Open Data : Amplifying the Voices

A cliché says that the easiest way to hide something from common folks is to put it in a book. Nigerian budgets as an example has always been in a ‘book’ – thick reams of pdfs difficult to mine and understand. However, most citizens without requisite knowledge in public finance or low level of interest will still be lost either data is published in non-readable or open formats. It clearly tells that open data is a means and enabler to the functional and self-accounting society we desire.

Notwithstanding, publishing data in open format is a huge step for the developers, data miners and geeks  to build ‘double helix of civic awesomeness’. The core task lies in harnessing open data for public usage and most especially how it drives to institutional reform, inclusive growth and improved service delivery. Open data is a correctional tool  and enabler for a society that requires transparency, accountability, institutional efficiency and improved citizen engagement.  A lot of work is needed at the both the supply side and demand side of open data to translate improvement. Based on a personal review of my startup (BudgIT) activities, I consider the following as critical for citizens to effectively harness open data

1.       Open Data must Actionable: To stay with the definition of Open Data is to strip it of its potential. A key aspect of open data is its power to initiate action. Data needs to move from being at a macro-level which is ideal for economists and public finance gurus to a deep-down stage where citizens and civil society can clearly ask questions. A typical example will be to see budget not released on ‘open’ format on abstract items such as infrastructure allocation or education spending. It must go deep down to the last possible unit where every veil of secrecy is torn and objective questions can be put forward. The World Bank Open Finances is a bright example.

2.       Educate the Citizens: Based on the society where I work, I seriously contend with a chain of literacy span. There is need for clearer definition of terms surrounding the data published in open formats. Getting granular with the context of the data is most critical to build a mass of followership that understands thematic areas in view. For example, in public finance items such as Recurrent or Capital Expenditure will need simplified definitions to encourage core understanding by users. This is highly necessary when building visualizations and infographics.  Citizens still need background information to clearly ask questions

3.       An Incentive for Citizen: Open Data needs to be citizen-centered. Applying Adam Smith phrase in the Wealth of Nations stated as “by pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it” is required in open data engagement strategy. There is a need to focus on building open data right to the mind of the individual on things that matters to him/her. If open data and its visualisations stay at the macro level and not built to focus on a citizen, it may have communicated too little. For example, public finance data needs to be crunched to an extent when the citizen is aware of capital projects and revenue allocations within  his/her neighbourhood. He/she is most likely to harness the power of open data and properly ask questions or trigger a debate through access to such personalized information

4.       Tell  A Story:  Open Data must tell a story to stimulate larger interests with the community. With visualizations built around it, it must shine light on winding corners. It must bring forth human angle stories  by converting stack of information to a moving narrative that drives a sense of ownership in the user. Working with Nigeria oil revenue equals to billions of US Dollars. Publishing such data in open formats must stretch further to describe the purchasing power of such huge amounts for citizens who barely rake in less than $5,000 annually. Lost in the ‘haystack’ of open data, citizens need a common thread to interprete the datasets.

 5.       Get Feedback to Institutions: Open Data cannot be driven on a one-way lane. Access to data is n’t enough. It must be linked with a feedback system that allows citizens or users to reach elected officials, public servants and other stakeholders at the supply side. Debate, discussions and comments emanating based on interaction with open data and its visualizations has to reach the required institution responsible for data or project improvement. An open finance data will need a feedback system attached to the head of implementing agency,  the legislator representing the area which project is located and possibly the finance ministry expected to disburse the fund. Such is the power of the open data and that citizens believe someone at the government institution end connects with their concerns.

These ideas are mined out of my new thoughts on driving open data in Nigeria most especially to amplify citizen voices in their demand for institutional reform and improved service delivery. This will be crucial to the revamp of BudgIT desktop and mobile web platforms and our engagement model with citizens in the short term. I also feel it is worth considering for open data initiatives springing up across the globe.

Oluseun Onigbinde, an Ashoka Fellow is the Co-Founder of BudgIT, a Nigerian startup using creative technology to represent budgets and public data. 

