Full transcript
0:12[Applause]
0:24okay hello everyone and uh good morning
0:27uh I'm very happy to be here with you uh
0:30and um this we just tell you that I'm a
0:32rather dated person I never really knew
0:34what a Tex event was um and when my
0:38daughter spoke to me about it um and
0:40said something about Youth and
0:41development I thought I'd just come here
0:43and talk about young people and job
0:45creation and the usual stuff we talk
0:47about until a group of young ladies came
0:51to me to explain that I was actually
0:53expected to speak in 16 to 18 minutes
0:58about one idea that can change the world
1:01um now that was crazy because I I don't
1:03have any ideas I can change the world
1:05and I um and the thing with young people
1:08is that they're the most difficult
1:09audience to address um I have found
1:12myself in situations where I address
1:14people of your generation and frankly
1:17the questions I get are more incisive
1:19more intelligent uh more um
1:23thought-provoking than the questions I
1:24get from people of My Generation Um at
1:27all levels and I'm actually just
1:30beginning to understand um how difficult
1:32it is for those of us who are in the
1:35analog generation to have a conversation
1:38uh with uh with our children um I have
1:41um an 8 n year-old daughter that I um I
1:45always see in the morning and um she
1:47goes to school and she comes back I've
1:49never really had serious conversations
1:50with her and and two days ago we were at
1:54the table with her sister who's about 15
1:57or 16 who then says to me you know Dad
2:00it's time for us to start talking about
2:02boys
2:04um and before I could answer this
2:09younger one who's eight or nine looks up
2:12and says you want talk to Dad about boys
2:14he won't understand he's a man he's a
2:16big boy uh now you can imagine for me I
2:21mean this wasn't the kind of
2:22conversation I had with my mother or my
2:23father so um for me having and of course
2:26the next day I had my son who's in form
2:28one talking about chromosome and X and Y
2:30cells on the table so this is a
2:33completely different world uh world for
2:35me I'm going to speak to you today about
2:38overcoming the fear of vested
2:40interests it's a topic that I have come
2:43to be engaged in mentally because I have
2:47learned in the four years or so that
2:49I've been Aja that if we understand that
2:53we may begin to unlock the key to how to
2:56change our world the world of the
2:58country in which we live and what is
3:00this
3:01country it's a country of 167 million
3:04people as you know um largest population
3:08in Africa second biggest economy on the
3:10African continent in 1960 with a per
3:14capita income that was better than
3:15higher than P income of of South Korea
3:181960 Nigeria was the preferred
3:21investment destination preferred to
3:23Japan according to us investment
3:25advisory um which has always had
3:28potential
3:30but which has never been able to realize
3:31that
3:33potential a country that specializes in
3:36exporting what it does not produce and
3:39importing what it
3:40produces one of the world's largest
3:43producers of crude oil that does not
3:45refine its own petroleum products and
3:47has to import petroleum
3:49products the world's largest producer of
3:51casava that does not produce tarch or
3:55ethanol a large tomato belt yet the
3:58world's largest import of tomato
4:01paste a country that from my childhood I
4:05have heard had the potentials for being
4:07a world power but every day we talk
4:10about potentials every day we talk about
4:12potentials today we still talk about the
4:15potentials of
4:16Nigeria and yet
4:19China Indonesia Malaysia Japan
4:24Korea
4:26Vietnam
4:28Brazil all of those countries have
4:31turned the potential that they had into
4:36reality what are these what's the one
4:39thing that if I were to ask what is the
4:42one thing that we need to do to break
4:45this barrier that faces
4:46Us in four years in Abuja I've come to
4:49the
4:50conclusion that we need to overcome the
4:53fear of vested interests and I'll talk
4:56you through a little bit of my own
4:58experiences
5:00um as governor of Central Bank and use
5:02that as a basis or as a template for
5:06what I think we need to do if we change
5:08this
5:09country I became governor of the Central
5:11Bank of Nigeria in
5:132009 and this was in the middle of a
5:16global financial
5:17crisis I came to the central bank
