interprets maybe what their views meant.
And that's another thing about the politics. In the fifties and sixties, the politics was far more substantive.
Today, the politics of Nigeria is anti-intellectual. It's completely anti-intellectual.
So it's lost substance completely. And if you are a person of intellectual substance, you run the risk of even being derided.
When people say things like, Oh, I'm on the blow. Grammar is blurring grammar, you know, speaks good English and things like that.
Keep speaking English. You know, you hear things like that.
And then, you know, it's really we need collective therapy. But that's a separate mindset.
So forth is the curse of the Petro state.
I don't need to go into details about the damage that oil has done, and this is the same with many resource resource rich states.
Very few states that are resource states have a state because of of of resources.
You know, we have examples like Malaysia, we have examples like Thailand.
Tomorrow, I'll be speaking at the Blavatnik School on Emerging Markets and we be discussing those kinds of things.
But the Petro state has hurt Nigeria.
It's made the country far poorer and made the country to lose focus on what was its original path towards industrialisation.
In the fifties and sixties, industrialisation was a very clear goal.
But as soon as oil rose in importance around the Civil War and immediately after the winning to early seventies,
the Nigerian state lost its way very clear. So then you have corruption.
A big problem. Why is it a big problem? Not because it's it's only in Nigeria.
You have corruption. Corruption is a problem because it's not on the periphery.
It's in the centre of the court. And that's a problem because it prevents development and increases poverty and a lot of the like,
I saw one civil society organisations say a few days ago. And I totally agree.
Sixty percent of the corruption in Nigeria is official and it's embedded in the budget.
It's embedded in the yearly budget every year that call trillions, but a lot of these things are bloated in the view of many, many people.
And so this becomes systemic corruption with very, very deleterious consequences.
It's distorted the governance and the political environment,
shifting away focus from good governance to corrupt enrichment in a country with very few social safety nets.
Population growth population is at once a problem, but also an opportunity.
It depends on how we handle it. Nigeria will be 400 million people by 2050.
That could be a good thing if it was a skilled population, if it was a population where there was a focus on human development.
But that's not the case. And if, as we do today, you have population growth running at 2.5 percent,
when in the past five or six years we've not had economic growth, more than two percent, really, then it's a problem.
So if you have 400 million people and the population gets younger and younger and a lot of them have no jobs,
a lot of them do not have the skills that they need to create wealth for themselves.
Then you have, you know, a recipe for possible social instability.
So that's that's even China, for whom its population has made it a great economic power.
Most countries with big populations today, including in the emerging markets, have significant populations.
So we can say it's always an advantage, except you have to make sure it's an advantage.
It's not going to advantage just because the people out there what's the quality of the mass of the people?
That's what makes population an advantage. Even China had to control its population, so there might be something to to save for population control,
not necessarily the way they did it in China, but through education.
You know, in a voluntary way, but very strong campaigns about why we have to control our population growth.
Then finally, Nigeria in the world? Well, Nigeria matters.
In the world of this, there can be no question the reality is recognised even by the great powers and assured to some extent,
by our population and by our economic size and the African continent.
You know, so in recent years, we've gotten some of our citizens who lost US citizens elected to leadership positions in international organisations,
though the World Trade Organisation, the African Development Bank and so on.
But when you look a bit deeper,
you will find that Nigeria remains far from achieving its potential as the beacon of the black race and world politics,
the way that China has been a beacon for the Asians.
You know, race is an important factor in international relations, even if it's not often discussed at diplomatic summits,
because with races you don't have worldviews and worldviews shape outcomes on the ground.
And so, you know, so I think worldviews like that of the western world based on human rights,
based on the Enlightenment and all those types of things have yielded a certain outcome that of China has yielded a certain outcome.
What is the worldview of the black race?
What does the world view of the African continent or what is the world view and what are the worldviews of individual African countries?
So I felt that Nigeria has a destiny in this particular sphere that is still to be fulfilled early in our life as a country.
In the early 60s, foreign policy was always a subject of debate in domestic politics.
You had people criticising Tafawa Balewa. Why are you allowing improvement to take centre stage in the world?
And of all that, I will defend themselves? Well, of course, he too was very respected international.
So, so you have today. Nobody discusses foreign policy inside Nigerian politics.