My Short List of Greatness

My Short List of Greatness

I once told Olumuyiwa Adejuwon and Simon Itodo about this. I face the mirror in certain times to scale my power of oratory. I am not planning to face Goodluck Jonathan in a presidential debate, the law and my present calling (BudgIT) won’t allow me. My effort usually ends up in mimicry of Barack Obama. I start on smooth sail with few familiar lines. I begin to rush into incoherence or even completely stammer empty words. I would peer of the lines of Martin Luther King, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, Reagan et al wondering how men could craft words so apt. But I will get there. I am someone who believes that if you can’t win be talent, why not be persistent with effort?

This is my height of inspiration when I see poetic cadences either in speech or fiction flow with so much grace. But most importantly, I am that person in search of narrative of greatness which I believe words have a huge share. I am mostly unmoved by popular narrative of greatness. They seem the affirm the thoughts of the expedient. I mean people would tell you about Obafemi Awolowo and his glowing wave of change that put the west ahead. I run ahead of such raft to peer at the men behind the veil. The Emmanuel Alayande, Simeon Adebo, Bode Thomas and Ladoke Akintola and many more would not bask in same glory. Not that I derob the Ikenne sage of his immense place in history. It is just a restless me finding peculiar heroes who remain unsung or not draped in immaculate glory.  Let me tell you of my new heroes who lived in great times:

Thaddeus Stevens:  Maybe this makes me loves a close brother named Thaddeaus more but Thaddeus Stevens is a man you need Google. No better way to tell the legacy of this man than watch the new movie titled Lincoln. We were five in the whole Silverbird cinema who watched this movie. If this was a Timberlake ‘Friends without Benefits’ you will see colour-blocked ladies falling over their heels. Such is my generation.

Thaddeaus was a white man who spent his entire life campaigning for racial equality. He was bruised and abused for it and in those fiery days when blacks were regarded as three-fifths of a human being, when justice was blind to color and education was elusive to the colored race, Thaddeaus married a black lady. The emancipation of Blacks might have penned by the majestic pen of Abraham Lincoln but here is a man who hangs the millstone on himself to ensure that blacks are free. In the end, the Thirteen Amendment which frees all slaves was passed by a thin margin. On that night of victory January 31, 1865, when he told his black wife to read the Original Amendment to him while he slept, I left the cinema in tears. That’s greatness.

I will tell you about Bram Fischer. Possibly you never heard of him. He had no fancy airport named after him like an Oliver Tambo or not in the ranks of eminence like a Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and others. Bram was an Afrikaner and guess who the tormentors of the blacks were – The Afrikaners. They were the Botha, Vorster and Verwoerd of this world who believed the black man was socially deficient and cannot lay claim to common rights of life and liberty. At the Rivonia trial when Nelson Mandela gave his final address April 20, 1964, Bram Fischer, his lead counsel stood firm by him not because of the quick wages but because it affirmed his lifelong drive to see blacks free. He stood by his belief and went even to Robben Island to visit Mandela after losing his wife in a week. Hounded by on the surface of the earth and underneath, he was finally sentenced to confinement, where he met death through cancer. These are the words of Nelson Mandela on Bram Fischer  “bravest and staunchest friends of the freedom struggle that I have ever known. From a prominent Afrikaner family, he gave up a life of privilege, rejected his heritage, and was ostracized by his own people, showing a level of courage and sacrifice that was in a class by itself”

So what do we give up for greatness? I have many more examples to tell of Robert Graetz and Clifford B. Durr who were whites but were scaled beyond the planks of passiveness to make it a lifelong cause to support Black freedom.  They might not be a Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks who are forever lauded today but this people in their own rights and many unknown more stood on the side of defiance – disrespect to the status quo. They were committed in the face of ridicule and death. So what’s greatness? Is it having a lifelong battle to do something different even the popular narrative seems to be on a diverging course? Is it following your trail of justice and liberty not at the convenience of ourselves but for others and many more to grace the face of the earth. So my list can be short, there are many more unsung who toiled upwards against the norm the polluted their society. In their unmarked graves or present lives, these are great people. Let me end with Martin Luther King’s stinging words:

