'Is this the change we promised Nigerians? - Ben Murray-Bruce

Read his piece below...
Two weeks ago, the Chairman of the
Senate Committee of the Federal Capital
Territory, Senator Dino Melaye, made a
startling revelation that shook me and
many right thinking Nigerians to our
foundation. At a time Nigeria is going
through a daunting economic recession, it
was revealed that we plan on spending the
sum of N250 million to build a gatehouse
for the Vice President of Nigeria.
Whenever I think of the budgetary provision of
N250 million to build a gatehouse for the vice
president, I am moved by the inequities and
inequalities of Nigeria.

There is no urgency or importance in building a
new gatehouse for the vice president’s already
over priced house, but if even we need to build
such a house can we not build it with less than
10% of the cost?
At the black market rate (which is the most
commonly used rate in Nigeria) N250 million is
equivalent to $500,000. At the official rate, it is
worth almost a million dollars.
With that type of
cash you can buy a mansion in Washington DC
and a well developed property in London. Isn’t it
a pity that all it can buy the Nigerian government
is a gatehouse?
Now we want to borrow $30 billion from other
nations and foreign financial institutions. But why
should any other nations or foreign financial
institutions lend us money when we have not
shown prudence in managing the little that we
have?

I can assure you that I did my research and not
one of the ten richest nations in the world is
spending the equivalent of 250 million for
something as inconsequential to the well being of
a nation as a vice president’s gatehouse.
Why should America, Britain or China lend Nigeria
any money when the gate man of our Vice
President is living in a house that only a
millionaire in their own country can afford?
Should they lend us $30 billion so we can build
more luxurious and befitting gatehouses for our
other public officials?
Is this the change we promised Nigerians?
With a minimum wage of N18,000 the N250
million to be spent on the Vice President’s
gatehouse can pay the salaries of 13,888
Nigerians!

How many staff are being owed salary by the
federal government? How many staff are being
owed salary by state governments? How many
pensioners are dying while waiting to collect
pension that never comes?
How many internally displaced persons are dying
of hunger while we budget N250 million for a
gatehouse? N250 million can feed one million
people for a day and 200,000 people for a week.
Recently, I was driving on a federal road in the
South-east and a portion of that road was so
damaged that it was a death trap. I wonder how
many people have been killed on that road.

Certainly, from my estimation as an entrepreneur
who has built several malls and other real estate
projects across Nigeria, N250 million will be
sufficient to repair that portion of the road, but
no! We have to build a gatehouse for a VIP!
Nigeria has some of the worst maternal and infant
maternity rates in the whole world. 10% of all the
women who die in childbirth are Nigerian women
according to the UN.
Meanwhile Nigeria only has
2% of the world’s population.
The main challenge we have in reducing maternal
mortality is funding and we are approaching
international aid organisations to help us raise
funds to help reduce death amongst our pregnant
women. Can you imagine how unserious we look
to them when they read that we are spending
N250 million on a gatehouse while begging them
for money?

We really must make better use of our scarce
resources at this time. We cannot expect others
to lend to us from their own hard earned
resources when we have demonstrated a
propensity to squander the little we have.

What we have demonstrated in Nigeria, especially
within the last two years, is a strong propensity
to major on the minor and minor on the major.
With the way we in government treat Nigerians, I
sometimes suspect that our people will prefer to
go to hell if our leaders are found in heaven!
And another thing, for a nation that wants to
come out of recession, Nigeria is not spending
enough on education.

The proposed allocation for education is N50
billion, which is only a third of the proposed
allocation for defence.

There is a reason why LEARN and EARN rhyme. If
a nation wants to earn more she must first learn
more. This budget proposal does not take that
into account.

We are still working with an obsolete Industrial
Age thought process that operates under the
wrong notion that nations become rich because of
what they have under their soil.
I have got news for the executive: today’s nations
can only grow rich by what is between the ears of
its citizens! We are living in the knowledge
worker era.

Apple, Google, facebook and yahoo are now more
valuable than Exxon-Mobil, Shell BP, Chevron and
AGIP. The world is changing and we must change
with it.
I have been studying Anambra State for a while.

This used to be one of the most educationally
disadvantaged states in the South. But since the
era of former Governor Peter Obi till today, the
state made education its priority and allocated the
bulk of its budget to education and the more
Anambra budgeted for education the more their
economy flourished.

They do not borrow. They did not participate in
the federal government’s bailout to states. They
have one of, if not the best subnational
economies in Nigeria. Nigeria as a whole is
importing food, Anambra as a whole is exporting
food.
And their secret is education. They have
consistently featured as number one in WAEC and
NECO results.