No. And so when you do find a decline in the ability to effectively project our power
and our interests because this depends to a large extent on domestic opposition,
if you are economically strong, the likelihood that you will be able to project power and your interest is much higher.
South Korea, for example, joined the UN only in 1990, but in 1997 it had produced the secretary general.
But that was just amazing. They did not see the need to join the UN for many, many years because they were focussed on something else.
But for many of us in Africa, immediately we became independent.
The first thing was to go to international organisations and show our physical and psychological presence.
So. Then you have issues like despite Nigeria being Africa's largest country by GDP,
we're not a member of certain clubs of the median global economic policy.
We're not a member of the BRICS. Some people would have argued that we should be and then it would be the Brink's.
We're not a member of the G20. You know, so some of these kinds of things and then of course,
our Foreign Service suffers from underinvestment, live in its operations, financially stressed.
And finally, in this area, you find Nigerians increasingly Nigeria increasingly unable to protect its citizens who suffer ill treatment abroad.
And this creates frustrations for people at home, but on the path to resolution.
The first, I must identify is electoral reform, because most of the problems that Nigeria faces come from the nature of its politics.
So the political domestic politics and you know, its malfunctions or dysfunctions, you know, have ramifications all across.
So if you sort out how the leaders are selected or elected, then you begin the journey.
In my view, two to two, I'm here and in the area of electoral reform.
We've had some very positive developments lately,
a very encouraging one of which is an amendment of the Electoral Act to allow the independent National
Electoral Commission conduct elections and collate votes and transmit the results electronically,
which has the potential to sharply reduce the phenomenon of rigging.
And we saw it happen in Anambra state. You know, despite some glitches that, well, there was really no rigging in the in the actual elections.
Then you have the the provision that parties should now conduct their primaries directly, which is good.
So it doesn't allow the political grandees in the party to simply align their candidates.
Party members vote for who they want to select to run any race for them, whether it's presidency or government.
So these are encouraging developments, but I say that further reform is needed.
The most important is the matter of money. Money controls politics in Nigeria, as it does in the United States and to a significant extent, the UK.
I would argue, and there's been a lot of scope for corruption when you are talking about how to raise money to finance elections for parties.
I believe in the system like in Germany and a number of other European countries.
The government should finance political parties.
The presidency of General Ibrahim Babangida did this in the in the 80s and early 90s, and I think it worked.
The National Republican Convention and the Social Democratic Party were both financed by the state, and it was a more even contest for power.
I think we should return to this. Otherwise we will continue to have an even playing field for candidates and political parties.
And so there will be a lot of room for the phenomenon of dark money and influence peddling.
Yeah. So I recommend a private money should be banned in Nigeria's electoral democracy.
The second is citizen education and participation.
This is very important to have a real democracy.
The third is the emergence of what I call transformational leadership, not just the emergence of politicians.
Of course, the transitional leadership will emerge through a democratic process.
But there's a difference between politics and leadership, and politics is simply a path to producing leadership.
And we need to our system needs to appreciate this a lot more.
We need to start looking for leaders, not just politicians, are looking for leaders amongst politicians.
Then we need a little consensus on youth participation.
I believe that we need a consensus amongst our elites the most now revive themselves and begin to discuss the next leadership of our country.
Bearing in mind the problems that we're having that we've discussed and young people who
make up 70 percent of the population need to be a leading part of this consensus building.
And and these discussions and I recommend in that context selection.
Before election. Yes. Let let young people,
let's let's let let different interests come together and see whether they can
achieve a consensus of the kind of profiles of leadership they would like to see.
And then do you put through the normal electoral process, then?
I think fourth or fifth is that there needs to be a third force needs to emerge to accomplish this
transition to transformational leadership with the benefit of youth support and elite consensus.
So I believe that this step force is necessary. My own personal view, and I think is shared by a lot of people.
Yes, I believe that that that force is necessary because the status quo, the way it has developed, the two major parties we have,
I believe that at least in the short term and as they are constituted today, I'm able to take Nigeria forward politically, economically.
And if you keep looking for salvation amongst them, it's like looking for a needle in a haystack.
It's going to be difficult for specific individuals to overcome the system that brought them to power and the system,
a system that exists for certain purposes that are not really aligned with with good, good governance, then constitutional reform.
See, I deliberately did not start with this. Constitutional reform is very important.
