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Tinubu should reduce VAT to 5% — Professor Ode Ojowu

Professor Ode Ojowu graduated with a first class degree in economics from the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria. After graduate studies he taught at ABU and at the University of Jos for many years. The professor of economics was also a commissioner for Finance and Economic Planning in Benue State between 1984 and 1985. He served in General Abacha’s National Economic Intelligence Council, before becoming Chief Economic Adviser to President Olusegun Obasanjo, between 2004 and 2005. Between 2018 and 2023, he was a member of the economic advisory team to former President Muhammadu Buhari. He has done many other things, as a researcher and consultant, to many state governments and international organisations. At a point, he was also the chairman of the Daily Trust Board of Economics. 

 

Let’s start with your early life.

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By estimate, I was born in early 1948; and in 1953, my parents tried to send me to school. But unfortunately, my right hand could not reach the left ear when the teacher tried to make the assessment, so I was sent back home.

 But a year later, luckily a school was brought to my village, so I enrolled in 1954. It took me five different primary schools to get my First School Leaving Certificate in 1960.

 

Why? 

They didn’t have enough classes, so we were looking for where the next class would be found. So I had to go to different places, including Methodist and Catholic schools. My father was determined that I would go to school, so I had to go to five different schools to be able to finish my primary school. 

After that, there were challenges. I was 12 at the time of independence and the first thing I ever got with excitement was independence bag with a plastic cup.

 

Somebody brought it to your village in Benue? 

In the school, yes. I think the federal government distributed independence bags, plus plastic cup from England. That was my first major property when I was leaving primary school. 

After that, there were so many family challenges; so my father, myself and my mother had to go to the cocoa plantation in 1961 to try to raise money for my next level of study.

Cocoa plantation in Benue or South-West? 

It was in what is now Ogun State, at a village called Araromi.

 

So, you worked at the plantation as a young child? 

Yes. I was working with other labourers from the state.

 

How old were you then? 

Twelve.

 

Were your parents also working at the plantation or they just took care of you? 

My father was there but mother was not in the plantation; she was processing and selling cassava. My father was a very mobile person; he just dropped us there and kept going places. 

We left at the end of the year, but unfortunately, that year, the cocoa plantation owners said they didn’t have enough money to pay us. So we actually turned poorer than we went.

 

So, you worked for one year but couldn’t be paid? 

They paid us but not enough. I think it was a strategic mistake on the part of my father because he was reluctant to sell his goats. But when he came back, virtually all the goats were gone. And some died.

I think there was a village problem and they said they didn’t want to keep goats again. We had a very difficult time.

In 1963, I took an entrance exam to go to teachers’ college. My father chose the school for me because it looked cheaper. And that time, they had converted from Grade 3 to Grade 2.

When I got to the interview place, the principal saw me and said I was too small to go to a teachers’ college. Most of the people in the school were already married and I was just about 15.

I looked into his eyes and I asked: “Won’t I grow in five years?” That was the only interview I had with him and he said, “You are intelligent, you have passed the interview for asking that question.” That was how I got into the teachers’ college. 

From there, I already knew inside me that I lost time because some of my classmates who finished with me in Primary 6 in 1960, by the time it was 1964, they were already in their fourth year in secondary school when I was just beginning. That was an impetus for me to work very hard. When I finished from the college, it was called Jesus College, Otukpo in 1968. 

I started teaching in 1969 and working hard to do my London GCE. So I combined both the O-Level and A-Level between 1969 and 1970. By 1971, I was in ABU.

 

In those days, teaching paid well and was respectable; were you not contented to be a teacher?

We were paid very well. I was getting £20 a month. Although I didn’t know what I wanted to be, I didn’t want to remain a teacher. Among the people who were teachers, I looked too young; and that was not my ambition. Then my other age mates were in secondary school and I wanted to be there.

My ambition was to join them in the university even though they went to secondary school. In those days, when you finished from secondary school you had to go for a Higher School Certificate for two years. 

I told myself that by the time those people finished their two years, I would also be at the university with them. And I caught up with them eventually.

 

Why ABU? 

At that time, admission was free. I applied to Ibadan and the ABU but the letters did not come. And my results were very good. 

Because I had a relative in ABU who was a student one year ahead of me, I followed him to the school to find out why I didn’t get a letter. When I got there, we searched and found out that my letter was on the floor.

 

On the floor?

Yes.

 

So, you had been admitted?

Yes. So, I picked it up.