If we want Nigeria to earn more money, that
cannot be achieved by selling more oil. It can
only be achieved by learning more to earn more.

As a nation, we are spending N49 billion
maintaining about a 100 embassies and
consulates. What do we get in return? That
expense is a drain and not an investment.

We can spend only a fraction of that amount. Do
we need a consular in every nation to issue
visas? Several nations that are richer than Nigeria
are doing away with consulars in preference for
entry point visas.

Turkey has a policy where you pay $40 and you
get your visa online. It is reducing their recurrent
expenditure because now they maintain only a
skeletal staff in their embassies and it is
increasing their revenue because without the
bottleneck and hassle of getting visas through the
traditional means, people are flocking to countries
like Turkey, like the UAE and other countries that
have online visa policies.
Instead of N49 billion, we can spend only 10% of
that and use the balance N45 billion to build
infrastructure and educate our people. In fact, we
can be like the UAE and Turkey that can afford to
use the millions they get from online visas to run
their embassies.

Two months ago, the presidency released a
statement announcing that they have recently
weeded out 50,000 ghost workers from the pay
roll of the federal government.
If that is true, then why isn’t that being reflected
in the budget for recurrent expenditure? If you
have weeded 50,000 ghost workers from the
system then there must be a massive drop in our
recurrent expenditure. Something is not adding
up.
Recurrent expenditure in the 2017 budget is
N2.98 trillion. Let us just call it N3 trillion.
Recurrent expenditure in the 2016 budget was
N2.6 trillion.

Are we sure that the executive did not make a
mistake and instead of weeding 50,000 ghost
workers from the system it actually added 50,000
ghost workers because the recurrent expenditure
has increased.
Has minimum wage increased? No? There are too
many ambiguities that need to be cleared up.

And on housing, certainly we can do much more
than what the 2017 budget proposes to do.
The American psychologist, Abraham Maslow,
theorised that our most basic human need is for
shelter. Let us relate this to Nigeria.

Nigeria has a 17 million housing deficit. If
Abraham Maslow is correct, it stands to reason
that lack of shelter, among others, is one of the
single largest drivers of corruption in Nigeria
today.

Civil servants and politicians steal largely
because they have no hope of ever owning a
home and they do not want to be destitute after
their retirement. This is why the EFCC seizes a lot
of houses from corrupt people.
If home ownership represents man’s basic need,
then no government has succeeded in meeting
this need. After all, what is the essence coming to
power if the most basic need of the electorate
cannot be addressed?
Nigeria needs to solve this challenge because if
we do, we will go a long way to improving the
human development index of Nigeria and
reducing the misery level as well igniting the type
of economic activity that will ease our current
recession while also fighting corruption.

There is no way government can build 17 million
houses. At best, the budget of the ministry of
housing can build a couple hundred thousand
houses annually. If we are to plug this deficit, we
have to rely on the private sector just like
developed nations.

We have over N6 trillion of our pension funds
sitting in financial institutions. Let us deploy
these funds into productive sectors of our
economy.

The naira gets devalued and the return from
investing pension assets in government treasury
bills and bank deposits is less than the rate of
inflation. Real estate is one of the few
investments that outstrips inflation. The safest
investment anywhere in the world is real estate.
Why don’t we use these funds to fund our real
estate development and end our housing deficit?
We can and we should use the pension funds to
stimulate the housing market while the
government subsidizes the mortgage rate for low
income earners so that they can borrow at single
digit interest rates.

Promoting home ownership will lower corruption
and what else could be a safer investment for our
pension funds? After all, no one can run away
with a house. They can run away with a car or
with cash, or with shares, but a house is
immovable and best of all it largely continues to
appreciate in value. It only makes Commonsense
to use pension funds in this way.

And I do not even see why government has to
sell land to property developers and private
housing estate builders in the first place. In my
opinion, if you want to build houses for the
masses, government should give you land free of
charge!
Of what use is the land when it has no property
or farm on it? At least if you allow people build
on it government can charge them property taxes.

Our president and governors live in houses paid
for by tax payers. It is time we return the favour
to the taxpayers and the masses. It is time we
begin running Nigeria in a businesslike manner
and provide our people the dividends of
democracy. It is time we deliver on the promised
change.

• Ben Murray-Bruce is the Founder of Silverbird
Entertainment Group and the Senator
representing Bayelsa East in the National
Assembly