Dr. Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), human rights activist, maritime lawyer and former president of Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), speaks with DAYO AYEYEMI about Nigeria’s economic situation, the challenges confronting the nation’s development, and what the Federal Government should do to salvage the economy and stimulate positive growths, among others.
What is your assessment of the Nigerian economy?
It is very tough for Nigerians. All the indices make it like that. The COVID issue is one. Two is the tight revenue position that the government finds itself in, dwindling oil prices, the need to provide social facilities, infrastructure, health, banditry and insecurity. The whole webs of things have made Nigerians face a very tough and challenging period.
How can we salvage the economy?
The issue of salvaging the economy will be based on the developmental plan of the Federal Government. We have high interest and lending rates, which altogether make the economy very challenging. One of the problems confronting Nigeria is a very low productive economy. I think part of how we can resolve the problem is to be more productive, locally. For instance, just to give you a good example, if I have a good shoe factory where I employ 100 people. I have all the productive capacity to import shoes but, rather than make good shoes, I prefer to go to Onitsha to buy shoes. What it means is that my local factory is not producing, yet I have 100 people to pay. When I go to Aba and get shoes, and sell them, the first thing I do is to pay my debt, then pay workers. There is little left to develop and fix my factory. What do I mean by that?
We have four refineries and they are all broken down; we have Ajaokuta and many others. All the things that should be working are not doing so and productivity is very low. If productivity is very low, then you can’t employ anybody. Unfortunately, the government’s economic policy is based on external borrowing.
The problem with our borrowing is that we are going to pay. We now find out that our debt takes over 90 per cent of our revenue. So, there is a little left for the government to focus on infrastructure and health services that grow the economy. I think it is much better for the government to concentrate on policies that generate internal revenue. This year’s budget is about N17 trillion and it is already carrying a deficit of about N7 trillion.
If the government borrows N7 trillion to fund the current budget, plus the other borrowings, we are looking at an amount close to N40 trillion. When all these funds are paid, nothing will be left for the economy. So, the economy is in real trouble. My suggestion is for the government to reverse its development policy and look at how it can generate internal revenue. If you can generate revenue internally, you don’t need to borrow. There are a couple of areas the government can do that.
What are those areas?
The first is the maritime sector. Just take cabotage. If cabotage says only Nigerians will be plying our coastal water, we have probably about 50,000 foreign vessels that are plying the water without benefits to Nigeria. I think the country can easily generate N3trillion or N4 trillion should it implement the Cabotage Act.
Under oil and gas, we have at least 34 values. Let me just speak about four that I am familiar with: legal, shipping, banking and insurance. I have suggested many times that if Nigeria were to probably monitor seven areas of the oil and gas sector, we are looking at N7trillion naira.
Then, we have the issue of generating funds from all the broken projects we have around. There are so many broken projects in the country. President [Goodluck] Jonathan set up a committee to work and look into the possibility of what types of revenue we can get from these. That committee never did anything. I can go on.
But just in these sub-sectors, I have shown you we can easily make N7 trillion. That is not happening. My point is that the only way we can get out of this is to increase local production by at least 60 to 70 per cent. That will absorb all unemployed 30 million youths roaming the streets doing nothing.
What is your take on the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) that has just been enacted?
PIA is a step in the right direction. It has been there for the last 30, 40 years. People in the industry are looking at how to get out of the oil and gas business. PIA is the first important and monumental step. It is not where it should be as there are still a lot of various and substantive flaws with it. But let’s start from somewhere.
For me, the fact that NNPC has been operating as a private company is a very good beginning. The hope is that it will finally open up Nigeria’s economy. Another thing that we need apart from productivity is that we need to tell the government that they have no business in business. Let the government concentrate on policy and allow the private sector to do the business.
The government should plan its development toward local resources. It should also concentrate on policy and creating an enabling environment for business to thrive. If the government just solves these problems, it will expand the economy, because the private sector will come in to do the things that the government is doing today.
There is so much argument about which zone should produce the next president of Nigeria. Is zoning constitutional?
I am not interested in zoning. I am interested in good governance.
Why?
What will it do for me? I am an Igbo man and if you have an Igbo man, who doesn’t do anything for me, how does that help me? I am not interested in zoning. I can understand zoning to be a tool to unite us as a diverse people. We are all diverse people but if making an Igbo president will only lead him to be corrupt, I would rather have a Yoruba president who is not going to be corrupt.
I am interested in a Nigerian president. I am just fed up at this stage or age of mine or this time of my life to be talking about zoning. I am looking for somebody who will be a Nigerian president, someone who will represent everybody. I’m sure every Nigerian would want the same. It is just that politicians have put this zoning into our heads. I don’t think Nigerians support zoning the way politicians support it.
By the way, have you heard any politician say that ‘we went to a particular zone and asked people what they think about zoning?’ We don’t hear that. All we hear is about the parties and there are only two parties – All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) talking about zoning. Over 200 million Nigerians are not interested in zoning; they are interested in the economy – money in their pockets, jobs for their children, schools to attend, hospitals to go to, good roads to drive on and food to eat. It is the politician that brought this zoning thing.