But we should not lose sight of the importance of leadership and leadership selection, because if you say it's just the structure,
that's the problem and you can do some view, then you just localise the problems that we've been having in a unitary context.
So constitutional reform to return majorettes a true federalism is necessary for political
stability and to prevent some groups from feeling marginalised by the powers on the centre.
It is necessary for economic development because that's what will create an incentive for the diversification of the
economy so long as the country is presently structured the way it is where the federal government owns mineral rights.
The costs of of RET resources will continue in the country.
I'll just wrap up very quickly. And then finally, a philosophical framework for the Nigerian economy is absent and is necessary.
Why is a philosophical framework necessary? It is necessary because it will bring clarity, economic thinking.
It will bring clarity to economic policy, and it will bring consistency in execution.
Right now, the government is trying to go back to economic planning, but their plan is an architectural for action philosophies, a belief system.
It's better to plan based on something you believe rather than planning in a vacuum.
I think if you look at every developed economy in the world, you can identify the economic philosophy they align themselves with.
Most and most of the world, of course, today's capitalist. And but the question is what type of capitalism is it?
Entrepreneurial capitalism? Is it welfare capitalism? Is it crony capitalism?
Or is it what China calls state capitalism?
So Nigeria has to come back, but I believe you need transformational leadership to emerge before we can engage with this subject.
The skill and the depth that it requires.
So let me just conclude and say that while many Nigerians may be gloomy about our country's prospects for its long delayed emergence,
I see opportunities even as we must confront the challenges that we face on both political and economic fronts.
Nigeria has difficulties have been magnified in the past few years for a combination of reasons.
But I believe that this phase will pass. Most pertinent is the concern about the country's national colonialism.
That's a country troubled from birth. But I'm also an international lawyer, and I understand the doctrine of beauty possibilities.
The territories that are conquered and war remain those of the person or the entity who conquered those territories.
Except there is a treaty that abrogates That's right.
So you cannot unscramble the scramble for Africa, much as we would like to.
So I proceed from the basis of reality and.
If you want to go back to recreate every African country, you know, based on all ethnic, convenient ethnic, you know, nations, you would have chaos.
So challenge in our cities, we have to deal with it. We have to make Nigeria work for its 200 million people and do so as soon as possible.
The matter of the emergence of a visionary and transformational leadership is the key to progress.
Can we utilise Democratic leadership to bust a transformation?
This depends not so much on the politicians who we can predict will seek to defend their vested interests,
but rather on the youth and the women of our country. The elections scheduled for 2023 will provide us with an opportunity to look beyond our habits,
to look beyond our prejudices and to vote for our hopes and not our fears.
Thank you. Yeah.
Thank you, I'd like to start by thanking Dr. Moghalu for his speech, which was excellent both in its backward looking dimensions.
Looking into the Nigerian trajectory, but also a speech that was forward-looking and aspirational.
Thank you very much.
Before I open the floor to questions and comments from the audience, I would also like to thank two distinguished guests in our audience.
The 14th emir of Kano and former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria and the current
chair of the Royal African Society and former vice president of the World Bank.
It's a pleasure and obviously a privilege to have you with us today.
It didn't say Mohammad descendants of the second. Oh, sorry, that means this.
Think the everyone in Nigeria talking about? Exactly. So the floor is open to questions.
I would just ask you to be brief in the questions so that we have not just the audience with us here today, but an extensive audience on lines.
And we we are collecting questions from that online audience.
So if you can be very sharp, very brief, very to the point, we'd be very thankful, pleased ladies if we have not.
Hello, my name is soda, and thank you very much for a very interesting talk.
And I just wanted to ask a question about policy, design and implementation in terms of the political point of view of engineer.
You mentioned some of the sort of hindrances, for example, how corruption is embedded in the annual budget.
So I know a lot of the time political economy sort of the vested interest hinders all of the development policies in the country.
So do you think that policies should be designed and implemented to accommodate the political economy of vested interests?
Or do you think they should model the ideal system that we once the conscience vote?
An excellent question. Excellent question. I could answer that if we were off record.
But I will answer it. I will say that as much as possible, you see every country has vested interests even in this country.
There are vested interests. It is possible to meet vested interests in illegal ways.
Perfectly appropriate ways if people want to make money and create an opportunity so long as there's a level playing field.
That's the point. You don't go and just serve an interest.
