Why Nigeria needs a focused leadership -Adum

By Dooyum Naadzenga & Andrew Oota

Alex Ter Adum is a lawyer and former Attorney General of Benue State . A stalwart of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party and Public Affairs commentator. He spoke to Daily Times Editors on the leadership question in Nigeria , the 2024 budget performance , Tax Reform Bills and the lingering crisis in the PDP.

Q : Nigeria is currently going through various issues of leadership and quality of life of the citizens , in your opinion what is responsible for these challenges?

A: The lack of knowledge in the public service as it regards what needs to be done is responsible for what we are facing . Chinua Achebe captured it when he said the Nigerian problem was the question of leadership.

There is absence of the rule of law , there is so much corruption and then there is lack of consequences for bad behaviour. The leadership challenge in Nigeria has to do first and foremost with the absence of the culture of statesmanship amongst those who had the opportunity to govern Nigeria .

You can count a few who have demonstrated capacity in terms of vision. When you recall the days Abubakar Tafawa Barewa who demonstrated the spirit of statesmanship , he was focused on the development of Nigeria. A statesman is somebody who comes to leadership without looking at what is there fur himself, but what he can do for his people and,if you look at Abubakar Tafawa Barewa who was a prime minister of Nigeria you can attribute such attributes to him.

I was not there ,but if you look at his leadership from what I have read and told,he was one man who was committed to the development of Nigeria as a whole and not for himself.

If you recall some of his videos either at the United Nations , his historic visit at the Washington , his speeches and how he was described at the golden voice of Africa for somebody who was just a grade two teacher but demonstrated absolute understanding of what a leader should do for his people and race you could understand who he was.

This is somebody who had a good understanding of foreign policies. He took Nigeria first in his estimations and the Africa second.

Look at Shehu Shagari and maybe Murtala Muhammed, but subsequently we have had people who are basically business men. They convert opportunities for people into there private estates.

This is even becoming more glaring when you look at the current leadership of our country. Many of us believe that President Tinubu has not seen the opportunity he has is not to amass wealth.

We believe he not seen these opportunities as such to develop his cronies and family because people had thought giving his background and age at which he came into the Presidency ,one would have expected him to be a statesman . Unfortunately ,Tinubu is neither a statesman and is neither a leader. He is just a businessman in Aso Rock. Look at the types and quality of his appointments.

You cannot have an opportunity to govern a multi ethnic nation like Nigeria and you narrow your selection choices to a particular tribe, not just particular tribe but particular clique of people of Osun and Lagos states and you expect the rest of the county with over 500 ethnic groups will be hailing you.

Look at the porque procurement system of this administration, what we see are procurement projects of humongous amounts without public tender, without any procurement process and when you out the 2024 budget you don’t see any project called the Lagos-Calabar highway, neither is therein anything like Sokoto-Badagry High way. Even the 2025 budget does not have such projects ,so where are you funding it from.

This is a democratic system where there are constitutional provisions that must be adhered to and how you can spend money as a Government . You cannot spend one kobo from the national Treasury without National Assembly appropriations but all these are happening and the National Assembly is simply complicit and compliant , nobody is raising any questions, the President has become an imperial Lord, he determines what he does and nobody raises any questions in the midst of all the challenges that we have ranging from infrastructure to poverty etc, the best the president could do is to engage purchases of new Escalade cars , new Presidential Jets, Yatch , putting on renovations of Presidential mansions in Lagos and Abuja.

Look at all the foreign trips of the President none has yielded anything except the one in France where his private partners seems to be making inroads.

This is President whose trips are mostly not because of state matters ,they are for his personal business engagements where he introduces his son to his business partners as the heir apparent to his private estate.

The question are really about the roles of a leader giving what we see in the current president.

Look at the situation in the petroleum sector where you have people who dont have knowledge of how the industry works. I know the reason behind the fuel challenges in Nigeria was because we were not doing local refining.

