Presidential mistake: Is it still a speech writer’s fault again?

The president has been led to make a couple of costly mistakes in the last one month. The recent one presents the president as someone who doesn’t really know the quantum of investment leaving and coming into the country. And this is not good for our president.

GE’s swift reaction to President Buhari’s Independence Day speech speaks volumes.

On Independence Day, the president said: ‘‘Meanwhile, General Electric is investing two point two billion USD in a concession to revamp, provide rolling stock, and manage the existing lines, including the Port Harcourt-Maiduguri Line’’.

But the chief executive officer of GE in Africa, Jay Ireland, quickly reacted by telling FT Africa that the company was investing $2 billion in the whole of Africa, and just a paltry $150 million in Nigeria. And this sum, the companies says, would be for a wide range of developmental projects in Nigeria – not only rail projects.

With this mistake, the coming on stream of a reinvigorated Port Harcourt – Maiduguri railway line cannot be guaranteed. Even the coming on stream of other planned railway lines cannot be guaranteed, as well.

Why?

In February, the minister of transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, told journalists that the Lagos-Kano railway would be completed in two years. He based his optimism on the ‘negotiation’ between his ministry and GE. He boasted about the number of jobs that GE would create from this project in Nigeria.

In June, Rotimi Amaechi told CNBC Africa that GE was investing $2 billion in the country’s railway projects. This suggested that the ‘negotiation’ he talked about in February had reached an advanced stage. (Transcript of this interview was reported in the Vanguard Newspaper on the 30^th of June 2016.)

The minister went on to say, ‘‘GE is already in, we are trying to get the government agencies to allow us negotiate with GE. The company is going to bring in over $2 billion in the Nigerian railway sector, in which they are going to revive the Lagos-Kano narrow gauge and revive the Port Harcourt-Maiduguri narrow gauge by private investment………It is good that such kind of funds will come into the economy, it will create employment, it will increase business and everybody will be part of the process.’’

Interestingly, the president said in his Independence Day speech that the government has provided its own counterpart funding for the construction of Lagos-Kano ‘standard gauge’ railway line to China. Not GE – the would-be investor – anymore, as reported by his minister! (Note that Jonathan’s government had in 2012 awarded and completed a $1.76 billion contract for the repair of the ‘narrow gauge’ Lagos-Kano railway line.)

GE, on its part, has denied investing huge sums – billions as reported – on any railway project in Nigeria as attributed to the company by government.

These events also cast doubt on the completion of the Lagos-Calabar railway project. The government has just renegotiated this contract, which was earlier awarded by the Jonathan’s administration, with the Chinese. But it is not clear when exactly this money would come into our receding economy.

If we are sure that an investment of $11.12 billion – the value that the Chinese are supposed to invest this railway line – was coming into this country in the coming months, then there wouldn’t have been any rush or discussions to sell off NLNG and other oil assets in order to bring in forex.

Apparently, based on these information, the president concluded that investors were falling over themselves to come to Nigeria. The president has been reported to insinuate this.

Well, there is no doubt that the president and his team are in a hurry to turn Nigeria around, but there seems to be so much misinformation.

It is important the president takes a tour around Nigeria, especially to the Niger Delta and the South East to get a feel of what’s really happening. With these level of misinformation, It might not be in his own best interest to continue relying wholly on the information been sent to him by his appointees.