 

So, if you didn’t go, nobody would have contacted you?

I would have lost out. Months later, my admission letter from Ibadan came, but I was already in ABU.

You said you didn’t know what you wanted to do; how did you veer into the Department of Economics? 

Interestingly, when I was in Jesus College, I wasn’t aware of the subject called Economics. My interest was to read Literature because I was doing very well in it. In the teachers’ college exam, I scored an A in Literature. In London GCE, I also scored an A in Literature.

When I was preparing for GCE, there was a teacher who was reading Economics and I was exposed to his books. And each time I read them, I found them very exciting. They called it Rapid Results College. I read them and found that it was very interesting.

And the arguments were restricted. You could calculate and get an answer, unlike other things you had to debate and debate. I just fell in love with it. So I registered for that GCE as well and it was one of the subjects I passed very well. I did this at A level and passed again, so I went to read it.

My mathematics was not strong because in the teachers’ college, we did arithmetical processes, not mathematics a whole lot. But I had that inclination towards quantitative things. So, when I went to the ABU, they did a remedial in mathematics and I passed well. 

 

In those days, it was rare to get a first class in Economics; what did you do to get it? 

Honestly, I don’t know. We were the first ever to get a first class. I wasn’t working 

towards a first class, but I already had a reading habit from my teachers’ college. As a teacher, I knew how to read. 

When I was in ABU, I worked with the consciousness that I wanted to learn. So, I was not really reading for exams, I was just reading and reading. The university library was the biggest I had ever seen in my life. 

I came from a very primitive background, so I never saw a television set until I went to the ABU. There was no television set in Otukpo when I was a student there. 

Reading was all I had to do. Apart from going to the farm with my parents, I didn’t know anything else. So, I think I read very well when I went to the ABU. In fact, in the first year I got a prize I didn’t know existed. It was called the Edith Whetham Prize. I got that prize for being the best student in Economics, Political Science and Sociology, the best student in social sciences. It was when the prize was announced that I knew that it existed. 

So, that gave me that impetus to keep reading. And when the first class was announced, it came to me by surprise. I felt very little because I didn’t think I knew much. Three of us –  Joshua Attah, now late,  Mike Kwanashie and I, got first class. It was the first time.

 

Getting a first class means that a career in academics is open to you;  Was it something you wanted to do? 

As I told you, I didn’t have any idea what the future held for me in terms of career prospect. I came from a family background that I didn’t have anything. My father was not literate in western education, as well as my mother; and the whole environment was not one that inspired you to know what to do next. 

When I got to the ABU and got a first class, it narrowed my choice to academics. I was posted to Benin for my National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme, but I was returned to ABU, where I started teaching Nigerian Economy and Business. 

From there, I got admission to go to the London School of Economics two times. First was the NYSC year. And at that time, it was said that you could not do postgraduate studies unless you finished your NYSC. 

I was given admission a second time, but unfortunately, the Nigerian government didn’t give me the scholarship on time. The US gave me  Fellowship, so I left for the US.

 

How was life in the US for you at a young age, especially coming from the kind of rural background you described?

That was my first flight out of Nigeria. When I got there, I was fascinated. The very first thing I was fascinated about was the network of roads. It was unbelievable.

 

Which city was that? 

The University of Connecticut in the State of Connecticut. By the time I got there, there was another student. Incidentally, his name was Yusuf Jinkiri and he was doing very well; so when I got there, they had high expectations of me also. We were doing very well. He did better than me, but I graduated before him. In my course of study there, I actually failed my master’s degree. Everybody was confused because I was scoring A in every subject.

 

What did you fail—thesis? 

No. In that place, if you were going for PhD you didn’t do master’s thesis. It was a straight exam. I failed and had to redo it two times. My professor was confused; I was also confused. 

I think I was over confident. I remember that the night before that exam, I was sitting and watching television because the books they gave us were things I had gone through in the ABU already. I felt that all the things they were teaching were a little below what I already knew. I was watching a programme called Roots. 

I think it was God’s way of telling me that I shouldn’t do that. That gave me a signal that that was not me. 

By the time I started to settle down to do my work, I was the first among my colleagues to graduate with a PhD. I finished my master’s and PhD in four years and four months.

 

In the same university? 

Yes.

 

When you returned to the ABU with a PhD in Economics, you didn’t stay very long as you were made a commissioner for finance and economic planning by Colonel John Atom Kpera in 1984. 

Yes.

 

How did that come about? 