For instance I am from Benue and if I am a farmer who farms yam in Benue, my children are supposed to eat pounded yam and I take all the yams and sells to somebody who produces pounded yam floor in Lagos and sends it back to be eaten in Benue I then go to a supermarket to buy that sand yam floor at 5,000 naira per kilo whereas one tuber of yam can give you up to five kilos.

Meanwhile I sold one tuber of yam for one thousand Naira to the manufacturer of the yam processor in Lagos . My understanding is that if I decide not to sell all my yams, I just take 10 percent of my yams to Lagos, it means my children will be able to eat pounded yams cheaper if I was to buy processed pounded yam at 5000 naira per kilo.

However we have arrived at that state in Nigeria today where you have Dangote refinery that is working ,we have the federal government founded refineries and other modular refineries working ,yet we are unable to get fuel at a rate that is cheaper than what is sold in the United States. All we are told is exchange rate and from one problem we move to the other .

It takes us to what is the basic understanding of leadership ,what is the vision. If these leaders truly understand the issues that look mundane should not be a problem.

This takes me to the lack of vision and basic understanding of what to do. The reason why these happens is that most of the times when people are contesting for leadership , like this President and the previous did is that they refused to participate in any town hall engagement to be interrogated on any policy position that was contained in there manifesto on his they will govern Nigeria.

All you heard was that I will build on what President Buhari was doing and what was Buhari doing ; lack of basic economic understanding, nepotism which Tinubu has outpaced Buhari ,impunity and of course incompetence.

When you put all of these things you will understand why it was difficult to President Tinubu to submit himself to any public engagement or any discussion of policy.

When Atiku Abubakar who was the alternative President and Peter Obi said they were going to privatize NNPC there was huge talk that he was going to privatize NNPC to himself, but now without privatizing the NNPC look the degree of incompetence ,corruption, waste; if Dangote can build a refinery within a period of six years from ground zero as a green field project ; NNPC has taken forever to do Turn Around Maintenance for three refineries .

All what you hear now is when they are able to a particular part of refinery working there is a hue media propaganda everywhere suggesting that all the refineries are working . Government is not by deceit ,Government is by sincerity ,these people are not treating Nigerians as citizens.

The way this government and governments generally treated Nigerians is like a conquered people. As slaves who don’t know there left from there right. If the objective of not privatizing the NNPC is to manage the Commonwealth of Nigeria where all of us can fill the impact of citizenship then we need to rejig our approach.

Our leaders ,since the return of the fourth Republic we have a very disturbing idea the fact that most elective executive office holders do not feel they have a responsibility either to the constitution or the law or Rule of law.

Once somebody is elected into office he assumes that he has become an imperial Lord and there no consequences for bad behaviour ,that is why corruption thrives and because corruption thrives in an environment where there is absence of rule of law,there is complete break down of Rule of law in Nigeria.

That is why you see the kinds of things that won’t even happen in a military regimes. These things won’t even happen under Abacha because there was at least some respectability to the law.

This kind of impunity was not there . Today you hear of judges are being given houses ,cars ,judiciary appointments are made without reference to any criteria, politicians smuggle names to NJC and JSCs and people are just been appointed into these places.

The level of competence at the Bench has collapsed ,judgements will come and you will not find one quotable quote. All you find is sentiments or abbarations, toxic definitions of certain principles of law, people who are lawyers today don’t even know what is the state of the law.

Let me ask say this, for capital to come into a market it must be assured of security, because capital is a coward . It wants where it will be first secured . If I come in as 1million dollar can I come out as 2million dollars ?

It is about growth so nobody is coming to invest where the minister of the FCT for instance will look at a piece of land that was allocated to you and revoke it. You are meant to face the consequences of the failure of FCT staff who failed to do there jobs.

If buildings are not on infrastructure lines ,rather than destroy them, acquire them and punish those who did the allocations ,the person who acquired an illegal land has already beared the consequences when you confiscate the building from him ,so all you to do is to take over such building for public use.

