Happy Statistics, Unhappy People’: Pat Utomi Laments Decline in Nigerians’ Quality of Life

Renowned political economist, Professor Pat Utomi, has raised alarm over what he sees as a dangerous disconnect between Nigeria’s economic data and the real-life conditions of its citizens.

Reflecting on the phrase “happy statistics, unhappy people” in light of Nigeria’s rebased GDP figures, Utomi said:

“One of the things that troubles me in Nigeria is that we are becoming distracted. One of the things that has happened is this economic stabilisation stuff and statistics. I want to focus on what matters – production – that ultimately determines whether people have a decent quality of life. Is there a strategy to boost production?”

According to him, Nigeria’s standard of living was far better in the years surrounding independence than it is today.

“The quality of life in Nigeria in 1960 was better than it is today. Look at what happened between 1956 and 1960; you will see the direct impact of industrial input on the quality of life of the Nigerian people. You will see the passionate commitment of politicians to making life better for people,” he said.

Utomi pointed out how rural economies once thrived from commercial agriculture, which in turn fostered a healthy banking system.

“A unique statistic I want to share is that back in those days, a lot of rural dwellers who engaged in commercial agriculture made significant money from selling cocoa, groundnuts, palm produce and all of that. They have savings. If you go back to why banking was natural back in those days, it was because these people made money from commercial agriculture,” he explained.

He added, “So, banks mobilised rural savings and run them to urban areas for lending. I recall at the 1986 Annual General Meeting of the African Development Bank in Cairo, the then-governor of the Central Bank of Gaza made a presentation which tracked these flows of savings in Africa.”

Now, however, the situation is dire: “What has now happened today is that 75% of Nigerians who live in rural areas live in chronic poverty. They don’t have any savings. The tonic metaphor is that the peasant farmer is so deep in water that even a ripple can drown him. It’s a metaphor of the reality of most people in rural Nigeria. This also talks about the quality of life of the average person.”

On GDP Rebase: Symbolic Growth, Real Suffering

Asked whether the rebased GDP has any tangible impact, Utomi acknowledged some statistical benefits but said it does little to address underlying issues.

“One of the impacts is that it shows a positive trend, and that positive trend gets taken on by letter. For example, a lender would see that statistic and may give you better interest rates when you come to borrow. Bear in mind that Nigeria is a borrowing country because of its current state of exposure to debt,” he said.

But in his view, the real issue remains: “The critical thing is output. How do we increase production? A part of how we increase production strategy is education, education, and education. The competitiveness of nations is significantly built around education. We have to learn to respect knowledge, give it its place of credence if we’re going to make progress.”

To drive home the point, Utomi recalled a telling conversation between Barack Obama and Apple founder Steve Jobs.

“If we don’t even want to go into statistics, take a very simple conversation that took place between Barack Obama and Steve Jobs in 2011, just a few months before Steve Jobs passed away.

Obama had asked Jobs: ‘Why are you making iPhones in China? Why are you taking all these things to China?’ And very frontally, Steve Jobs said to him: ‘We are trying to beat deadlines. We’re looking for software engineers to put together teams around the United States. We’ve looked at a few places and we’re having difficulty finding enough of these engineers who could work at speed. We discovered that one local government in China has a concentration of software engineers than several states in the United States, and their cost is a quarter or less.’”

Utomi added: “Our country continues to neglect the investment that is required to be made in education. It is fundamentally a problem. Where are the skills you need for manufacturing going to come from? What are the skills that you need to improve to yield in farming? I think that local government is the most important level of government in this regard.”

He condemned the ongoing decay in education infrastructure, especially at the grassroots.

“The recent spectacle of students having to write exams with flashlights and lanterns continues to be a troubling one, and we’re just hoping that at some point someone will wake up to it,” he said.

On Governance and Misplaced Priorities

Utomi did not hold back his frustration over political distractions, especially within the National Assembly.

“Governments are too distracted in Nigeria; politicians are too obsessed with politics. Talking about Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, look at the kind of time this country has wasted talking about somebody. Look at the distraction,” he said.

He drew a contrast with how agricultural policies transformed economies like that of the United States.

“Agriculture is what it is in the United States today because the Congress of the United States looked at the situation 100 and something years ago, and passed certain legislation that transformed agriculture. But here our National Assembly is wasting time talking about whether Natasha should resume plenary or not. It breaks the heart that people are not serious enough about governance in Nigeria.”

On the Informal Sector and Borrowing Habits

Utomi also touched on Nigeria’s failure to properly account for the informal sector in its economic assessments.

“There’s a question about the fact that Nigeria has suffered from not doing enough to capture the informal sector, because a significant part of our economy is informal and tax laws are problematic. Also, the way we develop entrepreneurship in our country is problematic. We have also not been appropriately capturing the output that comes from the formal sector.”

On the country’s growing appetite for debt, he warned:

“There’s this caveat that’s often offered to say that they are not necessarily bad if they are properly applied. That is probably true if you invest appropriately, then you shouldn’t be afraid to borrow a cup of that. Is that what we’re doing? Are we borrowing to facilitate output? We’re not doing that. We are borrowing to consume. We are borrowing to bridge fiscal gaps that come from our poor management of the economy. We still have a profligate government.”