That is not to say that it is a bad thing, especially if it will help to spread the presidency around the diverse ethnicities, but not to just start pulling it out as if it is the magic wand. If zoning is even the magic wand, why has it not solved the problem all this while? It is clear that zoning is not the solution. So I think that we need to cool down on this “the man must come from Igbo land or must come from Yoruba land”. Is he going to do a good job? I think that is the more important question.
In the United States, what President Joe Biden placed before the American people was an agenda to better their lives. What President Obama placed before the American people was an agenda to bring in 31 million people who never had medical insurance. That was the agenda; they didn’t ask him where he came from. So let’s stop this zoning thing, because it is not helpful.
Can you give us insights into the Nigerian Institute of Chartered Arbitrators of which you are the current vice-president?
We’ve actually come a long way. We were established by one of the early founding fathers, Justice [Bola] Ajibola, who was the former president of the Nigerian Bar Association, former Attorney -of the Federation and former Judge of the World Court, a distinguished gentleman now in his late 80s. He felt, back in the 80s when he was the attorney-general, that there was a need for Nigeria to have a place in the world’s arbitration map. He thought about the need to, in collaboration with a number of his colleagues at the time, establish the Nigerian Institute of Chartered Arbitrators.
The institute was established and has grown very strongly over the last 40 years up to where it is today. We have a good president, Chief Afe Babalola (SAN) and we have a very active vice-president, my good friend, Fabian, who has been doing a very good job on the day-to-day management alongside our registrar-general. We are one of many recognised arbitration institutions in Nigeria and the whole idea about arbitration is that it provides an alternative to the more rigorous process of litigation. So it is now being recognised as one of the more important leading tools to resolve disputes. We hope to discuss relevant topics concerning arbitration and advance the cause of arbitration further at our annual conference.
You were recently appointed as the chairman of the Arbitration Policy Development Committee. Can you please share some insights into the background details and what your committee has done in that regard?
Yes, of course. The National Arbitration Policy Committee was set up by the Attorney-General of the Federation and it is simply to review Nigeria’s best interest in the world of arbitration. Are we getting a fair deal? Are there things we can do? Are there policies we can recommend so that Nigeria takes its proper seat?
Right now, Nigeria is not taking its proper seat. So what are the things we can do to enhance Nigeria’s place in the comity of nations, so that even local arbitration that should be here should not just be flying out of Nigeria and going elsewhere to London to Singapore? We are trying to advise the government that, for Nigeria to have a good seat, it must be an arbitration-friendly nation.
The way we enforce arbitration through the court must be efficient, swift and quick, because arbitration is about efficient and quick resolution of disputes. If we have arbitration that takes 10 years, why should anybody want to come here? Nigeria’s judicial system is not quite assisting Nigeria to take its proper place in the arbitration world. So, part of our advice is how we can make sure that the judicial system is more efficient, and then how we can also say to the international arbitration committee that there are some types of arbitration that need to be done in Nigeria. For instance, if I have a quarrel with you and I’ve hired your vehicle to go to Kano but with the dispute, the vehicle breaks down and in our agreement, we have an arbitration clause, why should that get to London?
So we are promoting the policy to say all the domestic arbitrations should be in Nigeria by law. We are promoting a policy to say that international arbitration that involves me and a company in the United Kingdom concerning the use of a vessel, that the government should stay clear from the issue and allow us under what is called party autonomy or freedom of parties to agree to choose wherever they like to arbitrate, taking into account that the best place to arbitrate will be the place most closely connected to the contract. So both of us can say we want to go to India, that’s our choice. The Federal Government ought not to interfere with that, so these are the policies we are looking at.
Let’s look at Nigeria›s situation – insecurity, banditry, open grazing, controversies here and there, how can this institute help further to ensure that we settle some of these matters without going through the prolonged court processes?
Mediation is an extremely important tool in resolving complex conflict in international diplomacy. Henry Kissenger, who was Secretary of State of the United States of America, was famous for his diplomatic shuttles in the Middle East that assisted to calm the war in the Middle-East between the Arabs and the Israelis. So whatever can bring parties to the negotiating table through mediation is more than welcome. So as part of the family of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), conflict resolution can benefit from ADR principles.
So two antagonists need not kill themselves in the battlefield, if there is a possibility to have peace talks around the table, where a panel of neutrals and mediators can try to resolve the differences between the two parties. So it is not just about war – war, it’s also about talk and so, we as an institute obviously encourage the government to engage in dialogue with all the contending forces.
The Northern governors have gone to court to challenge the positions of their Southern counterparts concerning the issues of Value Added Tax (VAT). Is it possible to come together and resolve these issues through this initiative?
Absolutely! Everything is about being able to resolve problems, but keep in mind that sometimes what is seemingly a conflict is no more than the adjustments of the geopolitical positions. On what is playing out now in Nigeria, I don’t want to use the word ‘restructuring’, but a process of re-balancing the federation, after which the Federal Government may not have all the powers that it has today. It may need to say to the states that, here are some powers we want to give you to become more efficient and economically independent from us. So Mr Wike going to court on the VAT issue is just the beginning of that process.