This is same for the EFCC who have refused to disclose the identity of the owner of the estate the confiscated . It is just about transparency , who is that owner, name him to serve as deterrent to others . Look at the cars that EFCC confiscated many years ago, they are just laying opposite the National mosque .

It has had become a car mortuary of the EFCC. Meanwhile ,even Government needs cars , if you are not going to use these cars why keep them there when most of Government agencies are submitting budgets for new cars . We need resource mobilization to be able to develop as a nation.

Today we are talking about 45trillion and people are shouting . They have forgotten that at the current rate of dollar to a Naira ,that 45 trillion is less than what was budgeted in 2023. It is plenty of paper money pursuing less value.

That type of money is too insignificant to develop a society of over 200 million people . If you pick out budget and compare to nations you will see that we are a very poor nation.

The only way you will be able to develop Nigeria today is to create the enabling environment to attract both direct investment from the private sector. Take example of the Telecom sector for instance , it was the creation of an enabling environment by the enactment of the new telecommunications law ,the privatization and opening up of the sector that between 2000 and 2025 today that has been able to attract over a 100billion dollar investment ,money that Nigeria could not have raised from the sector .

What we suffer is the unwillingness to do these things because we have the knowledge available . Look at the Aviation where you have nearly 100 percent private participation in Nigeria since the end of Nigeria Airway What we have been having is the private airlines, you need to do that same with the railways.

Even the roads if we begin to tow the roads with example of the Keffi-Abuja-Makurdi highway to be run by a Chinese company, people are going to pay like a thousand Naira for a car but I tell you I will be more willing to pay that and drive a road without potholes to Makurdi.

We have ideas on what to do, it is the willingness that is the problem and it is because we profit from these gaps. What will profit you when you live in wealth and your neighbors are in poverty because the insecurity we have is bereded by these misalignments .

There are upraising of the poor against the rich and nothing more than that . Look at how much the Bureau of statistics released as figures for the payment of ramson alone ,that money represents not than 10 percent of the National Economy of Nigeria ,so how can you develop. We need to look at politics with ideology and not just an immediate gratification.

People who were in power and now out of power will tell you we need to restructure but if you ask me what we need to restructure I will tell you to restructure the benefits attached to public offices ,make it less attractive . Look at the military junta in Burkina Faso, even though we calm its abbaration but look at what the young man has been able to achieve withing three years .

Q: Government is about policies and policies substantially defines a government and one of the contentious issues is the Tax Reform Bills where the The Northern leaders and Southern leaders are on different pages, what is your opinion regarding the advise of the Economic Council for withdrawal of those bills for more consultations ?

A: I don’t really want this argument reduced to the North and South division . There are fundamentals that are contained in the Tax Reform proposals which are completely in disagreement with the current situation in Nigeria which people should focus on.

When you focus on the change of the distribution formula I can understand why the people supposedly in the North are opposed to it. They are opposed to it and it is for a good reason.

VAT is a consumption tax and if you look at the extant distribution structure , it gives about 50 percent to equality of states which is a federal principle. In every federalism the equality of all federating units must be guaranteed no matter how small. Distributing revenues available for distributions from the federating pulse on the basis of 50 percent equality is not wrong.

But because you have a tax which is based on consumption and twenty percent of that is distributed based on consumption I find that not correct and thirty percent on the basis of population. Now population determines consumption but in several ways that one that is a fallacy that can also be disputed, because there can be ten people here with less than a thousand Naira income per month and so these ten people will probably be earning a million Naira per a month that is about a hundred thousand Naira per month.

One percent of that income is disposable income, in contrast ,there will be one person with a ten million Naira income who’s disposable income in terms of consumption amounts to 3 million Naira ,so that one individual has greater consumption power than ten people in another location. So, change the allocation formula, population should have less and consumption should have more. You can twerk the other two formulas on the basis of equality ,that is a fundamental principle of federalism.

So revenue sharing must start on the basis of equality of states, so when you apportion 50 percent of revenue for distribution to states on the basis of equality I don’t have a problem with that. But I have a problem with distribution formula between consumption and population.