One of the prayers that I prayed to God every day was: “Oh God, help me to see myself in my true perspective. Help me, oh God, to see that I’m just a symbol of a movement. Help me to see that I’m the victim of what the Germans call a Zeitgeist and that something was getting ready to happen in history……Oh, God, help me to see that where I stand today, I stand because others helped me to stand there and because the forces of history projected me there.“  

The Accidental Public Servant – My Review

Accidentally, I found myself at the launch of Nasir El-Rufai’s book now overtly referred to as controversial and full of insider details mysterious to the common citizen. I wanted to say goodbye to Jackie Farris of Musa Yaradua’s center and unknowingly, I launched into a midst of fellow labourers who toil in the digital and offline minefield, trying to raise active citizens. Standing the gallery peering at Nasir who was about to cry at his own book launch, his little frame struggled to fit into the grand agbada and one might wonder if  that small stature counts for a man whose narratives are being presented  in giant print.

Allow me by starting with that mild abuse, but this is overly fair to Nasir who in his book fought hard to neatly depict his characters.  He had words for Charles Soludo as ‘ Charles would wear expensive bespoke suits, complete with bright red tie” and  for the early days of Umaru Musa Yaradua as a man “ that never worked a day in his life,  that had lived off and been kept by his brother Shehu, that he was a free thinker for a period, and believed more in marabouts than his professed  religion’. It was that clear level of description that he wound up around characters either on his good memory – Nuhu Ribadu, Tunde Bakare, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala – or those he peered through the dark lenses such as Ahmed Yayale, Atiku Abubakar and Ibrahim Mantu.

A narrative that hauls canaries into the present by reciting his account of the past, The Accidental Public Servant (TAPS) comes as brilliant read for folks not only interested in public service but finding a meaning to complex interplay at the top they possibly aspire to. Not the canticles of public service but reaching to the stand of a seminal publication, Nasir’s personal account unintentionally throws a reader into disbelief with sighs, wondering aloud if this isn’t stranger than fiction. These stories around the power play, serial tests of loyalty and forceful ambition of men throws recent happenings of the fourth republic to debate. To the unknowing future generations, this could be the single narrative of this era unless the ‘fallen’ such as Mantu and Zwingina step forward with their plausible side of the story.

A reader notices that the whole power space lies in the small junction of haphazard connected individuals. Nasir easily places a phone call to the familiar names that regurgitate in our country. He was that close to power. The 627-page book of which only 489 who counts as the main narrative starts with the story of the Third Term Agenda- the overt perpetuation of the old guard who still peered Africa through the lenses of the Big Man. The accounts of Obasanjo yes-men (Andy Uba, Ahmadu Ali, Tony Anenih ) who tried all means to arm twist a reluctant legislative leadership to their bidding were well written. In those banal moments, Nuhu Ribadu was hushed and cash was freely shared to power the gravy train. Even the ‘incorruptible’ Nasir was privy to the bounty given legislators overseeing his FCT Ministry.

The book went on to document his early losses in life, the choice of career, his rare early qualification as a Chartered Quantity Surveyor and how his early company faced crisis of ownership. Nasir kept a significant mention of Barewa College – a Northern institution that produced likes of him, Umaru Musa Yaradua, Yakubu Gowon and Murtala Mohammed. TAPS does not project Nasir as a self-made man because consciously, he revealed how he was lifted on the wings  of friends, seniors and peers. He would constantly remind readers on influence of his elder brother Bashir El-rufai, Hamza Zayyad, Economic Management Team, BPE and FCT employees and Barewa College friends.