I was invited. At that time, the military somehow did headhunting and somebody recommended me to them. I think five of us were invited for the interview. It was a very rigorous interview, so I apparently did very well and was picked.

 

Were you interested in becoming a commissioner? 

It was not in my thinking, but I was happy that I was invited.

 

How was the experience? 

It was quite interesting. It gave me a complete different perspective on the economy, what we were teaching and what was happening out here.  

What we were teaching was economics in theory, which was a good foundation, but what I met was economics in politics, which I was not really exposed to. In political economics, decisions are taken, not because they are right but because that is what the vested interest or influence require. For example, when I went there, I found out that in eight months, they had collected only N300,000 in internal revenue. Of course, at that time, money was strong.  

I checked to see the sources of revenue, and without adding any other source, after four months there, we moved from N300,000 to N1.2 million in one month.  And there was a fight as people who were benefiting from the old order were trying to make sure that it didn’t happen. They were trying to drag me out there. 

Luckily, I had a very highly responsible and principled governor. He was something else out of this world. He left governance without a car. That was the kind of person he was. He gave me a lot of support. 

I saw the interplay of ethnicity, politics, all kinds of things that were not really in the classroom. 

What happened was that it enriched my teaching of the economy because I was teaching Nigerian Economics as well. I was able to add the dimension of politics and economy to decision making and policy making. I was very excited about it.

 

Did you survive all the intrigues? 

Fortunately or unfortunately, I didn’t have to survive the intrigues because we were thrown out.

 

Was there a coup? 

It was the Buhari administration, Babangida threw us out.

 

As a local boy who grew up and went to the US, then came back and became a commissioner, how did your local community respond to your achievements? Were your parents and siblings still alive? 

My parents were alive. My father was a very rigid person. He was a disciplinarian, but lovely. 

When I was commissioner, one night when I went home, he called me and my mother and said, “I never thought that a government would consider you responsible enough to take charge of their money. I am very happy. From today, I surrender myself to you; you have become my father. 

“If the government can give you this level of responsibility, do me one favour —Don’t bring more money to this house than the government gives you. That is my order.” 

His understanding of the position of a commissioner for finance was that I was in charge of a whole big room where I was dispensing money to people. 

I told him that I won’t do that; and I kept to it till today.

 

But you were able to help your family and the community? 

I was able to help, but not by giving money. I was able to go to the Benue Cement Company and obtain two truckloads of cement to do culverts in the community. I was able to provide some assistance to people. But actually, the demand was more than I could handle. 

When I was leaving ( back) to ABU, things were so hard for me that I couldn’t carry my children to that place. I had to return them to the village because I didn’t have money to carry them to Zaria. 

I had to go to ABU after the coup. Before I got my pay in November, I went home to bring my children back to the ABU. It was a tough time, but I liked it.

 

Why did you eventually leave ABU to teach Economics in the University of Jos?

I didn’t just leave ABU; what happened was that the ABU I knew when I was a student, and when I came back as a lecturer, started changing. 

Before the Structural Adjustment Programme, ABU was filled to capacity with lecturers from all over the world; it was bustling with the future. But the Structural Adjustment Programme came and struck us down very badly. Many people said it worked, but for us in the academic community, it didn’t work well.

The first casualty of the Structural Adjustment Programme was the tutorials. You know, after the main lectures you would organise students into small groups to teach them.  It was at that point that we were able to identify people who were going to be the next line of academics or other professionals. We were able to do that, but it died instantly.

 

Were there no staff members to do the tutorials? 

Excess workload, as it is called, started from that Structural Adjustment Programme because so many people left and those who remained had to carry the burden of those who left. That was the beginning of excess workload. 

On top of that(Professor) Ango Abdullahi was tough but he was not vindictive to individuals. But when(Professor) Nayaya Mohammed came, he introduced religion. It was never part of ABU’s spirit. I had teachers who were Muslims, Christians, atheists and they  never introduced religion.

I remember when we graduated students and five of them were in first class and we forwarded them for graduate assistantship to the office of the vice chancellor; nobody was thinking of religion. 

He approved only three who were Muslim boys. But within a year, those Muslim boys also left for better places.

Apart from the Benue State Government, where you were a commissioner, you also served at the as the chief economic adviser under Obasanjo. You equally served in the National Economic Intelligence Committee under Abacha. What did you learn about the economy of Nigeria and the way we run things in the country? 