So that's one part of the answer to the question. The second part of the answer to the question is that leadership creates a framework.
You can also bring from the vested interest along to see why we need a different way of doing things.
And this would be my approach as well. That leadership should frame a new vision for the country and a new way that everyone in the country,
including the previous vested interests, can find the opportunity.
But we create wealth for the people. That's the point.
The current system focuses on the vested interests and doesn't even think about the poor.
I believe we should focus first on the poor and then take it from there.
This is if your life is, I think, the people of mine.
Yeah, maybe so I think we need to understand that vested interests differ and vary.
So it's one thing to have US lobby groups pushing the interests of the oil sector or manufacturing or the entrance, he said.
It to have vested interests, as you have in Nigeria, whose interest is who turned the state into a site for rent extraction.
Yes. And these are interests that need to be rooted out them.
And I don't think there's any accommodation with anyone who is not interested in the growth of the country, but just the extraction of rich.
Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
Over there, the gentleman. Thank you very much.
Is the opposite of Al Mustafa, associate editor of Supplement and Devoted much of our two questions for you.
One is to you directly. You contested.
I've been to 19, and hopefully my buddy will have got you out and we see things pretty pretty again.
You mentioned very, very important concept.
And yes, it's a country where things happen, the way it happens, because vested interests has been the key issue.
You have that oil. We don't know exactly what will be disrupted the metering system as key problems.
The oil revenue for Benedict gets hot, a congested issue,
which route network power through a very weak and nobody, everybody come to say, I would do this and that's.
Do you think? You are very prepared to govern Nigeria.
In relation to the visit.
And I'm very sure blue management did a better approach to manage diversity with competence and credibility of those who they put in a position.
Absolutely. That's just what I would. Second question, please. Probably it will have to be a rhetorical question because we're very pressed for time.
I'm sorry, but that's the first question is a very good debate already.
Otherwise, the detailed. Yeah. Thank you for that question.
I actually think that in terms of being a presidential aspirant, that is one of my most unique attributes.
I am prepared to govern Nigeria and to manage its diversity.
And I've been I've led a life that has prepared me for that diversity in terms of race or ethnic groups, diversity in terms of religion.
I spent 17 years in the United Nations and that's the mother of all diversities.
That's 200 countries, different races, different religions in Nigeria.
I have worked in a very, very important national institution,
which was the central bank of Nigeria when I was deputy governor again, where we had people from different parts of the country.
And my career has had political sides, economic sides and other sites.
These are the things that prepare you to manage the diversity in the country.
So I feel yes. And I think importantly,
I think I have the ability to articulate a vision that people can buy into and persuade even unwilling people to to to consider that vision.
Some people have paid me some very interesting compliments, one of which was if you don't want to support Kingsley, just don't listen to him.
Don't listen to him because we have questions from the online audience.
This is from opener. How can you combine a political economy and a knowledge based economy?
Is anyone better than the other with regards to Nigeria? Is anyone better with regards to Nigeria?
Oh, I see. OK. Well, my vision for Nigeria is, first of all, a knowledge based economy.
You see, you can create an economy that is based on knowledge that is based on innovation, which is why my focus is on young peoples.
That's why my focus is on the fishmeal system because every country can only be as strong as weak as its educational system.
It's the educational system that produces the human capital, and that educational system, in my view, should focus on productive knowledge skills.
So yes, sir, if I may just interject this part of the paradox of the Nigerian educational commitment is that
Nigerian elites and even the Nigerian Nigerian upper middle class as they make a massive commitment,
financial commitment towards education, but they make it over here in the UK or in the United States or Canada.
Yes, and that's a massive disincentive to build institutions inside the country because those
institutions are not there to serve those that would normally be using those institutions.
How would you change incentive structures around that? Well, first of all.
You have had a political elite that does not understand and does not care because they steal public funds and come up with their kids in schools.
That's selfish. They are not leaders. They don't have a vision.
So they don't invest in education.
As president, if I were president, it would be my primary investment right now, and it takes just about five percent of the budget.
I will spend not less than 20 percent of the budget on education, but not just,
you know, because sometimes when Nigeria, we think money solves problems.
No, it's what is that 20 percent going to it will be carefully thought through, and that is one that must go into teacher training and retraining.
It must go to curriculum reform.
I believe the curriculum should move to 70 percent stem and entrepreneurship and 30 percent other things very specific.
