Nigeria’s public corporations have become bottomless pits –Moghalu

President, African School of Governance, Prof. Kingsley Moghalu has decried what he called the dearth of corporate governance in Nigeria’s public corporations, saying most public corporations have become bottomless pits “for the gratification of partisan political associates.”

He spoke in Lagos as Chairman of the occasion during the Annual Directors’ Dinner and Awards organised by the Chartered Institute of Directors Nigeria (CiOD).

Moghalu who is a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) recalled that the bank was run like a private company with Lamido Sanusi Lamido now Muhammad Sanusi as the Governor.

According to him, no public corporation would deliver without institutionalising the principle of corporate governance in its corporation.

“When I was at the Central Bank, we ran the Central Bank like it was a private company. We ran it with very high standards of corporate governance. And that’s one of the reasons we were so successful in our five-year tenure from 2009 to 2014.

“It was not an accident. It was not an accident. How many public sector corporations can we go to and see the principles of corporate governance being followed?

“No. But most public sector corporations in Nigeria have become bottomless pits for the gratification of partisan political associates. It doesn’t matter the party.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s federal or state. This is what is going on. And that’s why the country is not being governed. You have public sector corporations, but there is no corporate governance in those corporations.

The political economist noted that the private sector has become more mature over the past 10 years in terms of entrenching corporate governance but the same cannot be said of the public corporations.

He stated that Nigeria must work on improving good governance in the public sector, saying without it the private sector cannot realise its full potential.

Moghalu noted that the private sector is bleeding today because of the misgovernance in the public sector.

He said, “We have our private sector where corporate governance has become more mature over the past 10 years, over the past 15 years. When I came back to Nigeria in 2009, appointed by President Umar Yar’Adua as Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, and working with my brother and friend and boss, Lamido Sanusi, as he then was, now Mohammadu Sanusi II, who had recommended me to President Yar’Adua to be appointed, and I was tasked with heading the Financial System Stability Directorate.

“That task was to reform the financial system, to bring new standards of corporate governance, to bring new standards of risk management, and I’m pleased to see that in the years since then, many aspects of the private sector have grown in their maturity when it comes to corporate governance, and a large part of it is because of contributions from the Chartered Institute of Directors, which is training a lot of corporate directors and a lot of its members, but there’s a problem.

“You can have corporate governance all you want in the private sector, but if you don’t have good governance in the public sector, there’s a problem. There is a gap. The gap needs to be plugged, and we should think seriously about what to do, about what I’m saying and what I’m about to say. You see, in Africa, we tend to think our problem is we don’t have money. We need investors, and we go around the world looking for investors.

“We’re indebted. We need debt relief. We need foreign aid. The biggest problem the African continent faces, and that also includes our dear country, Nigeria, is the absence of good and competent governance.

“That country or a continent that was well governed, the way it should be, with purpose-driven leadership that is thinking about improving lives of the citizens and the people, about taking people from poverty into the middle class, about taking people from being mid-range to being globally. We would not be in the situation in which we are today.

“The private sector in Nigeria is bleeding, bleeding massively, and if the private sector is bleeding, you can imagine the condition of Nigerians who are not corporate citizens, just ordinary.

“We need to emphasize the importance of governance in the public sector, because without good governance and competent governance in the private sector, the private sector will not be able to create wealth in the manner in which it should.

“It will not be able to create prosperity. It will not be able to create the wealth of nations, rather than the wealth of individuals.”