Before Abacha, I was appointed the national coordinator of the Industrial Master Plan under Babangida. In that programme, supported by UNIDO, we had a very robust discussion of the economy and the steps needed to industrialise the economy. 

We undertook activity-specific investigations. Instead of talking about industry, for example, we undertook 9 specific areas of concern like food processing, pharmaceutical studies, leather and leather products, cement, non-metallic building material.

We brought in public and private sectors and the academia to draw up the terms of reference; and together, we went to the field to do the study. 

There was the concept of carrying everybody along; which we did. That was in 1991. 

I thought I was going to make my mark on the basis of that work. When we finished the study, Rashid GBadomasi, now late, was the head of the Industrial Master Plan under the National Committee on Industrial Development.

We did that work thoroughly. The documents are piled up there till today. It was submitted to Babangida in August of 1992. And we had an announcement on the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA).  

I was excited and ready for the next phase of that exercise, which was implementation. That was the end of that project. Till today, I have not recovered. That’s one of the things that dampened my enthusiasm about governance. 

After that, I was invited to join the Abacha regime. While I was there, Abacha gave us more opportunities to explore the economy than any one  I had worked with. 

He said bluntly that he didn’t know much about the economy, so we should not criticise, but do what we knew was right. 

So, we went into that system; and if you recall, no matter how crudely it was done, we were able to stabilise the exchange rate for five years. People have various forms of criticism, but it doesn’t matter. It is like somebody saying that the Biafran bomb was crude; but did it work? Yes, it worked. 

The economy was crude, so, we used crude methods. We interfered with the black market. People don’t understand the black market, it is not the size of the black market that matters, it is the signal it gives. 

People who are out see the signal from the black market. So, we tried to blunt that signal and it worked for five years. Since then, nothing has happened. 

What did I learn from the Abacha regime? I learnt why our industrial master plan did not work. I found inside the government a lot of people who were not thinking about Nigeria. I mean, it is not a generalisation. 

There are people who think about tomorrow’s Nigeria, but they are not many. They don’t form the critical mass required to move the system forward. Instead, I found a lot of people who were willing to take advantage of the challenges facing the economy for personal gains. It was in the Abacha regime that I discovered that.

 

When you hear all the bad things being said about the Abacha regime after his demise, do you regret ever serving in that government? 

No. Abacha’s weakness was that he didn’t manage his human rights record well. And you know that one little thing can dismiss you completely. 

Let me also say that Babangida did a lot of good things for the economy. For example, he constructed the Third Mainland Bridge and did so many other things for this country, but the poor handling of the 1993 presidential election finished him.

 

There was also corruption during the Abacha regime; do you agree?

There was corruption, but to what extent? I didn’t know about the so-called Abacha loot until I came out of the system. 

What interests me about Abacha loot is that he didn’t travel out of this country as a head of state. So, who helped him to do the looting? Till today, nobody in Nigeria has been arrested for facilitating this loot. And I keep wondering – Supposing Abacha was alive, would you be talking about such loot?

 

Is it possible that you don’t believe there was Abacha loot? 

I believe there was corruption, but Abacha was not the only one that looted. So many people looted and are still looting. We are talking about Abacha loot because he is no longer alive. 

Maybe people looted in his name. 

It could be his or in his name. What I mean is that many people are looting, but because they are alive, you cannot afford to label corruption after their names.   

I remember that during that period, we discouraged him from borrowing. Go and check if he borrowed.

Also recall that it was during that period that the Value Added Tax (VAT) was introduced. It was introduced before we came in, but we were in the implementation stage. 

The World Bank advised that the VAT rate should be 17.5 per cent, but it was rejected. They argued that 5 per cent rate would be too small to cover the cost of collection. 

Ghana took 17.5 per cent as advised by the World Bank, but we took 5 per cent. When Ghana implemented their 17.5 per cent, they harvested riots. There was riot everywhere until the government of that country was forced to suspend it in 1995 and reintroduced it at 10 per cent in 1998. 

In Nigeria, when it was 5 per cent, the revenue projected for that year was N6, billion, but we got N8.15 billion. And the second year, it was projected to be N12 billion in 1995, but we got N21 billion. 

What revenue the federal government is getting from VAT is not because it is a tier of government, but it is a collection fee. The federal government has a mechanism network for collection, but it is a state VAT. 

What I find  is that  a little bit of critical thinking can help you to avoid advice from big people and multilateral institutions. The World Bank gave the advice, but we took the five per cent we wanted; and we got it right.