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the rise of the digital economy in Nigeria and other climes. Businesses are being done more by technology. What roles do you think arbitrators and ADR institutions must play, particularly in the area of dispute management and resolution resulting from this new normal?
It’s a good question, because I am consulting for the attorney-general on something we called ‘law and development’, and we looked at about eight semantic areas, one of which is the digital economy, which has many facets. I mean zoom is just one of them. Look at what is happening in the digital economy; even banks are now beginning to copy the Fintechs; so digitalisation of banking services is another way, because with COVID-19, people don’t want to go to the banks and it is now very easy to do your banking requirements without a gadget.
One of the big advantages of COVID is the fact that it has made us very aware that the digital economy is a very strong way of communicating, which is why a lot of IT companies are flourishing. Now, the shares of the entire technological companies that allow meetings to take place in America have skyrocketed. Zoom, for instance, has done exceedingly well. So the digital economy needs to be integrated into the Nigerian economy, because it was not part of it and it is only now that the ministry has come with the digital economy strategy paper and there are a couple of laws that they need to implement.
Apart from the laws being implemented, a couple of young guys have already taken off, I mean all the banks. The one that readily comes to mind is Flutterwave. They are making waves, so it also helps to grow the economy. I think the last report by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics shows that the digital economy is the fastest growing sector of the economy, and then obviously, we are talking about new jobs. All of that helps the process of arbitration.
What is your take on the separatist agitations being championed by Nnamdi Kanu, Sunday Igboho and the like?
People should be able to express themselves in a non-violent manner. It is a good way to allow diverse opinions in such a diverse country to flourish. I would like to see people being free to canvas their own political or religious cause without, of course, affecting the freedom of other people. So whether the government wants to be strong on this or not, the underlying point is how do we deal with the real problem that we face in Nigeria? That is the issue.
There is insecurity and extreme poverty everywhere. If everyone is meaningfully engaged, I am not sure we would find Boko Haram or IPOB. We don’t find them to re-group, but it is easy for the groups to recruit new members, because people are looking for basic survival needs. To me, there is an economic underlying process, whereby people feel dissatisfied. That is one.
The second one is that we have, generally speaking, an unresponsive political class, who think about themselves alone. These two problems have created situations in which many people are angry and are able to mobilise many people around the anger they have. You will see Boko Haram, IPOB, banditry and all of that. I am not sure that just using force will resolve this; I would like to see the government think about how to create jobs. This is a very important way of dealing with terrorism. But if government just confronts terrorism with force, I am not sure that such would be a successful formula.
You are part of the third force. Do you have a candidate now?
No. You know why? If you want to run for office, won’t you open your mouth and say it? Can you point to one single politician who has said I want to be president? There is nobody. That is the point I’m making. None of them has said it because they disrespect us. They don’t take Nigerians seriously; they would go to a hotel, huddle and feel after that they have consulted, it is just this and this person. If they fully feel that we have a role to play, then they will tell us. So how can I have a candidate when nobody has told me he wants to run?
What does the third force really stand for?
Third force means an alternative. It is not a political party; it is simply an alternative platform that assists people to make informed choices. I just gave you one informed choice as a member of the third force. My message to Nigerians is to forget zoning as the only single way of picking a president. Zoning is important if it is going to create unity. But right now, all I see politicians do in both parties is to use zoning to cause dissension. I rather prefer that the politicians tell us who among them would like to run and why? I have no interest in where the person comes from
What was your growing up like?
I enjoyed growing up. In my time when Nigeria was working very well, the systems were working. The institutions were working. The government was working; food was cheap, and the roads were good. I enjoyed my youth tremendously.
What I hope can happen is that the young ones today can also have the opportunity to enjoy their youth before they get old. I want the youths, because sometimes when the youths are making complaints, I shudder, because there are more women than men. Why don’t they organise themselves the way they organised the #ENDSARS movement? That is what you see from a third force: get organized, so that you can make an impact.
In America, you have all kinds of groups that played a strong advocacy role and changed the tones of politics. #Black-life-matter was one. So the youths should organise themselves, because they and women make about 70 per cent of the Nigerian population. So for the country to also change, we need to vote out our rapacious politicians who have not shown any interest in us. And the only way we can do it is to have a very strong youth and women movement.
Did you start your activism at the university?
Yeah, I started my activism at the university. I was heavily in the students’ union. People such as Segun Okeowo, late president of NUNS as the name was and Nwanfo Oritsu and a lot of people. We were all very active in the students’ movement back in the early 70s (1972 to 1974).
And that has helped to shape you?
Absolutely.
Considering your busy schedules, how do you unwind?
I read heavy books. I used to enjoy my Whiskey if I could get toward some whiskeys. I enjoy my red wine or white wine. I like to watch documentaries about life and leaders, and you will see a lot of experiences on how Bill Gates, Churchill became who they were; even Hitler, who was known as a negative leader, but there are a lot of leadership qualities in a negative man. I like to know what drove Hitler. So those are the things that I do. I liked to always relax but in an intellectual way. I am not interested in dancing, but I like music. I am not a dancer; I don’t go to nightclubs; I am more like a family person. I love to eat plenty of good foods. So that is why I’m a chef.