Seemed the death of Abacha unearthed his moment to public service as he documented his steps from being a transition committee think tank under Abdulsalami Abubakar, BPE Agency boss where he had running battles with Atiku and schemed to give a lifeline to the EFCC and also as a FCT minister. He would even ascribe to himself the unofficial title as Obasanjo’s vice president in the last days of that tortuous Presidency due to the enormous responsibilities hurled at him.

Interestingly, he gives a good account of the pains of change, especially making Abuja a working city that fights the ghosts of Lagos. His attempt at the land reforms, justification for his last minute Abuja land approvals and his account that his wife had a prior application for a land in Abuja before he came the FCT minister were all listed. A lot to instruct the reader which include the story of flesh hankering after sleazy fortunes, the sale of government houses, running battles with Bashir Sambo,  the chase to prove equity in demolition exercise, his running battles with Umaru Musa Yaradua which forced him into exile and also harrowing account with the courts. His moments with Goodluck Jonathan and how he ended up supporting General Buhari were carefully written. In end, you miss too little in the timeline of Nigeria’s center during this 4^th Republic.

Succinct lessons lie on interactions among the intellectuals who though see it as a lifelong battle to save the country, yet won’t rise above petty ego to forge a common front. He goes ahead to document the four mistakes of Obasanjo which includes fraudulently underpricing Transcorp shares to people in the government. This book offers insights and lessons on the challenges, pitfalls and common battles of a technocrat in public service . While Nasir may have told a story to prove that he stood incorruptible in the midst of brazen theft, it is left to the reader to subject the TAPS to independent reasoning and further research. Well edited by men of towering calibre, in its giant font, TAPS is silky to read but at the terminal pages, one feels sad as a father lost Yasmin, a promising daughter and grip of the polygamous family, to massive seizure in the bathroom.

Unpaid Goon of the Cabal

The Cabal and its kindred in government houses will always be among us. Either they lurk with greasy palms around Apapa Jetty or they sit in decrepit office in Abuja Pensions Offices watching over their mansions.  Didn’t we see legislators overseeing and benefiting from SEC funds at a go? Or Saint Farouk denying his voice and turning $620,000 in a needle?

On January 1  2012, President Jonathan struck the matchbox tossing the flame into an gaseous enclave. Rage was the word. It’s been a while the ‘aluta spirit’ that defies restraint possessed me. I ran into the streets protesting this brazen fraud. Caught in the excitement, morphing into angst against an ineffectual government, ‘we the protesters’ were absent at the negotiating table. NLC and TUC showed no hope resided in their yard. Like a movie already seen, they brought the mid-way solutions. The President in series of speeches  postured like a thespian with cosmetic measures that cured no ailment of sleaze.

But the pall of sadness over the wanton corruption tipped with the massive floods that displaced thousands, Aluu4, Dana Crash, Mubi Killings, scores of bombing in Yobe and Borno crisis. While the rich and famous took delivery of private jets, we woke up to a nation struggling to keep its seam in a stitch. With the Governors’ fold now suffering crisis, the affliction lands in the camp of our leaders.

For London, it was the year to bask in her ancient glory. The Olympics was rendered in magnificence but Nigerian athletes except the now revered paralympians  came home empty. Andy Murray will look back with his Grand Slam & Olympic medals and beam smiles. Lance Armstrong will behold his fall in same year and probably give a deep sigh. Chelsea will relish a year the Champions League triumph ended an era of ageing squad. Man City saved by ‘Fergie Time’ won’t forget 2012 quickly. The Spanish in their economic woes played captivating football to keep the European football crown. The Facebook IPO, fall of Zynga and Groupon, failure of Apple maps and launch of new tech gizmos are highlights of the space. In Nigeria the e-commerce war has begun with Jumia and Konga leading the chase.  

Obama will also stride in smiles after securing another  four year term while the Republican base remain rattled with  shifting demographics . The squash game between the bankers and Western government still tosses Greece and Spain around. The world in a mild recovery was dragged down the pitfalls of a faulty European economic zone.  China shuffled its leadership pack and also keenly watched its frosty relationship with Japan.

