Osinbajo, Nigeria’s first VP to be in Davos

Davos, Switzerland, hosts the world’s best every January. This is the time participants gather for the World Economic Forum. Sessions at the WEF are relevant for the globe, for Africa, as well as Nigeria. Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo represented us in Davos this year, our first leader to so do in the VP capacity. He participated in many of the sessions. Incidentally, he had been actively involved at home in some of the issues he spoke about in Davos. His presence at the 2017 gathering was therefore apt. For we were represented by someone who knew not only President Muhammadu Buhari’s mindset well on many of these issues, but he equally had a full grasp of those salient issues about Nigeria that the world out there was interested in.

I had written actively about WEF’s events in Davos since 2008. WEF itself started out in 1971, and everyone had come to recognise it as almost a one-stop shop for important global, continental, and national economic issues, as well as economic-related ones. The gathering attracts thousands of the world’s top corporate executives. There are also bankers and financiers, Heads of State, heads of major international organisations including the IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organisation, the UN, academics, economists, political scientists and journalists. It’s a forum where any leader can cut the cost of flying around the globe, by meeting dozens of other leaders in one city to initiate partnerships.

Regarding its mission, WEF states that it is committed to improving the state of the world through public-private cooperation. It collaborates with corporate, political, academic and other influential groups and sectors to shape global, regional and industry agendas as well as define challenges, solutions and actions. Apart from its annual meeting in Davos, WEF hosts regional and sometimes even country-specific meetings multiple times a year in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Nigeria had hosted the 2014 Africa edition. The Davos Forum also promotes particular issues and positions on different subjects, from investment to the environment, employment, technology and inequality. From these and other subjects, the Forum publishes dozens of reports annually, identifying key issues of importance, risks, opportunities, investments and reforms.

The WEF has remained relevant over the decades majorly because it adapts to the times. With the rise of anti-globalization protests in 1999, the Forum began to invite non-governmental organizations representing constituencies that were more frequently found in the streets protesting against meetings of the WTO, IMF and Group of Seven. This change made the Forum garner interest from corners where it would ordinarily have been dismissed. Also, at its 2000 meeting in Davos, the Forum invited leaders from several NGOs to debate issues that were relevant to them. The participation of NGOs and non-profit organizations has increased over the years for obvious reasons; one being that public trust in bankers, governments and business is low, while NGOs enjoy the trust of the public.

Criticised for promoting policies and ideologies that contribute to the problems which have led to populism across the world, WEF’s president, Klaus Schwab, says the Forum tries “to have everybody in the boat.” He added in another setting that “We also try… to put more emphasis on integrating the youth into what we are doing.” Nevertheless, everyone knows that WEF remains the place for the gathering of global elites whose interest it is to promote and profit off the expansion of global markets. In spite of the globalising economy, politics at the Forum have remained national. It has to be because, as I recall a former European Union ambassador to ECOWAS saying in his reaction to my observations regarding the ECOWAS-EU Economic Partnership Agreement at an event in Lagos in 2014, international trade agreements still have to be negotiated and signed by nations for known reasons. Yet, Davos meetings are a means to promoting social connections between key global power players and national leaders along with the exotic class of corporate and financial oligarchs.

The WEF has thus been a consistent forum for advanced networking and deal-making between companies, occasional geopolitical announcements and agreements, and for the promotion of global governance in a world governed by global markets. In fact, WEF functions as a socialising institution for the emerging global elite, globalisation’s mafia-like bankers, industrialists, oligarchs, technocrats and politicians. Note that these ones promote common ideas, and serve a common interest, which is their own.

In that case, the point shouldn’t be missed that it was in connection with serving Nigeria’s interest that President Buhari (even while he was on his way to London for his medical vacation) ensured that Vice-President Osinbajo was in Davos. Now, why was Osinbajo’s presence in Davos important, considering the fact that both the President and his VP were out of the country at the same time? The first reason is that Nigeria’s economy is in recession and it needs to gather as much support from the world out there as possible. Osinbajo’s presence in Davos thus presents a Nigerian official high enough to make top government officials and corporate heads from other nations feel they are hearing from someone who knows what he is saying. Investors and businessmen who were naturally interested in Nigeria with its large market needed to be imbued with confidence, and Osinbajo was available to give it.

Apart from this, Osinbajo spoke about issues regarding Nigeria in which he had for some time been involved. Issues such as the Niger Delta, the insurgency in the North-East, the economic and business policies of the Nigerian government were areas he had been involved in or had represented the President. At a press conference in Davos, Osinbajo spoke about Nigeria’s economic recovery and growth plan which investors were interested in, as well as policy measures that the government had put in place to improve investment climate and drive growth through social-inclusiveness. “If you look at our economic recovery and growth plan,” Osinbajo said, “it is clearly the expectation that these (issues of concern to investors such as the unstable exchange rate) would be redressed. And this is a conversation we are having with the CBN itself, and I believe that some adjustments will be made, and that we must advance to an exchange rate policy that closes that gap as quickly and as efficiently as possible.”

He also said the administration was committed to ensuring the security of lives and investments, and that this was especially obvious in the manner the government was addressing the Niger Delta issue. He had been holding a series of meeting with stakeholders in the Niger Delta, so he had his hand on the handle on that one. As a member of a panel of discussants, Osinbajo also spoke about terrorism and the digital era, reiterating the need to improve response to terrorism. More than 400 sessions were held at the 2017 WEF, addressing various economics challenges and Osinbajo participated in some of them, including the one on rebuilding Africa.

Much as Osinbajo informed the world in Davos about Nigeria, as well as built confidence for us, I believe he too was informed. That he has returned from the meeting with insights he could share with the President in order to move our economy out of recession isn’t in doubt. Since he returned from Davos, I had heard him speaking with candour on some issues in a manner I had not heard many of our policymakers speak in recent times. The other day at a gathering, Osinbajo said some government agencies had become obstacles to the setting up of business rather than facilitate business, especially at this time when we needed to attract more businesses which could help get us out of recession. Osinbajo said once a government agency missed the point that it was to facilitate business, it had missed all, its relevance was lost. He therefore called on all agencies to change their ways, and imbibe the right philosophy in their operations. This is an observation that cheers the heart at a time when outfits that should assist in improving Nigeria’s ease of doing business have become more interested in the revenue they generate, stifling legitimate business in the process. Here isn’t where I want to go into the details of this contradiction, except to state that I fervently hope the insights which the VP has gathered in Davos won’t be discarded. We’ll all be the beneficiaries if what he gains are translated into action.