PRESS STATEMENT: STRENGTHENING NIGERIA’S ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESPONSE TO THE PANDEMIC
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Nigeria has been putting in place measures to mitigate the impact of the global pandemic affecting almost every country in the world. The debt relief and forgiveness so far obtained will be of tremendous benefit to the country but much more is required and should be sought. It is not clear when the pandemic will end so the Nigerian strategy is germane to ensure that post-pandemic, Nigeria is repositioned for increased growth, prosperity and unity. The Federal Government, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and the states have made laudable efforts thus far but much more needs to be done. Below are a few recommendations to strengthen Nigeria’s economic response to the pandemic.
Develop a comprehensive economic recovery plan for Nigeria.
Strong consideration for sourcing health equipment and personal protective equipment as a country. A secured and restricted website could be developed to bring together all of the nation’s requirements. Each state could determine what they need and this could be updated daily or weekly. This will make the national requirement known at any point in time. States can open accounts on the platform and fund the accounts periodically. When purchases are made they are done so for the entire country at a time so they end up being cheaper for each state on a per unit basis. First consideration should be given to Nigerian businesses. Develop a Pan-African Digital Market Place
The Problem: Insufficient intra-African trade and high-unemployment of Africa’s young people. According to Afreximbank’s Africa Trade Report 2019, Intra-African trade grew by 17% in 2018 ($159 Billion) however Africa’s contribution to global trade in 2018 was 2.6% up from 2.4% in 2017. Intra-African trade represented about 16% of Africa’s total merchandise trade of $997.9 billion in 2018. According to the World Economic Forum (Chart of the day: The EU’s trading partners article published on its website on 29th April 2019), Europe’s 2018 total merchandise trade for 28 countries stood at $6.089 Trillion (5.474 Trillion Euro) while Intra-Europe trade was $3.914 Trillion (3.518 Trillion Euro) or 64% of total merchandise trade (this is four times Africa’s figure for 2018). Africa needs to not only increase its contribution to world trade but more significantly and most importantly the volume and value of intra-African trade.
Main Objective: To increase the standard of living of Africans (mostly young people) significantly by providing opportunities for work and business across Africa through an interactive, ubiquitous internet platform. By 2030 the following should be achieved:
Increase African unity (especially young people; increased religious, cultural & social tolerance; more intra-African marriages, more diverse African businesses).
Contribute significantly to increasing intra-African trade by at least 100%. (Double Nigeria’s trade with the rest of Africa).
Create employment opportunities for at least 100 million (directly and indirectly) young Africans (at least 15 million young Nigerians).
Engender the sustainability and development of at least 20 million MSMEs across Africa (at least 3 million Nigerian MSMEs).
Generate tax revenues for African governments reaching at least a total of $20 Billion annually (At least $2 billion for Nigeria).
Attain annual revenues in excess of $100 billion.
Market: This African Digital Market Place will cut across all sectors (fishing and agriculture, manufacturing, cars, food, textiles as well as services retail, tourism, banking, entertainment etc). African entrepreneurs from across the Continent can sell products and services to customers with all transactions done electronically with uniquely developed payment platforms robust enough to manage the transaction volumes and the peculiarity of the platform. Clearly anyone or any business from any part of the world can make purchases on the platform but only businesses based and registered in Africa can sell.
Unique Value Proposition: This will become the largest and most robust pan-African digital trading platform for African entrepreneurs and consumers to buy and sell. This is not a basic e-commerce platform for selling products and services to consumers only. It is however a Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-Consumer (B2C) and Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) platform which provides a digital market place for African Entrepreneurs to sell their products and services to consumers all over the world as well as to each other.
Unique Advantage: With the recent establishment of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), impressive mobile subscriptions and increasing internet penetration (39.3% - Internet World Stats) across the continent (2019 - N. Africa 50%, West Africa 41%, Middle Africa 12%, Southern Africa 51%, Eastern Africa 32% - Datareportal); predominantly young and increasingly tech savvy population (75% of Africans below 35 years by 2030 – Population Reference Bureau); significant increase in mobile money transaction value by 34.9% to $130 billion in 2019 (GSM Association); well organised and effective African Union and other blocks across Africa (ECOWAS, SADC etc) amongst other factors ensure that the foundation for success are in place.
Increased specialization: Businesses listed on the platform and also including those which may not be but which will benefit tremendously because they are part of the entire supply chain will have to increase their specialization and quality to remain competitive. With significantly reduced labour costs in Africa and sustained continent wide investment in infrastructure, the continent would become a major production hub of the whole wide world.
Risks: There are significant risks ranging from current infrastructure limitations, inadequate power supply across most the continent, relatively high level of illiteracy (also diverse national languages), high rate of poverty which affects smart phone penetration and political will of leaders on the continent.