2012 would actually take more than a page in my biography. In my personal space, the last time I had a defining year like 2012 was five years ago when I proudly organized the UNAAB ICT Conference. Not because I found another employer, I just cleared a  new pathway that tickles my spine.  Listing the awards and global itinerary might come with a brush of pride but I am most grateful to the forces of history propelling me.

I kept thinking that day I decided to finally quit my job in the bank.  I dropped my id card. I signed the exit forms.  I faced the Samuel Asabia building and took a bow.  It was a defining moment to marvel at how the height of my passion has transformed  to running into untested waters. BudgIT, my double helix of civic awesomeness, like a new guitar rocks my life. Sadly, I could not publish my collections of stories. I didn’t write as I would have loved.  I didn’t read as much as I did.

2012 has ended. My President has gotten N161bn for stabilize fuel in festive period. Yet I still queue to buy at N110 per litre. It’s been another bazaar of committees, Diezani is firm on the throne, the fraudsters chuckle in court and the charade is now dressed in SURE-P.  Cursed for its sleazy ways in January, the cabal now have a temporary reprieve almost blowing into a last laugh.  In this scorched sun queuing for December fuel, I try to remember differently. While I trekked miles to Ojota in January, I could have been the unpaid goon of the cabal protecting their interests and their friends in power .

 

 

 

 

 

Influence : God

Friend of the Year: Joseph Agunbiade

New Friend of the Year: Moshey 

Book of  the Year : The Big Short by Michael Lewis

Facebook Friend of the Year: Babawale  Oluwabiyi

Tweep of the Year: @oniyiabiri

Person of the Year: Obiageli Ezekwesili

Happiest Day of the Year: 19/05/2012 – Chelsea won the Champions League

Saddest day of the Year:  Ogunyemi Bankole Taiwo’s death 

Song of the Year:  Outside by Tuface Idibia

 

The River and Graveyard

Recently I had the honour of presenting at the Open Knowledge Festival in Helsinki and as I touched down on the majestic floor, I felt an aura of ease around me. I could accurately call it a leash of  freedom. Freedom from a pile of filth inching to the gutters, rattle of noisy generators or discovery of another open theft of oil funds.

After having a sauna, in the breezy cold watching over the tip of the old cathedral, I turned around.  I asked a Finnish guy what he thought about Nokia. He quickly retorted “ Nokia to us is dead, we just feel it’s too big to die so quick”. I would see his frustration at how Nokia was losing share in the smartphone business and how the Finnish Company whose sales were once 4% of Finnish economy has  seen its GDP share dwindle to less than 1% in three years. It’s corporate taxes  to government coffers shrunk by 75%  in the corresponding period.

Most Finnish youths (possibly out of the 3,700 laid out by Nokia) are fastened to iPhones and Samsung products either checking a Google map or running through a playlist. No emotions in a land where Nokia should be on the throne. Even the free wi-fi that greets one at the airport is paid for by Samsung and it announces the S3 product in passengers’  faces.

My Finnish friend told me Nokia previously a paper, electronics and retail company was moving on as it seeks the next big startup to redirect its course. There’s a Nokia Bridge incubator where it gives $25,000 to its former employees to unleash a new startup and it also invested over $1m in a university to fund new mobile startups.

It’s a reminder to the lifespan of the company. One sees the bright pupil of the yesterday class struggling to fill in the numbers. How does  a company lose touch with innovation? When  does a warhorse in limelight go on a misstep and starts to hug a tombstone. However, the Finnish society wired to seek answers is excited with Angry Birds, homegrown global gaming leader. You move around Helsinki pubs and you peer at areas marked ‘Angry Birds Space’ which provides free wi-fi access.

Running round an innovation circus, it’s a tale of juggling many balls. To keep a steady hold to the consumer , not iterate fast and not fall prey to the Innovator’s dilemma, to lead in a sustainable way, keep a forefront in R&D and continually keep consumers on the cliff of surprise. No matter how little a space one tries  to innovate either as a startup or huge enterprise, the worry hangs there to deepen the reach to the attention or wallet of the consumer, to continually provide value and revel in a space of relevance.

