21st Meeting Of The National Council On Development Planning On 08/04/2022

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SPEECH DELIVERED BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PROF. YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA AT THE 21ST MEETING OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL ON DEVELOPMENT PLANNING THEMED: “GOOD GOVERNANCE AND INSTITUTIONAL CAPACITY: PATHWAYS TO SUSTAINABLE NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN EBONYI STATE ON THE 8TH OF APRIL, 2022

PROTOCOLS

Let me first congratulate the Governor of Ebonyi State, Governor David Umahi on this well-appointed Executive Council Chambers. It is possible that the Governor is not aware of the law that states that you cannot build an Executive Council Chambers bigger than the one in the Villa! I was considering asking the President to issue an Executive Order to convert this one also for the use of the Federal Executive Council, FEC. There might be an advantage for the State because we (FEC) may come here more often.

I am delighted to be here at this 21st meeting of the National Council on Development Planning holding here in Abakaliki, this beautiful and enchanting capital of Ebonyi State.

I bring you the very warm greetings of His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari who feels very strongly that National Councils such as this have a very important role to play in boosting cooperation between States and the Federal Government as well as in helping better coordination of economic policies for poverty reduction and sustainable development.

Permit me at this point to sincerely appreciate my dear brother, His Excellency Governor David Umahi and the good people of Ebonyi State for the kind hospitality accorded to all the participants and for their support towards the successful hosting of this meeting. And also for the very warm and affectionate welcome I receive from him, his family and the government and people of Ebonyi State, every time I visit.

I also commend the Honourable Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, the Honourable Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, as well as all the Honourable Commissioners of Budget and Economic Planning who are here with us today for their steadfastness in keeping the tradition of holding this Council regularly and using it as an opportunity to exchange views on our national development trajectory.

The National Council on Development Planning has remained a very important platform for setting the tone of national economic discourse. It certainly provides a good opportunity for Federal and State Governments to somehow find active collaboration for the well-being of all our people.

The need for synergy amongst all tiers of government remains of paramount importance at this critical time when we continue to face the challenges of recovery from the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic now compounded by the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, the invasion of Ukraine.

This war has already led to price and supply shocks, especially in food and fuel markets and we must brace ourselves to collectively respond to the inevitable economic headwinds that will occur and some that are already occurring.

Let me take this opportunity to congratulate the Council, the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Federal and State MDAs and indeed all the stakeholders from the private sector and civil society for the stellar work done in articulating the National Development Plan 2021 – 2025.

The strategic objectives of the National Development Plan which include establishing a strong foundation for a diversified economy, investing in critical infrastructure, enabling human capital development and improving governance and strengthening security will certainly contribute to achieving our national development aspirations.

The contents of the Plan are as important as the process by which it was developed and I find the extensive consultations and contributions to fashioning our medium-term blueprint quite impressive and commendable.

But the implementation of the plan is, of course, the crux of the matter. This speaks to the relevance of the theme of this meeting – “Good Governance and Institutional Capacity: Pathways to Sustainable National Development.”

A question that I am sure many of us ask ourselves, especially as planners, is why countries with huge natural and human resources still develop slowly, rate poorly on many human development indices and have greater levels of poverty than other less endowed societies?

Why for example, do countries with no resources at all, the likes of Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, still perform better than the resource-rich nations of the world? I think the sum and substance of most studies conducted on the subject show that it is the lack of good governance and weak institutional capacity in the poorer and less performing economies that largely account for the difference between the poor and rich countries.

In other words, the way that public institutions and agencies perform public affairs and manage public resources, and also how they manage the participation of citizens, and ensure equity and the rule of law, are what make the difference between the poor and rich, performing and non-performing economies. How public institutions function, of course, is largely determined by institutional capacity.

This is not merely having a well educated and well-motivated workforce, but systems that are and can enforce transparency and accountability. So even where a country has all the natural resources in every local government and a reasonably well-educated workforce, willing and able foreign and local investors, the economy can still fail, social services can be poor, there may be no jobs and extreme poverty can prevail. Why? Because if the system of collection of taxes is weak and most people do not pay taxes or the processes for getting government approvals of any kind are cumbersome and if most public servants want to make money from bribes or “thank yous” received from those seeking government approvals, or investors find it difficult to get land approvals and building permits to build factories and plants, or the administration of the justice system is so slow that plaintiffs claims can be thwarted just by delays, and law enforcement is weak, capricious and arbitrary; where accountability is weak or non-existent and poor performance or misconduct have no real consequences, then poor performance becomes systemic.

The result of poor governance is that the delivery of public goods is ineffective; every public service is affected, whether it is the collection of taxes, delivery of social investment programmes, public education, health services, obtaining trade facilitation approvals or just passports or drivers licences, public running of power services, or delivery of petroleum products.

Poor governance and institutional capacity mean a weak economy, and that is so for States, Local Governments and all governments. The private sector performs sub-optimally because the business environment is hostile, so fewer jobs are created, housing stock may fall where private people do not build houses for rent because when tenants fail to pay their rent can remain in the accommodation for years without paying rent because the court system is too slow and they cannot be legally evicted while the court process subsists.

We had a problem in Lagos when I worked as Attorney General, we noticed the housing stock fell, and people were building few houses and would rather invest in stocks and shares. We tried to investigate and found that generally speaking, people were considering building middle-income accommodation as poor investment. The reason is that after the house has been built and a tenant pays for 2 years, thereafter, no further payments are made. The tenant goes to court and the landlord and tenant are stuck in court for years. The investment is essentially idle as far as the landlord is concerned.

Wherever you have the failure of governance and in this case, failure of the justice system, it has a direct impact on the economy. If people cannot trust the justice system, it has an impact on the economy. We had to work very hard on our justice system in Lagos to reduce those delays and set up the Citizens Mediation Centres to take rent disputes out of the Magistrate Court system and have mediated so that they could be done faster.

The truth of the matter is that every time we have these problems, we must recognize that they are human problems. Problems of governance, institutional capacity. They can be solved by human beings. Every country that chooses to solve its governance and institutional problems has in effect chosen to develop and prosper. That goes for any State, Local Government and community.

Anywhere that makes dishonesty, lack of transparency, bureaucratic corruption the norm has chosen backwardness and poverty of the majority of its citizens. I think that the most effective use of this meeting will be to find answers to this elephant in the room at our State level and National levels. How do we improve governance and institutional capacity?

We have the policies and plans, but the weakness is implementation, governance and institutional capacity. I hope this may form the substance of some of our subsequent discussions whether here or perhaps at the various levels of interaction at the State level.

Thank you very much for listening and I wish you fruitful deliberations as you go forward with this meeting.