“If you are
going to speak truth to power, make sure it’s the truth.”- Margaret Atwood
The
Greek Reporter is a website I love to read when I have some downtime. In one of
its entries, they wrote about the job of the priestess of Apollo at the Oracle
of Delphi, Pythia. Her job stands out as it involved the gathering,
re-packaging, and distribution of information, with the ultimate intent of
providing sound advice on the trivial and not-so-trivial questions of life in
ancient Greece. The oracle was consulted by the movers and shakers of ancient
Greece on a diverse range of problems. For the priestess Pythia, this meant the
opportunity to comment on a variety of issues of public and individual concern:
cult matters, warfare, the relationships between existing city-states, and the
foundation of new ones. The position of the Pythia seemed to have entailed the
extraordinary opportunity to speak unwelcome truth to those in power. Sadly,
Pythia often disappoints his listeners as more often than not, the predictions
are historiographic traditions. Anyone could have possibly glean the
information necessary to answer any particular enquiry from the chatter of
those queuing to consult the oracle. Cue the recent speech by Olisa Agbakoba at
the Senate president birthday celebration.
Our Senate
president had the most magnificent of birthdays in recent memory. He spared no
funds in ensuring that his birthday is celebrated and one of the highlights is
the well-orchestrated birthday speech by gadfly, Olisa Agbakoba, former
president of the Nigerian Bar Association and founder of human rights activism
organization, Civil Liberty Organization (CLO). By a sad coincidence of
history, the likes of Olisa Agbakoba are currently the pseudo-intellectuals the
Nigerian press acclaims as government critic. Even though most of the so called
critics of the Nigerian state on the pages of newspapers are critic by day and
contractor by night. Perhaps, the few exceptions like Sowore still remains in
the mould of Gani Fawehinmi, Claude Ake, Pa Mokwuogu Okoye and Bala Usman.
It was Noam
Chomsky that is quoted to have debunked the myth of intellectuals speaking
truth to power as “pious tag”. Chomsky states that those in power knows the
truth already and they are just busy concealing it. More importantly, he said
those who need the truth is not those in power but those oppressed by it. Olisa
Agbakoba speech at this iconic birthday celebration should be viewed from this
prism. There are parts of the speech that are laudable and others that are
populist loud sounding nothing. As usual, Nigerians frequently swoons when we
hear ideas that makes our collective ears tingles. The excitement increases
when those ideas are said with gusto by those in authority and by people with
titles, lawyers, chiefs, priest etc. For now, let’s set aside his argument on
blue economy which he trots out as consultant at the beginning of every
administration to project himself as maritime economy savior. I said this
because those of us familiar with his shtick knows this is pablum. He wants
coast guard. He wants fishing and deep sea exploration. He promised we
will catch so many fishes on our oil polluted coast that we will be rich and pay
off our debts to World Bank etc. There is only one catch, the new minister of
Blue Economy, his friend and former governor of Osun State, Adegboyega Oyetola,
needs to invite him to a meeting and signed his consultancy firm to a contract
and pronto all this ideas will become reality.
But,
the main gist of Olisa Agbakoba speech is not the pablum but another Trojan horse.
The claim that he owns property in England and Nigeria and gets equity on his
property in London and got zero on the one in Nigeria. He also said he could
get loans easily on his property in England and Zero from the property in
Nigeria. He went on to cite Hernande deSoto’s “Mystery of Capital” in support of this main plank of his argument.
The book was written in year 2000. I had a signed copy by deSoto’s book as I
bought a copy when he came to the campus where I currently teach as adjunct. We
have had 23 years to try out de Soto ideas and the results are at best mixed.
As Chris
Woodruff wrote in his article published on JSTOR and University of Oxford
website here https://chriswoodruff.qeh.ox.ac.uk/wp-c
... to-JEL.pdf
“ De Soto’s own experience in
Peru suggests that land titling by itself is not likely to have much effect.
Titling must be followed by a series of politically challenging steps.
Improving the efficiency of judicial systems, re-writing bankruptcy codes,
restructuring financial market regulations and similar reforms will involve
much more difficult choices for policy makers.”
These
important truths are swept under the rug by both deSoto and Agbakoba. Olisa
Agbakoba as members of the National Judicial Council knows the inherent
corruption and challenges faced by the poor in accessing justice in Nigeria. As
Senior Advocate of Nigeria he’s a beneficiary of that corrupt system that
appoints and tepidly discipline errant judicial officers. The truth of the
matter is land titling is made to sound like a free lunch. But without a broad
set of complementary reforms, property titling and registration systems are
likely to have a more limited effect than de Soto’s and Agbakoba (very
refreshing) enthusiasm would lead one to believe.
For now, it is refreshing to see Agbakoba, command the attention of
policy makers at high levels in Nigeria as De Soto once did in developing
countries in the early 2000. His ideas contrast in non-trivial ways with the
central focus of the development literature. Either the policy makers need to
be alerted to the limitations of Agbakoba’s and de Soto’s proposals, or
researchers need to give more attention to the connection between titling,
credit markets, and entrepreneurship.
For
now, I commend Nigerians who care to read to focus their attention on DeSoto
first book, titled “The Other Path”,
which described the labyrinth of regulations and permits required to do
business or build a house in Lima, Peru. As he stated in that book, the
informal is as regulated if not more regulated than the formal. If you doubt me
ask road transport workers in Lagos or any motor parks in Nigeria. The informal
regulations of our transport industry has made many motor parks tout
millionaires and billionaires. Some of them are well connected to the seat of
power in Aso rock. The likes of MC Oluomo are enforcers for those in power. As
I write this piece, the government has just announced t50 per cent discount on
road transport fares on 22 major routes across the country, starting from
December 21, 2023. We have no recognized Highway Transport commission or any
interstate transport governing agency. How did the government identified the
transport companies that will benefit from this scheme? Does the government
knows the average cost of travels on these routes before this announcement? One
things is clear, if you are traveling from Lagos to Onitsha this year, don’t be
surprised if your fare increased by the same amount the federal government
promised to subsidize for transportation. You might even be paying more.
The reason The Other Path
had a significant impact on the academic literature on the informal sector in
the decade after its publication is not because of its academic rigor but
because of its ideas. The idea that that informals are entrepreneurs, not
marginals and banks and financial institutions should recognize it as such. The Mystery of Capital has much in
common with The Other Path. It is
colorfully written and entertaining. It focuses on an important issue. Its lack
of empirical rigor is compensated for by a wealth of ideas. But while The Other Path focused on actions the
state takes that hinder entrepreneurship and growth, The Mystery of Capital
looks from the other side. Our focus should be on actions states fail to take:
creating and enforcing private property rights. That is our Achilles
heel’s in Nigeria. Until then, the rich and the powerful can continue to trot
out stale ideas that tingle our ears.