Mitigating the risks:
Increased creativity from logistics’ companies especially for last-mile distribution (e.g. using drones), enable local commercial transport businesses across Africa to leverage technology and urge African governments to work aggressively to close the infrastructure and power supply gap urgently.
A key segment on the digital marketplace will be renewable energy products to help drive continent wide migration to renewable energy.
Develop simple and user friendly interfaces effectively as well as alternative language platforms (for local languages) to broaden the user base.
African governments need to ensure that at least 70% of smart phones sold in Africa are produced in Africa. Local Smartphone manufacturers should be given tax breaks for a few years and access to low-cost (or zero-cost) capital to help drive down Smartphone costs across Africa.
Learn from globally successful E-commerce companies.
African leaders and governments will be shown the benefits of supporting the Pan-African Digital Marketplace and encouraged via the African Union, other blocks of countries and direct engagement to take necessary actions that will facilitate the participation of their countries in this platform.
Why Nigeria should drive the African Digital Market Place: Nigeria is not only Africa’s most populous country but has Africa’s largest economy and market. This positions Nigeria perfectly to drive free trade initiatives on the continent. According to Trade Law Centre (Tralac) in its article Nigeria: Intra-Africa trade and tariff profile on its website; In 2018 Nigeria exported goods worth $7 billion to Africa while importing goods worth $1.3 billion. For the same year, Intra-Africa exports for Nigeria accounted for 13% of total exports while imports were 4% of total imports. In 2018, 88% of Intra-Africa exports for Nigeria were crude petroleum oils. According to worldstopexports.com, in 2019 Nigeria’s major African trading partners (percentage is trade with Nigeria to Nigeria’s total world trade volume for 2019) were Ghana ($4 billion – 7.5%), South Africa ($3.2 billion – 5.9%) and Ivory Coast ($1.2 billion – 2.2%). To truly rebuild the Nigerian economy there is a need to deepen exports (increase earnings) especially in merchandise and goods. Clearly the data shows that Nigeria is doing too little trade with Africa (especially non-oil trade) and also not taking advantage of effective trade with most of the countries in Africa. While it is very important to increase and ease trade within the country, it is critical that Nigeria provides increased opportunities for its local enterprises to become more sustainable by accessing external markets. An online digital market place that allows Nigerian entrepreneurs to easily and seamlessly buy and sell from businesses and consumers all over the continent (as well as within the country) will offer tremendous benefits for the Nigerian economy. By pioneering this project Nigeria will be able to position itself to maximize the benefits of the platform. This can be done in two phases. First, a Nigerian Digital Market Place (to strengthen in country trade) should be built followed by an expansion of the platform across the continent.
Capital required: $9.5 million
Enhancing Social Protection
There is a critical need to strengthen social protection to support Nigeria’s economic recovery. Food distribution is an effective way to do this. While Election Monitor believes that government funds should be distributed to the beneficiaries using the free market model there are some situations where government can and should facilitate the distribution of food items and other basic living items to the poor. For example the Federal Government recently approved the distribution of 70,000 metric tons of grain for citizens across the country. In addition 150 trucks of quality rice have also been released by the Federal Customs Service to help people in need which have since being distributed to states. Many private companies and individuals have also donated money and have been doing their own bit to distribute food items to the poor. However, because these efforts are not centrally coordinated there is a risk that some people get more support than others while others get none at all. With the Federal Governments increase of the social safety net to cover 3.6 million households this would provide a good foundation for an effective nationwide food distribution programme. The following are recommendations for ensuring effective coordination for food distribution to people in need nationwide.
Choose a date (preferably a single day) for national distribution of food and other items’ palliatives. This day must be sufficient for effective preparations and soon enough to meet peoples current and dire needs. This day could be a Saturday or if during the week, a public holiday for the day declared (could be tagged, National Day of Social Support or Intervention etc). This may be done only once during this period.
Determine an effective distribution mechanism that is transparent and equitable. Election Monitor recommends using INEC polling units or Registration Areas (Wards). This is because they are located in 119,973 locations nationwide and are largely known by citizens. Registration Areas and Wards could also be used as these are just in 8,809 locations and will be more manageable.
Government will need to determine how many bags of 25kg grains can be distributed nationwide. Since 70,000 metric tons have been approved this is the equivalent of 70 million kilograms of grain or 2.8 million 25kg bags of grain. With 119,973 polling units this would come to about 23 bags per polling unit nationwide. If registration areas are used this would result in averagely 317 bags per Ward. 150 trucks of rice with an estimate of 600 bags per truck (for example) leads to approximately 90,000 bags (it could be more or less depending on the size of the trucks). This would not be enough for one per polling unit but would average out at about 10 bags per Registration Area (these bags are usually 50kg). If these bags are divided into two for example and added to the grains from the strategic reserve this gives about 337 bags of grain and rice of 25 kg provided at each Ward.
