Nigeria: From Giver To Beggar In 50 years

 By Dele Sobowale

I am delighted to announce here today that just three days ago, the African Development Bank board of directors approved $100 million for the establishment of the Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Bank for Nigeria.” — Dr Akinwunmi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank for Africa, AIDB, Friday, October 18, 2024

All the people present at the event, when the AfDB fulfilled a promise made in June last year, must have given a thunderous ovation. To some extent, there is a need to cheer that a global bank is still willing to invest in Nigeria’s future. All is not gloomy; there is still some hope.

But, before revealing why Dr Akinwunmi’s announcement brought tears to my ageing eyes, permit me to recall a real personal experience which might help current and future leaders, if or when the nation’s economic recovery gets underway. It is very easy to get carried away when fortunes change from bad to better. That was what happened to us under President Jonathan when crude oil prices galloped to over $100 per barrel.

Primary school experience as lesson

“There are only three things to give children: good manners, good memories and good education”, said a sage. I was in the same class in St Peter’s Primary School, Ajele, Lagos Island, with the son of a justice of the High Court; name withheld because the intention is not to embarrass the family or my late friend/classmate.

 For the rest of us, his classmates, if not the entire school, his family were the Joneses with which the rest aspired to catch up. While most parents gave their kids two or at most three pence for mid-day break food, his parents gave him two shillings i.e twenty four pence. Others bought only one piece of meat with their meals; he ordered twelve; consumed what he chose and gave the rest away.

Needless to say, he was everybody’s best friend. He would spend the rest of the money on the way home when the driver came to pick him up. He was the only one driven to and from school.

But, he was a dullard. To make up for his deficiency, he cultivated my friendship and received my assistance. Thus, from Primary One, without realising it, I was a paid tutor — two pieces of meat and three pence everyday.

Unable to spend freely, because my parents would not allow it, I had a piggy bank; into which all my “salaries” went. The meat, of course, went down the alimentary canal. By the time I left in Primary five for Igbobi College in 1958, almost ten pounds were in my “bank” – most of it from my classmate/employer.

Fast forward, I returned to Nigeria in 1974, after ten years in the USA and my former employer and I met at a party in Campos Area. He recognised me; I did not remember him. I was shocked when one of our former classmates who had done well while remaining in Nigeria introduced us. He was absolutely wretched.

I got the story later about the descent from Ikoyi to Apapa Road. His father reached retirement age and was retired. Ikoyi residency came to an end and the old man became a pensioner — with all the adverse consequences of retirement, even in a good society suddenly manifesting. My former employer was sent to secondary schools and was thrown out of three; before the father said “enough”.

He very quickly ran through his own share of the inheritance by becoming a socialite and favourite of owambe musicians. He was destitute by the age of 30.

It was my turn to start giving him money until he passed on in 1979.

Nigeria at 16 and 64

“The Nigeria Trust Fund (NTF) was created in 1976 by agreement between the (African Development) Bank group and the Nigerian Government. The NTF is a self-sustaining revolving fund. The NTF’s objectives are: to Assist development efforts, provide concessional financing; co-finance operations with the AfDB, and the African Development Fund (ADF). Fund stand-alone operations, and consider supplementary loans for Bank Group financed projects.”

Source: African Development Bank.

The Gowon Administration committed one hundred million dollars, $100m, irrevocably, at a time when that amount was a colossal amount in any bank, but, “chicken change” for a government which had previously declared that “money is not our problem but how to spend it.” 

It was the same prodigal approach to public financial management which led to the unprecedented and ruinous Udoji awards. Today, all over Nigeria, there are millions of people in public service who, after receiving their astonishing payments (think of my old classmate and his two shillings), who rushed out to acquire refrigerators, air-conditioners, musical systems and cars which proved to be their first and last.

Lured into a false sense of affluence, Nigerians embraced the most wasteful habits on earth – importation of everything imaginable. Murtala Mohammed/Obasanjo/Yar’Adua regimes continued with the prodigal wasteful spending until 1978 — when it gradually dawned on Obasanjo that the party might be over. Before that, Nigeria had become the dumping ground for just about every other country which manufactured anything. In 1977, TIME magazine published an article titled “If you have anything to sell; Nigeria is the place to go.” 

It went on to describe our country as “an economy bursting at the seams”. So wasteful was the spending that some of the goods ordered, caught in the worst congestion the world has ever experienced went down with the ships bringing them. Yet, Nigeria paid for goods and demurrage. Hundreds of million of dollars went under water at a time when $100 million was a lot of money.

Corruption became a monster

“What does corrupting time not diminish…?” That question asked by William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, explains how diminished leadership brought Nigeria to the point where we are clapping for being granted as a compassionate loan part of what we gave away 48 years ago. Nigeria also funded the political liberation of Central and South Africa with over $200 million; so much so, the title of a Frontline State was bestowed on us by Eastern, Central and Southern States.

By 1997, the economic boom had turned to gloom: institutionalised corruption accounted for the transition in addition to official prodigal spending. In that year, Chief Ayo Ogunlade, Minister of National Planning, under Abacha stunned the audience at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, NIA, Victoria Island that, 76 per cent of the external loans taken by the Federal and State governments were spent on abandoned projects; 18 per cent was drawn down without any projects being started, four per cent on white elephant projects which could never benefit the people and only a mere two per cent went into viable projects earning returns as envisaged.

The crippling $36 billion debt burden, which Obasanjo confronted in 1999, had its origins in the $2.8 billion loan his military regime accepted, on advice by the International Monetary Fund in 1978; with assurance that it would be easily repaid. That turned out to be a grand deception. Now, we clap for receiving $100 million. I thought we should be shedding tears.