It's controversial, but that's my view. China. China did it.
They did it because they want transformation.
It's not because they didn't think lawyers were important or they didn't think philosophers were important.
No, but I think there's a stage at which you have to fix certain steps to shift the paradigm.
And so this is the approach I would take. We will invest in education and infrastructure.
I've studied every child in any federal institution,
if I would a president without a laptop because we can't afford it, we just have the wrong priorities.
We invest in everything else instead of using public private partnerships to develop massive infrastructure.
The government awards contracts so that public officials can get rich.
So it's about, you know, shifting the paradigm with leadership and policy.
Thank you. We have another online question, as this is from Madina. What policies and programmes are currently in place by the federal and state
governments of Nigeria to reduce the unemployment rate that it is currently at?
Twenty seven percent? The unemployment rate is to three percent, actually, and the youth unemployment is, I think,
four to six percent, and youth unemployment and underemployment is over 5.5 percent.
So it's actually worse than the question. But right now, there isn't as a lot of rhetoric.
But the challenge is actually not being met. The way to meet the challenge of unemployment is to go back to education reform because
right now the university and fisheries system is a pipeline into unemployment.
Many people are not equipped to create jobs for themselves because they don't have the skills to.
So that's where to start in a structural way. I've also said that if I were president, I would establish a venture capital fund not credit,
but venture capital one trillion to give young people train them with skills, fund innovation and give people venture capital to start new businesses.
So these are the kinds of approaches that I would use. I don't think they're being used now.
Two. It's about skills very, very important about skills and then creating access to capital, access to capital needs skills.
And a lot of young people can create their hustle. And that's what's happening, you know, for a small group of young people now.
Imagine if you had. It's happening in spite of the government, not because of the government.
So imagine if you had a government that says this is actually our way forward.
So yes. And I said also because I have come out with a seven point agenda for the young people of this country.
And I have said that one of the things we would also do is transitional support for unemployed young people for about six months,
but that's uncertain conditions.
You have to register for training and a skill, and we'll transition you over and I'm going to keep you permanently on the dole.
But we will help you to find employment or create one.
I can see at least six questions in the audience. So I'm going to we're going to there's one there, the gentleman.
And then here and there and then over there. And while they're simple, please, as I said, please be brief.
I will. I will try to be very brief.
First and foremost, let me acknowledge the presence of His Royal Highness, the 14th Emir of Kano, Mohammed Sulmasy, the second drug smuggler.
Thank you very much for very insightful talk I have known Kingsley for well over 30 35 years were classmates.
40 40 years were classmates. Now you started your very interesting talk by looking at the homogeneous nature
of the heterogeneous nature of Nigeria and how that has been a problem.
My first sort of problem with that is that there's hardly any country in the world that is strictly homogeneous.
So so there must be a problem with you with leadership and how we transition from from from nationalities to nation state.
On the one hand, but what interests me in your talk is you seem to have looked at a third force as the way forward for Nigeria.
My question is that Third Force is going to be made up of Nigerians from outer space or are you going to create
this third force from the current stock of Nigerians who have been polluted for several years in nation building?
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Bankole de la Benkler Balogun is an old friend who in secondary school together federal government college in the late seventies.
Let me answer your question then. I know there's a lot of scepticism about,
but I can also tell a truth that many Nigerians in 2019 people were not necessarily thinking the way they're thinking now.
The country has deteriorated quite significantly between 2019 and now.
And sometimes people begin to shift their views based on how bad and how hard things have become.
Many people have scepticism about small parties, but if there were to be a third force,
which is a merger of several small parties and people feel that this is a force that is clearly an alternative to the status quo,
you will find a lot of support.
That's really my answer to the question, but everything is about political strategy that that force will succeed based.
If it has a political strategy that is effective, it will succeed if it can raise financing.
They don't have governance who controls the resources that they can steal, but they can go to the people for crowd funding if the people want change.
If one million Nigerians or two million Nigerians, the five key, you have 20 billion already.
It's it's it's it's about the strategy, you know, and the message, so 2022 will be a very interesting year.
I believe that a mighty wind will blow and Iraqis will fall.
That's the way I think. And I think it's possible if you look at America, the way Trump came to power.
If you look at France, the way Macron came to power, they again they beat conventional wisdom.