For a company like IBM which moved on from personal computers to consulting or even Google spending fast to keep the user on hold to its search function, it’s the price of innovation.  As creatively defined by Joseph Schumpeter,  the profits that litter around from the tangible hold of today’s customers is the cost of innovation and being in  tomorrow’s business. In all as a person seeking to lead a frontier in public data access and visualisation, I keep a famous line in Michael Lewis  Liars’ Poker: ‘Wall Street (a hotbed of financial innovation) is a street with a river at one end and a graveyard at the other.’

The journey of a product/company between the river and the graveyard can be told in Schumpeter’s single phrase – creative destruction. It could be a whirlwind of the times pushing to higher grounds  or even small missteps leading to self-destruction.

Farad – A Review

Prancing between  plots of a troubled Northern region and a university whose chapel’s choirmaster is facing revolt from the clergy and the choir,  Iduma’s prose Farad reeks of exciting characters. With well-cut language, subtly revealing  its writer’s knowledge about classic books and topical  texts,  Farad takes the reader on a journey across the minds of converging characters living by on a cliff; they needed help. Help to the wayward lady whose memory sank after meeting Abacha in bed or to a confused life of young man whose sister was run over by a bus while listening to her short songs. For those who sought help from the thugs of an election violence, Reverend father Muna was a harbinger of hope in a polarised Jos community. Little could a Reverend father do to redeem souls of a violent clan as he also sought salvation after handing over his mother to death.

The novel assembles people who tried to affirm themselves of their true calling but fate hanged them by the balls. Being contrite after seeing their loved ones who seemingly pursued happiness gone, a brother suffers a career crisis after losing his music-drunk sister to a running truck; another one  longs  to preserve the  museum collections of a sister-in-law run over by a bus; an overbearing father goes weary after his son left on a journey  never to be seen or heard.

Farad comes with superb narratives quickening the pulse of a reader to find knots of characters in the loosely connected chapters. It reminds of one Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel which combined fine prose with sweet scent of poems. Farad disrupts a love story usually found between the sheets or trysts under an apple tree. Rather, it outlines an uncompleted love anecdotes  in Frank, Goody and Ella or Chika and Mosunmola. In a stream of thoughts, it could bring despair when you think  erotic love story has just begun – of a Reverend father Muna and Taibat in an hazy night of flying emotions or of Chika and Mosunmola, denied another kiss by cancer.

Center to the prose is a university chapel and its worshippers reliving thier past lives and how it connects the struggle of veteran choirmaster in his silver jubilee of stewardship. After caught filling his seed into a female chorister, Dr Addo led a plot to save his friend, the choirmaster, from the weight of Okon’s pen. A mirror of the society as after spent energy of the youth to replace a veteran choir leader, another old Professor takes up the mantle again.

Farad ends with the beginning, leaving its middle as a shuffled jigsaw. It blurs the lines between insanity of Lekan at the end, extreme irrationality of Moyosore at the middle and memory gaps of Ella in the opening pages. Born 1989, Emmanuel Iduma proves to be of the Generation Y as he polished his lively tenses with a stream of tweets.

Wake up in the  morning. Bear your silence.  Do some face washing. Find Farad that  gleams with fine printing. In the end after reading this swift and gorgeous piece remember  the referenced  words of Colm Toblin ‘We saw nothing, not because there was nothing but because we had trained ourselves not to see’.

Doing God’s Work

One worry on my mind today is how much good can banks do?  Within an economy in a state of dysfunction, financial markets heading to a tailspin or sustainable jobs needed to keep the nation standing, can a bank still have a moral imperative? How does a bank allocate the resources it keeps in custody between those who out of fear save their money and those driven by creative and illicit greed go for brass rings.   Three Nigerian banks in Nigeria before the end of the year will declare a profit of N100bn. You wonder if that is possible in this economy but as at June 2012, GT Bank has declared N53bn, First Bank (N49bn) and Zenith Bank (N45bn).  These three banks account for 54% of profit in Nigeria’s banking sector. Adding Access Bank of N26bn and UBA with N24bn to that top –tier group shows the profit meter; sorry these one still chase demons of a merger and bloated structure.

