Arab Emirates. He’s the founder, Global Analytics Consulting Uk; a philanthropist and a youth advocate.
He shares on what the present administration can do to lift millions of Nigerians out of poverty; the effects of globalization and Nigeria’s place in a flat world.
-You’re the CEO of Global Analytics Consulting Limited with offices in the UK, UAE and Nigeria. What is it like doing business in Nigeria, given that Nigeria is ranked as one of the worst business destinations?
No! It’s a very wrong concept. When I hear that I want to believe that there’s a psychology to it; to put Nigerians off
from doing business in their own country, while other people come here to do business. If it was so bad, we won’t see many foreigners falling over themselves to come here and do business.
It’s totally wrong to say Nigeria is one of the worst places for doing business and I will tell you why. In the US and UK, all of those places are economics that have reached a certain peak and it’s difficult for an upstart to come and just get something done. In fact, those who are actually making a lot of difference there are maybe, if you like some of those tech start ups. And for everyone Facebook, Twitter, Instagram that you see, five thousand, ten thousand people fell by the way side.
You cannot just walk to the US and say you’re starting a business like you would in Nigeria. Nigeria is where some of the gaps are; in the whole of Africa, Nigeria is where you have some of the largest population with a very good cash flow. I have done businesses in different countries; I am telling you Nigeria is one of the best places to do business and it compete fairly well with places like Dubai if you ask me.
-In view of the recent political permutations in Nigeria, what should Nigerians expect from General Buhari led government?
I think Nigerians should expect what Nigerians want to make happen, in which case it’s not about sitting back and say “Buhari has promised let him go and do it” it’s about what we do, it’s about how we make it happen. I personally am not going to be sitting down to just say “now we’ve voted for him or whatever the case maybe let him go and sort it out” , it’s my call, it’s my time. If he fails, I have failed.
-I hope you’re not saying this because you are a member of the APC?
See, it doesn’t matter. The PDP forced us to join parties because of sixteen years of gross mismanagement, therefore we realized that and we had to do something. I am not necessarily politically inclined but all of us are political animals. In which case, if you dig deep down you’ll find that politician in you and at the end of the day, everybody plays politics- it’s all about how you manage people, how you lead, how you deliver on your promises, how you take people forward and for me certainly I do have a lot of those attributes.
Some people can decide to hibernate and go into a cocoon for the next four years and be on the other side plotting the failure, naturally that’s going to happen but that’s their own cup of tea, I just happen not to be one of those. I believe that Nigeria needs change and change we are going to get and I believe that to a large extent this next four years is going to be prosperous for us.
I live on the cutting-edge of economic thoughts. We can’t be thinking in a straight linear fashion when things have gone digital, the kind of challenges we are dealing with now are not the cut and dry kind of issues. When I wake up in the morning that’s all I read, that’s all I think about, and I have fine-tuned my ideas in that regards. What happened is that Buhari did not win; I think that the people of this country won
and therefore the people of this country will dictate how the economy rolls.
-Speaking of the people what should they expect in the first
100 days?
I think we are going to see a drastic cut in government expenditure in terms of what the government spends on itself; I think we’re going to see a scenario where when they are coming in they will declare their assets. Of course it’s not going to be easy; we are going to see some fight backs. Hopefully they’ll be able to re-energize EFCC to do its work; hopefully we are going to get a lot of recovery of assets of stolen money, here and there or maybe misappropriated funds, let me not use that word stolen money.
-Our economy needs technocrats to drive growth, well not the kind of growth that will keep the poor poorer and the rich richer. What kind of economic team are you looking forward to?
The word technocrat itself can be a fraudulent word because a lot people come and they say “ we are technocrats” and they put their noses in the skies and they don’t actually see what is on ground and they come with this arrogance of “I
have been abroad or I have gone to the best schools or I have got a PhD” and so on. What we need are patriots.
The question that you asked, you put this very question together perhaps with some divine guidance because you
talk about technocrat on one hand and growth that does not reflect on the lives of the people. What our technocrats have
been selling to us including Mrs Okonjo-Iweala is growth that does not include the people and it could be very easy to
include the people in the growth of this nation. In fact, until you include the people you’re not going anywhere. We don’t
want some technocrats that will come and tell us some theories they learnt in some place, what we need are patriots who can fix this economy and let me tell you, it can be done.