Things that people did not think would happen happened. You can say, OK that Macron broke out from the major two party system and from want that way.
And they made it. You might say that is France, not Nigeria.
But I don't believe that is possible. I don't believe that that's necessarily correct.
In 2015, most people thinking in the Nigerian, we did not believe an incumbent would focus off.
But it happened because a number of factors came together. The time was right.
The insecurity, the perceptions of corruption, weak leadership, all of this has created a vacuum.
Again, something else happened between 2015 and now. So people have tried two of the main parties and many people.
The key will lie with the youth. That's what I want to tell you.
If if it's up to the poor, hungry villagers, the people can go and give money.
I don't know what will happen, but if young people, many of whom are here today and many of who are listening,
if they were to decide to fight their policy and engage with the political process, they have the numbers.
So we intend to create our own electorates. Let me just reveal that to you.
Well, first of all,
I have to thank Oxford Martin School and reporter for this opportunity that you've given Professor Muller and also to focus on Nigeria.
I'm offering your points about Nigeria's global credibility is one that I see and I see people not even recognising Nigeria,
even though I think that where Nigeria goes is where Africa goes and where Nigeria goes is where the world goes.
And I have a I have an addition to what you said as to why what would make a third force work in Nigeria?
If people gave up their personal interests.
If that Fed force is really focussed on coming together as a third force, yes, don't give up my personal interests.
Yes, it will not happen. The question that I have for you, even though you have a slightly different view.
I do agree that Nigerians need to solve problems. But what do you think the West the rich nations can do to help?
Because sometimes when you are removed from a situation, you do have power that those institutions don't have.
Thank you. Thank you. The West and their possible role in the resolution to the Nigerian crisis is a question that comes up a lot.
I think. I assume I was president of Nigeria.
Let's just start from. Because when people who don't have the worldview, when people who don't have the exposure,
the experience of international relations and diplomacy are the ones making
decisions about how our relationship with the West can be more mutually beneficial.
It's not going to work. The world view is to go around the world with a begging bowl.
Oh, we have a problem in the Northeast. Give us money. All we have is give us, this is just not a place I operate from.
I will say to the West, Here is your vested interests.
Yes, your enlightened self-interest in a Nigeria that works.
And that interest will benefit us all. Your companies can come and do business, I don't mind so long as they create jobs.
You see what I'm saying? You know, here's how we can negotiate a mutually workable outcome.
But I do believe that the primary solution for Nigeria's problems will have to come from Nigerians themselves.
But, you know, the country's big, big economy and of course, several angles from which the West is important.
And I think someone who understands international relations, someone who's exposed someone who can strike, you know,
beneficial deals can deal with the West in a way that is mutual, that Nigeria's interests are not shortchanged.
But you don't want the West into your enemy. I don't think it's necessary.
I'm not interested in being Fidel Castro of Nigeria. No.
And then, you know, people who spent 20 years trying to kill PetSmart.
Not interested in that? Yeah. You know, so. So they didn't manage to.
Yeah, Castro did well. But it's so interesting that Win-Win scenario and I think it comes to negotiate.
Yeah. There's the question, this gentleman and lady over there.
Thank you so much for your very nice talk.
I have a lot of questions for you, but we're just focus to one of them is just taking off from the issue you spoke about now,
which is interest of the different parties. So does this talk about restructuring Nigeria adopt true federalism,
but it appears as though this opposition to that view from a region of the country, mostly the North.
My question is like given the policy makers have come to see that this is probably the best thing to do.
How do we get other people to understand the incentives for this new system because it appears as though they are trying
to protect their interest and then no one is trying to tell them what their interest is going to be in the future system?
But then have nothing like real practical steps about how to do that.
So that's one question. The second one is what will be the logistics of the government's actually funding campaigns of different political parties.
How many parties can be allowed to contest?
What will be the criteria for registering parties and how will the current system, which is currently existing, fits into that?
Yeah, the first the first question, it's a very important question, and it's addressed in my speech, but I didn't have time to elaborate.
First of all, I don't agree that it is the case now.
Perhaps I can enlighten us more, but that the MOF is opposed to restructuring.
There are elements. People outside of the North that were very sceptical about restructuring.
For example, the former military leadership class, which brought in more of the unitary system.
But if you notice most of them, even the Babangida as Obasanjo, they will insist that this is how a society evolves.