 

We are still debating on VAT and new taxes. What do you make of this? 

What I make of the debate is poor strategy. I think the chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Tax Reform has done a very good job, but that’s a technical job. And if it were in a military regime, this debate wouldn’t have taken place. After doing a technical job, you also have to do a political job for acceptability. They have not done that.

Now, the argument is that everybody who wants to make an input should go to the National Assembly during the public debate, but that is a very poor way to think. 

Stakeholders may have made their contributions during this process, but that doesn’t remove the role of the Governors Forum. It does not remove the role of the National Economic Council and other stakeholders. Those stakeholders are not the ones to appear in the public debate over the VAT. You don’t expect the Governors Forum to send a representative to go and debate because they and the National Economic Council are the same set of people that are supposed to own the bills before going to the National Assembly. That is where the challenge is. 

The other challenge is that we are shifting from the headquarters to the issue of point of consumption. That is perfect; but have we decided how to calculate the point of consumption?

It is better to leave it in the open. And what is the open? Send this document to the academia and various interest groups and let them debate it in the meantime.

If I were Tinubu, I would just give an order that while this debate is on, I want to reduce VAT back to 5 per cent. I think that in the last third quarter of 2024, they got N1.73 trillion. If I were to play politics with it, I would say “let us.” He cannot change the law but he can suspend part of it in the interim and say: Because of the challenges my people are facing, I want to take VAT back to 5 per cent. 

However it works, there would have been an amount of encouragement, and confidence and hope (that) would be more than the loss of revenue arising from the 2 per cent.

In the situation that we are in now, the last thing you want to be talking about are taxes. Once people hear the word “tax”, it irritates them, whether they are paying or not. 

I think the Senate president was saying that nobody could intimidate them, but these are not the periods of intimidation. These are periods of negotiation, persuasion, debate. They should allow a robust debate. 

I must say to you that what this government needs today is not more revenue, what we need in the immediate is efficiency in spending. We need to save from what we are spending on governance. Those savings will give us better understanding and framework to accommodate more revenue in the future. 

Everybody knows, including the government, that we are spending too much on frivolities, it is better to reduce those spending than seek to increase revenue.

 

As an economic adviser to Obasanjo, would you say that  governments take advice from experts like you? 

A piece of advice is not a directive. And don’t forget that you are not the only source of advice to whoever is in power. There are other considerations you may not know. So, to say that the person does not take advice is not entirely correct because your advice has to be weighed against other issues before it is taken in context. 

So, I would say that people take advice, but sometimes the issue of vested interest may interfere with the quality and acceptance of the advice. 

 

It is said that Obasanjo had a reputation for not listening to advice; did he listen to you? 

Well, he listened to me to the extent that I provided good advice. I wouldn’t know whether my advice was good enough, but he gave me responsibilities that I handled them; and he said ‘thank you.’

 

So, you were not frustrated as chief economic adviser? 

I was not frustrated, but I also knew that the stage was set in the first administration before I came in.

 

The first term?

Yes. They were doing a lot of things. For example, I was responsible after Soludo left for the Central Bank.  

After the economic empowerment and development strategy at the national level, we pushed it down to the state level, and when we finished the state level, with the support of the DFID, I tried to create an institution where the process of decision-making ( will be) established. It was not about you coming to see whether you had a building, we wanted to knead the process by which we arrived at that building, in construction and the decision itself. 

So, we sent out people to assess the states in their capacity to take decisions and follow processes – what we called accountability transparency. At the end of the exercise, the states were ranked. It caused an uproar, which, from all indications, cost me my job. 

But if you ask me today, I will still insist that there must be a mechanism for continuously assessing the states by the federal government as a basis for getting grants. That’s what we were trying to do. That was when, I think Peter Obi of Anambra came first. I remember when he was referring to it, but he didn’t even know who was in charge at that time because I never visited him. 

The relationship between states and the federal government must be determined in such a way that the federal government must have a reason to give grants. 

We cannot always do as we are doing now, such that if you want to give N10,000 to one state, you must give N10,000 to every other state because there are no set criteria for doing so. 

That programme was meant to serve that purpose. He gave me the responsibility and I carried it out, but I didn’t carry the political stamina; so something happened.

 

You were fired? 

He didn’t fire me. That night, he called me and said some development partners were not happy with me, so he would find a replacement. I was very grateful to him because I dined with the president for 18 months. It was a real privilege. 