The top five banks have 72% of industry profits. If the economy continues in the outlined structure below and banks keep up the frenetic chase, N100bn profit mark by the trio is much more possible. Connecting the dots of the banks’ profit to the rising domestic bonds of government is obvious. The top three banks have N948bn in treasury bills with Zenith Bank leading with N542bn. The CBN risk-free 90-365 day paper which helps banks liquidity  has yields of 15-17%. The top four banks (UBA included) have a total of N1.15tn in government bonds and other securities. Government bonds yields presently range from 16-17% for federal government while the state bonds (guaranteed with standing order from CBN as the allocation is shared) are between 18-20%. The loan book of three banks to private sector reads N2.9tn. Also note that out of the N2.9tn, some banks still lend to states directly as loans (not through bonds which goes through the stock exchange).  A look  into investments which the country is attracting adds another alluring paint to the Nigerian canvas. In first quarter of 2012 while the sticky foreign direct inflows lost 19.7% on the prior quarter to close at US$2.13bn , portfolio investment (the more volatile part of the inflow used in trading bonds and securities ) rose significantly by 181% qOq. With the capital market taking half sinusoidal movement,  government debt is just a sweet okra froth racing into  the bank’s bowels.

So far this year, Debt Management Office has auctioned government debt of N611.27bn at yields of ranging from 2014 to 2022. Also, CBN in July sold a total of N245bn with N65.05b for 91-day bills, N125.40bn for 182-day bills and N60bn worth of 365-day bills.  Despite the profit bucket which this government instruments offer, Nigerian banks still keep interest rates as high as 24%. In developing economy that needs funding for sound infrastructure and manufacturing fortresses to employ its youths, credit to private sector grew from December 2011 to June 2012 grew by 3.6%. With the stock market numbers oscillating between bears and bulls, government bonds with the risk-free label (beg the militants not to shut down oil) is the cash cow for banks. For the bold with the appetite to borrow except the likes for institutional customers like Dangote, NNPC, and Forte Oil which attract low interest rates because of volume, how can 22-24% interest rates be sustainable for business with huge energy costs?  That’s why I wake this morning bothered about the hustle of the Nigerian entrepreneur with government and banks playing the game stacked against his\her social mobility. How do we slow down the banks to lend to private sector and allow the small businesses to thrive?   Though the risk premium for retail customers is the bank’s narrative why lending rate is high but this brings me back to be opening question, how much good will a bank do to help draw people up the pyramid. With Central Bank jokingly tightening liquidity (through the use of monetary policies to raise banks’ cash balance at its vaults which yields 0%), banks  in the beat to maintain profit portfolio, either raise interests rates or focus on non-risk assets (which needs no capital provision) by stalking government bonds. The FBN Capital offer which closed last week  meant to gather retail funds to buy government securities (fixed income) is a sign of the times and things to come. Government wants to slow down with an Eurobond, I think they know in their closet that domestic debts at N6.15tn with such huge borrowing costs is a speedy train out of rails  whose wreck can be foretold.

In the midst of the challenges of nation in terms of infrastructure , N100bn profit emerges, can we say this profit has crossed the line? Will it be safe that banks review lending rates downwards, take some heat and allow the right economy that support private sector expansion  emerge?  Lloyd Blankfein, the Goldman Sachs CEO said he as a banker (after selling toxic mortgage bonds to German Bank IKB and at same time betting against it through John Paulson) is doing God’s work. I mean those kind of workers (moneychangers and bankers) the Biblical one-talent man should have met and given his paltry fund for trading. In Nigeria, the banks and government now worship at same cathedral but this can’t be God’s work, the Leviathan, the comrade of the devil is in our midst.