People argue, people debate and then things are happening. And then you begin to see that your position is no longer tenable.
There are two things about managing the interests of any region that feels that if we stop everybody going to get a federal allocation account,
the federal allocation, Clinton's life will stop tomorrow morning.
I propose that there has to be a transitional period in the revenue allocation formula.
You do not create a new constitution and tomorrow morning, voila. No.
You create a transitional period so that different parts of the country will prepare themselves.
That's number one. Two. If you are even looking at a resource endowment as a basis for wealth creation, which I don't believe in.
But since we have the resources, we'll it to wealth. How? Look at the solid minerals in the northern part of the country.
I'm sorry. Yeah. Look at the solid minerals all over the country.
They come in a federal, a proper federal state where the state owned.
Those resources are the regions on those resources. That's actually the future oil is in the past.
These are the things you explain. And that future. How can you benefit from it in a way that avoids the mistakes we made with oil?
One, I would argue that it shouldn't be foreign investment in natural resources without a
component for value addition for beneficiation before it's exported out of the country to.
If you come to the mouth to establish industries around solid minerals, you create training institutes for young people.
It's part of the deal you create. You have to create a workforce that will help you extract those industries and add value to them.
That's jobs for thousands of people. So these are some of the ways that you can negotiate and bring.
You know, I believe in what is called manufacturing consent or manufacturing consensus.
Many people have given up in Nigeria because the kind of leaders who can articulate a vision and manufacture consensus around it.
I've not yet come up because the system is not allowing them to come.
So therefore, everybody in Nigeria feels this is an impossible country. We should just go our separate ways.
You know, I don't think so like like, I think they said.
There are very few countries that are totally homogeneous,
so I don't see what is so impossible about managing our diversity or managing the different interests that exists.
Everybody may not get ideally what they want, but you can create, you know, a win win situation.
Yeah. Well, I can see at least six or seven questions in the audience and many more online.
I think they are, but unfortunately, we're just 10 minutes past the hour.
So I'm going to give you Your Royal Highness the last word.
And from that point onwards, we'll close the session. You had to think.
Well, OK, OK, OK, OK.
I believe the question was what was to comment your entree to contest for the presidency?
Presidential candidates in a country like Nigeria, are you getting me out front three?
What was your first choice?
Without doubt because of both of you got that one crystal grits one?
Well, how do you want to get there? Is it a question? Are you get what I'm saying?
When you have the likes of talk about, Well, I need to talk to content, which is a contextual I'm not going to win a competition.
Is the contention the competition a contention?
I would say that is an excellent last question. Yeah. Thank you.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, of course one cannot.
It's a lot of things are about strategy,
and you will understand that we have some detailed plans and detailed thinking that I may not be able to reveal in detail.
But I would say that we want to go to the people.
With a message that will resonate with them, we want to mobilise resources because we know that you cannot fight elections without money.
You don't need the same type of money like certain people you may be mentioning.
I don't need to have that money. What I need is a basic, you know,
cache of resources that allows us to do the things we need to do because a
lot of the big resources in the traditional Nigerian politics go to football,
they go to settle in godfathers must now look out. So half of that money actually doesn't go into the election, goes into private pockets.
So. So the point is that you have to ask people some basic questions.
You must get into their minds what can make them change?
What can make them do things they have not done before? What can make them respond to the power of such a political, you know,
people in a way that they have not before the electoral reform is beginning to help the michael delay transformation of us.
It helps. We intend that every polling booth of us will be manned on like 20 minutes.
You know, these are lessons we have learnt. So there will be messaging and there will be structures.
We are going to create our structures on the ground in every polling unit.
We've already started that.
It's not there's no big fanfare about it, but we are setting up our structures across the country and over the next three, four or five months.
By May, June, I think we'll be in a very different place and a lot of things will also help
us that we ourselves are not doing the the infighting in the APC and the PDP,
the two parties. I concluded it will also have some advantage from a point of view of strategy.
So it's a combination of the things we will do and some serendipity, which always happens when change will happen.
Again, I refer you to Barack Obama. Somebody said, Oh, you're doing these things, but oh, it's a two party system.
I said, If you must have a two party system in Nigeria, if you really must, then the APC and the PDP should match and then we have the third force.
Yes, because there is a party. Thank you, Kingsley, and please join me in thanking our distinguished guests with great.