The only thing that will move the economy forward now, all things considered is for the government to define unemployment from the level of secondary school graduates to say that anybody that leaves secondary school must have a job--a light kind of work. And God have mercy there’s so much work to be done. Coming to the office today, the kind of dirt on the streets, the kind of dumping grounds that we passed and there are people who can clean that.
One way to move this country forward is for us to advertise to the world that now we are ready to run a country that’s going to be the cleanest and the safest and the money will come. If we do so, we will be putting money directly in the pockets of our young people. Get our young boys and girls on the streets light work. The idea is to put money in their pockets. Every streets could do with 10-20 people, 3-4 hours shift daily, with this plan you can easily create 1.5 million jobs in this country and if you say one graduate should supervise 5 people or ten people you can easily create either 200 or 300 thousand jobs for our graduates and pay them at
least N50, 000 monthly.
In an economy like ours, private sector is not charged with the duty of creating employment. Government first! In the
north we have desert encroachment, what do you need to do? You need to do tree planting; you need to do irrigation,
that’s mass labor. Private sector will not do tree planting for you, government has to chip-in in order to create the standards. If government employs 800, 000 people as a result of this that is a plus for all of us and there is a lot of work for everybody.
A clean safe environment means that businesses will be able to do more, businesses can open longer and in fact,
we should be talking about the 24 hrs economy. No young person should sit at home waiting for jamb-if jamb does not
answer you, get something doing. If we do this 1, you’ll reduce crime, 2, you’ll be putting money directly in the pockets of young people, and by so doing you’ll be creating a new class of people.
We are talking about diversification; you are not going to diversify with mouth. If there is a local textile industry in Aba
manufacturing shoes and there are local guys in Aba sewing it well, why are some of them not growing? They need someone to buy from them. The people, who’ll buy the N2000 shoe made in Aba, are these boys and girls. When you put money in their pockets, that guy manufacturing shoes in Aba will sell more and when he sells more he will improve his processes.
-Mr. Fasua, you have built a successful business across
three continents, if given an opportunity to serve under Buhari’s government will you take it?
I will and I will do it for free! I can do it and I’m ripe enough to do it. In fact, I won’t even wait; if I can I will talk to the
necessary people. It’s not a matter of pride, these ideas I’m propagating are unheard of. I’ll be glad if am called to serve and if they don’t call me, I will give my ideas for free. If they don’t accept any of these ideas they’ll fail, I’m telling you.
If they get advice from the hawks I see floating around the scene now; they’ll come and say “oh we have infrastructure deficit of 100 billion, let’s go to the World Bank and borrow 60 billion” they are finished! If it is about awarding contracts, they are finished. What we should do now is to reinvent our economy by focusing on the youths, how? Retooling most of our educational institutions and I say #bringbackourpublicschools.
-Social Media played a huge role in this election; in fact you are one of the few big boys who went all out online irrespective of your business interest challenging young people to give a 72 year old general a chance, why?
Because with the information at my disposal I knew we had reached our tetras end as far as PDP was concerned. I staked everything I had to say look this wasn’t the way to go
and I pushed for a change. I knew that we couldn’t continue
to sustain the level of brigandage and open looting that was
going on. I knew the economics was wrong because it was
all about chronic capitalism; I knew that we couldn’t continue
to run an economy base on bailout for the rich. These big
guys have taken Nigerians for a ride, you bail them out and
next time you see them buying all sorts of things. That’s the
reason chiefly I rooted and still rooting for Buhari, because
hopefully we will get the opportunity to get things right in this country, the wickedness was getting too much.
-All over the world, there’s a global conversation turning into innovation, as we speak the world is flatter than it was ten years ago. Where’s Nigeria’s place in this?
Regarding that one, Nigeria is finished! There are 400 Americans working in Instagram, serving almost a billion
people, when Facebook bought Whatsapp for $19 billion,
it had 55 employees serving 450 million customers. How much did they cash out? The young CEO Jan Koum who had 45% stake got $6.8 billion, his friend Brian Acton, co-founder got $3 billion, the other 55 people who were the early employees who had only 1% stake got $160 million each. Ambassador Victor, where are you there? You are there to use Whatsapp. Don’t talk innovation as far as Nigeria is concerned. What we need to do is, first go back to the root; it will give us time to think of where to come in.
POWERED BY:
No comments:
Post a Comment