So you can reduce population to maybe 15 percent and take consumption to 35 percent . Now when they say derivation it connotes a different meaning from the consumption tax we practice because derivation means the revenue is going to where it is instigated and to that extent it means ,it is the producers that are going to get revenue from the principle of derivations.

It means that all the company headquarters for instance are located in Lagos , if Nestle produces water from Lagos and it’s consumed in Sokoto ; on the basis of derivations that tax goes to Lagos because the headquarters of Nestle is in Lagos. Nigeria has not reached a state where you operate this kind of policy.

The only thing that is clear and definite on how to determine these is the point of production ,because the producer is able to give statistics of how much he has been able to produce for a particular period of time and how much he has been able to sell. From that point you are able to deduct as source.

At the point of consumption many states are even unable to collect that VAT. Because it is consumption tax and many obligor in the states are not accountable . I give an example in Benue state for instance , for every bottle of beer you drink ,the VAT element if it is deducted as source , which you pay. Now ,how about hotel accommodations, because it is also a service.

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There are several hotels in Makurdi that you there to check in and you are billed without putting the VAT. meanwhile they supposed to the VAT obligor to the FIRS but they are able to invade FIRS checks because the capacity of the FIRS is also weak and collection is not total.

Wheteas total VAT is easier to collect ,an aspect if hospitality VAT is easier to collect, because it is not paid at source . Most of these obligor are required to file there returns to FIRS at the end of the month, then you find out that several of the files are incorrect . For you to be able to give a very scientific prescription so that everybody will believe that this thing is possible rather than just twerking derivation and making it in the way and manner it is prescribed in the tax reform, you have to be able to do a total overhaul of the collection system in such a way that you can create efficiency required to ensure that everyone is brought into the poll. That has not been done.

The reforms does not seem to address the challenges of collections ,there is more focus on the distributions , there are collection challenges which up till now have not been effected.

Today VAT is about 7 percent and you talking about graduating it to 10 percent , to 15 percent , with a minimum wage of 70,000 naira and with 15 percent VAT that 70,000 is purely consumption money. You cannot use that money to build capital, you can’t use it to invest or do anything. It means with the Withholding Tax you already paid, government has a claim of 15 percent on whatever that is in your pocket , this economy cannot afford that.

For every one Naira in your pocket Government has a charge of 7 percent without doing anything . These are the fundamental issues and this economy is not as robust to carry such.

The deceit that we are going to take the tax obligation from people who are earning certain amounts of money is not true. Because you are pushing the street tax which everyone pays to the ordinary person.

VAT is a street tax because everyone consumes. So rather than focus on the North and South division and if I were a state Governor and without the federal government telling me how it is going to strengthen the collection system , define consumption and not derivation I will not find the tax proposal appealing to consider .

As an ordinary citizen I believe the burden of taxation under the current proposal is such that I cannot carry ,my income cannot carry it. I can’t be drinking water and paying government 15 percent for a bottle of water.

Q: You spoke about the docility of the National Assembly , legally speaking how will you react to its constant budget adjustments within one fiscal year with higher figures .

The constitution requires the you cannot spend without appropriations so you can do supplementary appropriations many times in a year but it only shows that you are not prepared.

Q: These are not supplementary appropriations ,the projects are same ,but the figures keep going higher .

The constitutional requirements is that a budget should run for 12 months and if within that one year you are not able to meet the time duration you come back if you are able to make new estimates.

These is for a maximum of three months, so when the President was presenting the 2025 budget, one of critical things some of us were expecting was the performance of the 2024 budget.

But nobody explained what happened with the monies appropriated . What we just heard 80 percent was achieved. There were several road projects that were to be completed in 2024 for instance, what have you achieved and where are you
All you see is a drama by the ministry of works flagging up and disagreeing with site engineers who turns asphalt to cement controls ,all that drama for a whole year and nothing happened.