 

Buhari took a long time to set up an economic advisory council. And when he eventually did, you were a member; did you really make an input in his government? 

When we went into that programme and it was announced, the whole country felt relieved. When we went to see him for the first meeting, his gatekeepers had a programme in front of us that was meant to last only 30 minutes in presentation.  When we started the presentation, our chairman, Salami, was a very articulate person, we spent three hours with him instead of 30 minutes. We were supposed to meet him every quarter, but on that day, he said to his people that we should be meeting every six weeks. Eventually, we met him at sporadic intervals because he was busy.

 

So, there was no formal meeting like the first one? 

We sat with him a couple of times. He was very critical of his people. 

I don’t know what eventually happened, but we didn’t make an impact. What really caused the crisis of not meeting him was the death of Abba Kyari, his chief of staff.  When he died, the council died with him. 

But the new chief of staff was a professor from the ABU like you.

He struggled to fit into the system. I think he did his best, but a lot of politicking had taken place.

 

But you remained there until the end of Buhari’s tenure. 

What we were doing was to document. We did a lot of documentations that are still useful till tomorrow. 

 

While working with the Nigerian government, you were also a consultant to the World Bank, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and other international bodies. Having worked with these institutions, do you think the World Bank has a value to add to our economic development? 

In a serious sense, I first met the World Bank when they introduced the Structural Adjustment Programme. And you would recall that under that programme, the military government was not discouraged from attacking the academia. In fact, at a point they brought armoured tanks into the university. And some people lost their jobs on account of rejecting the Structural Adjustment Programme. That was when I first ran into the World Bank. 

I met the World Bank face-to-face when Obasanjo gave me the job as chief economic adviser. 

I want to tell Nigerians that the World Bank is not our problem. We are our own problem. The World Bank treats you as you want to be treated. If you place yourself to be cheated, the World Bank will not mind. You see, the concept of the bank is what is confusing us. 

You see, Americans always think about the world. When they are playing their game, they call it World Series – everything is world in America. That’s how the concept of the World Bank came. Just remove the word “world” and you know that that is a bank out to lend, specifically.

 

It is an American or Western bank. 

It is a bank controlled by America and the West and they want to lend. Under Abacha, they didn’t lend and they were very hostile to him.

 

Abacha didn’t want the money? 

We discouraged (the government) from borrowing and the Nigerian desk and the World Bank suffered the consequences. 

If you check, you would see that if the World Bank country director does not lend, it is either he is demoted or removed.  But it is our responsibility to make sure that the lending is useful to us.

 

Are you alarmed at the level of loans that Nigeria has accumulated; and it keeps rising? 

I am not alarmed at the loans but what it is used for. And the terms and conditions of these loans are not always available for us to see.

So, you can get a loan, but for what purpose? For example, the Chinese Three Gorges Dam, which I visited, was funded by the World Bank. The electricity projects of Japan were funded by the World Bank. The issue is purpose.

 

Let’s talk about your private life. At what point did you start a family? 

By traditional standards, I started a family late, but by academic standard, I started early. I had my first child when I was 31.

 

So, you married after your postgraduate studies when you returned from America? 

I married before I left. Our first child was born in the US in 1979. We have five biological children – one girl and four boys. They are all grown up now.

 

How is retirement for you? I know you have a private consultancy firm. Are you really busy or you are just taking it easy? 

I was very busy until the last two years. This is the first time I am feeling the impact of retirement because as at today, I depend on my children for feeding.

 

Feeding?  

Yes. This is because work is not coming the way it used to; and I am getting old. In those days, I could sit and work for 18 hours and won’t feel it. But now, if I work for three or four hours, my feet would swell. And I am working to survive, not to die. So I have kind of withdrawn; and my pension is very small for all that. But my family is good, we don’t have crisis.

 

 But one would assume that a professor of economics who worked for state and federal governments, as well as consulted for the World Bank, would have accumulated enough capital to live comfortably in retirement? 

The sources of income you mentioned were not padded. I signed for what I earned. I am happy and comfortable with it. I live in my own house, ride my own car and eat 60 per cent of the food I have from my farm. But the daily cash has been dried up by the current reforms. Actually, these reforms are courageous but the implementation is timid.

 

Do you see the reforms taking us out of the woods? 

Economy has a force of its own, and as at today, whatever happens, whether good or bad, is linked to the reforms. But it doesn’t mean that all reforms must be painful in order to be useful in the future.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a structure of hope, but I know that Nigeria will not collapse.

 

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