The state governments should also make contributions towards these efforts by liaising with companies in their states to provide food items as much as is possible which will be taken to the Registration Areas or polling units for distribution to citizens.
The Federal Government can also appeal to the private sector, international donors, religious organisations etc to make significant in-kind contributions to add to what the Government has made available. This eliminates cash transactions.
Government should make public announcement about how interested companies and individuals can make their donations. Wealthy individuals in the registration areas can bring what they can afford as well. No amount is too small. If a citizen brings two yams and a 10kg bag of rice to give to someone less fortunate than himself/herself, the person should be permitted to do so. Each Registration Area can be opened three days before the National Day of Social Support with representatives from INEC, the state government, security agencies, local traditional leaders and citizen representatives on ground to receive items at each Ward. All items received must be comprehensively documented. Registration Areas used must be conducive to keep food items (schools in most cases which are currently not in operation). Citizens in the communities could also help by ensuring that goods are secured in partnership with the officials in charge of the distribution.
The night before the distribution all the goods and foodstuffs should be placed neatly in columns on the field or in classrooms to enable citizens’ easy access to the items and to encourage physical distancing.
Government should also announce that on that day, only citizens who really need support should come out to collect foodstuffs. It is important that citizens bring their permanent voters cards (PVC) to ensure that someone doesn’t get food stuffs in one ward or polling unit and then migrates to another and do the same thing. In this case, Smart Card Readers may become necessary to authenticate that the citizen is validly registered in that polling unit or registration area. The key here is PVC authentication and not so much finger print verification (so as to help as many people as possible). If the 3.6 million households are used then there could be a direct communication to the affected households optionally.
Citizens should be told to come by a specific range of time (for example 8am to 11am). Once it is 11am the distribution officers (DO) with the aid of their assistants DO2 or DO3 will count the number of people on the line. The items will be shared based on this number of people. For those coming after this time it may be difficult to handle to prevent disorganization. Therefore great effort should be made in sensitization that those coming after 11am will not be attended to (word of mouth, text messages, fliers, handbills, posters, social media, radio television etc).
Transparency is critical. It is important that this whole process is extremely transparent. The total number of items obtained and distributed should be documented at the registration area or polling unit. This information should be sent to the state where items distributed per state are collated and subsequently that for the entire nation as well. A document can be produced showing the distributions nationwide at some later date.
Government may also consider leveraging NYSC members as well as willing volunteers in the communities to act as Distribution Officials or Assistant Distribution Officials. This process must not be hijacked by local politicians and influential persons in the localities, therefore there needs to be a clear organizational structure (FG official (SIP), INEC official, security agents, state government officials etc). Each centre must be well secured but security agents need to be professional and friendly.
It is important that the Federal Government provide the same quantity of palliatives to each Registration Area or Polling Unit across the country. This is the base provision. However state governments may mobilise as much food stuffs as they can. Private companies and individuals will not bring the same amount in every state. All these other sources cannot bring the same quantity and this will definitely vary from state to state. But efforts must be made to ensure that whatever the states generate is distributed evenly across all the Registration Areas or Polling Units in the states (in addition to the FG’s base provision).
It is important for INEC to accredit observer groups (who have observed at least once before and have submitted reports to INEC) that will submit independent reports on the distribution of these items nationwide. Each accredited observer group should receive some support to facilitate this very important work of independent monitoring which can be facilitated by willing donor organsiations. Every accredited group should get the same amount of support and be apportioned an equal number of registration areas or polling units they are expected to observe. This should also be done to ensure that at least each Registration Area or polling unit has at least 3 observers (from different groups) each nationwide. The observation will commence from the three days prior to the National Day of Social Support and end once the final state tally of items received and distributed has been determined and publicized.
The media should also ensure that the distribution exercise is well publicised. Donors supporting the observation process may also choose to offer some support for nationwide media coverage as well.
The key is for Government to provide palliatives transparently to as many people as feasible who can benefit during this unique period. It is important to state that these recommendations are made purely in relation to palliatives for the current pandemic (which are temporary, unique and urgent) and not government’s existing social intervention programmes. Certainly social distancing will be required for officials and beneficiaries alike while officials will all be required to wear gloves and face masks while in the distribution centre (beneficiaries may also be required to do this if it is feasible). Registration Areas (probably better suited than polling units) will need to be disinfected before foodstuffs are brought in as well. One additional advantage of this process is that if well managed, it will increase the trust of the citizens in the Government and encourage unity and togetherness across the country.
Long Live the Federal Republic of Nigeria! Nigeria shall prevail! God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria!
Signed
Abiodun Ajijola
National Coordinator
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