Tope Fasua is the Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Economic Affairs. In this interview, he speaks on the reforms of the current administration and why focus should be on addressing poverty, and need for the people to pay attention to state governments

You said that people are panicking because when they hear multi-dimensional, they think it’s a problem. You also say that Nigerians can live on $1 but if you go to New York, or you go to anywhere in the U.S., you need at least $10 to feed. Is that a justification?

Actually, that discussion itself, which was part of a one-and-ahalf-hour interview was actually an elevated economic discussion. The discussion was around purchasing power parity. You know, purchasing PPP analysis is actually a bit discredited, because, culturally, the idea is to compare what people buy in one country with what they buy in another.

But culturally, people have different choices. There’s no ‘Amala’ on the streets in New York, for example, so you have to do something different. They even have this burger analysis. But only our children eat burgers. I’m not a fan of it. So, the whole idea was to say that, indeed, $1 is still valuable in Nigeria, whereas in a place like New York, or in a place like U.S, you would struggle to get anything with it.

That’s why the analysis came; that when we’re talking about the issue of poverty, perhaps we need our own indices beyond the $2 or $2.50 cent a day that’s been recommended. That the fact that those indices are being recommended doesn’t mean we should take it hook, line and sinker, because we know our country, we know our people, we know our culture more than the people recommending. So, this idea of buying policies off the shelf, plug and play, that’s what we’re addressing there.

Now, the point is also to say that, my concern as an economist is for us to say, let’s discombobulate this issue of poverty and hunger, so that the government is not constantly gas lighted. And I’m not talking about this government alone. Also in Goodluck Jonathan’s government, the same rhetoric, how there’s so much poverty and hunger in Nigeria.

We inherited a problem in this country. Right from independence to the pre-independence, people have always struggled with poverty. The issue now should be how to solve it, and how are we trying to ameliorate it, given the fact that there’s poverty everywhere in the world. My key concern, actually, why I’ve made a bit of a media tour, is that part of the ways we try to solve or reduce the impact of inflation and spiking poverty, is to agree on a minimum wage of N70,000. Some of the states have taken it to N80,000, some N75,000, some N78,000 and so on.

This morning, I was reading one of the newspapers, which reported that only 16 states have actually implemented that. So, I think we need to put the rest on that pressure to effect this minimum wage, because we can’t expect people to continue to survive on the same salaries that they were earning two years ago, given the fact that inflation in some critical goods like food, in some instances have gone up between 100 per cent 200 per cent. It’s not only the state, even the private sector, because the minimum wage is also binding on the private sector, and that’s only one aspect.

I’ve met people who say they’re still being paid N40,000 for fulltime work. In fact, it’s against the law, because there’s a law now that says you can’t pay someone in full employment, no matter how old they are, less than N70,000, and that N70,000 is actually what you pay an intern, and that’s why they’re paying corps members about N77,000. In fact, I heard that even though they started last month, they will also pay those who have passed out. But those who have left, or those who just finished, will be paid in arrears.

Now is the time to put issues on the table, not just to blame President Bola Tinubu, because he is doing his best and is thinking medium to long term for Nigeria and not just the immediate

So, we need to put ourselves under pressure, and also have a stakeholder meeting of how do we take this forward. You know why; the presidency sitting in Abuja, is responsible for less than 100,000 civil servants. About two million people who work for this Federal Government, whether they were policemen, or army, or any other, including all those parastatals that seem to have sorted themselves out, they seem to pay so well. I don’t have to mention them here.

These two million people, let’s say 2.5 million people at most, what about the rest of Nigeria, they live in states. So, I’m putting the challenge back to the private sector to do right by their people. We are also seeing a scenario where some sectors are doing incredibly well.

I mean, I can’t mention the banking sector, where you see that a number of banks are declaring N1 trillion in net profit. However, you know, the problem we have there is that most staff are no longer unionized. Most staff are casualized.

They don’t even have many real staff anymore. So, the real challenge we have now is actually to quickly bridge the gap by reducing the inequality that seems to have appeared, especially because it’s even a global affair. Now is the time to put issues on the table, not just to blame President Bola Tinubu because he is doing his best and is thinking medium to long term for Nigeria and not just the immediate.

Do you agree that there is hunger, poverty in Nigeria?

It doesn’t define Nigeria. Yes, I agree, but those things don’t define Nigeria. And it’s not as pervasive as it’s sometimes made out in the media.

Do you think that this palliative economy is the way to address the human development crisis arising from the failure of government to deal with the challenge of poverty and hunger further compounded by insecurity?

You mentioned palliative, and you mentioned poverty. If you take it from insecurity; the problem with insecurity is that, a single nail or two can knock off a perception of increasing security. But if you look at Nigeria, if you look at it on a geopolitical basis, North-West, we are having fewer and fewer of all of those people come in and move around. In the North-East, it’s been a while since we heard about Boko Haram. In the South-East, that used to be really insecure, since the two gentlemen have been incarcerated, we’ve seen that there’s been a reduction.

Every country has a bit of crime. I mentioned the fact that in most parts of London, you can’t even use your phone on the street. But of course, I think this government has tried a lot in terms of reducing inequality. But there’s still a few blowouts from time to time that sets us back, which is a constant affair.

So, in terms of palliative, I personally am not a fan of palliative. However, palliatives are very important because the whole idea is that you find a scenario where some people just have no capability. So, the palliative is important for that kind of people because they just can’t feed. However, it’s not supposed to be a very constant and unending affair ad infinitum. That’s why the President has done two very critical reforms.

The reform around the Naira is what led to the depreciation of the Naira. It’s less defined this level. At N1,500 or 1,550, they’re about swinging between the managed floating systems that we’re running. A place like South Korea, the currency is about $21,000 today.

They’re still surviving and they’re doing pretty well with their industries growing as well. So, we can manage it around where it is. But what it has caused is that it has released a lot of money, especially to the state governments. If you see the last report from the Debt Management Office, Nigerian states and FCT, they paid down 32 per cent of their debt.

That’s very remarkable. And if you look at the reform in the petroleum sector, it has opened up that industry. Now, Nigeria is almost a net exporter of refined products from a position, where we were actually a country that was producing 1.5 million barrels that couldn’t refine even one barrel. This has released a lot of money to the state level. And I think that the focus should also go to the state and to put them on their limit of pressure.