5:20knowing that Banks had problems and
5:23believing that these problems were
5:24caused by a global crisis by the
5:26collapse in the Capital Market the
5:28collapse in the price of oil
5:30and that they would be fixed by simply
5:33addressing the normal risk management
5:35issues in
5:37Banks and shortly after I came in and
5:41one went through
5:42investigations I discovered that the
5:44Nigerian banking
5:46system was
5:49infested with the same Corruption of the
5:53renest system in this
5:55country that a number of bank chief
5:58Executives had had taken their
6:00Banks and fleeced those Banks and
6:03literally taken away depositors money to
6:07buy property all over the country all
6:08over the
6:10world and just like people do in
6:12ministries or in government agencies or
6:14whenever they have opportunities in all
6:16companies the banks were themselves a
6:20site for rent
6:22seeking the fundamental character of the
6:25Nigerian
6:26state is that for decades since we found
6:30oil it has existed not to serve the
6:35people but as a site for rent extraction
6:39by a very small minority that controls
6:41political power and it doesn't matter
6:43whether this whe whether whe this group
6:45group comes from whether it's north or
6:47south or Muslim or Christian or military
6:50or civilian the state has always been a
6:53site for the extraction of rent with the
6:55exception of a few years that we can
6:57think of where we've had development and
6:59this is at the heart of the problems of
7:01the
7:02country now when we discovered this and
7:05I'll give you a few examples and these
7:06are well known now they've been
7:09published you know there was one chief
7:12executive
7:13officer that took away from her bank
7:16over 200 billion
7:18Nara okay that was over a billion
7:21dollars and where was this money taken
7:23to purchase of property we dis we
7:27recovered from one
7:30CEO 200 pieces of real estate in
7:35Dubai real estate in
7:38Johannesburg real estate on the PAC in
7:41Washington apart from shares in over 100
7:46companies and all of that was purchased
7:49with depositors
7:52funds we went to the court in
7:56UK on the case of another CEO we got a
8:00judgment against that CEO for 142
8:03billion
8:04Nara stolen from the bank taken to buy
8:08shares and manipulate the shares of his
8:10own institution and also transferred
8:13outside to purchase
8:16property now the first CEO we were able
8:19to convict we recovered these assets and
8:21got a six-month sentence and sorted it
8:24out the second CEO we finished our case
8:31established in Nigeria that we had a
8:32civil case in the UK had a criminal case
8:34in Nigeria established the
8:36case 2 weeks before the closing
8:39statements were made the judge was
8:41miraculously promoted to the federal
8:44court of appeal after 3 years of trial
8:47at the very end of
8:49trial because
8:52someone a very popular religious leader
8:55with hundreds of thousands of supporters
8:58carried him to political author
8:59authorities and the system that was
9:01supposed to protect depositors and
9:02handle criminals was used and
9:05manipulated to promote a judge so that
9:08he would not convict a
9:10thief now this is an example and an
9:14instance of the kinds of things that
9:16happen in a country that stop a country
9:19from reaching its full potentials but my
9:21experience with the banking
9:23reforms and how it affects the fear of
9:25vested interest was the
9:27following after we discovered things
9:29that happened in the
9:30banks the
9:33critical thing we had to do was take a
9:36decision that would pitch us against
9:39powerful political and economic
9:41forces we were dealing with Chief
9:44Executives that in
9:462009 had become
9:50invincible they were in the seat of
9:53power they had economic power and they
9:56had bought political uh political
9:58protection
10:00they were into political parties they
10:02had financed the elections of officers
10:05and they believed that nobody could
10:07touch
10:08them and every time I said it was time
10:12for us to take action people said to me
10:14you can't touch these people you'll be
10:16sacked or you can't touch these people
10:18they will kill you or you can't touch
10:21these people you can't do that and I
10:22said you know what we are going to take
10:24them
10:26on and
10:29we took the decision we're going to
10:31remove them and you know what we removed
10:33them and nothing
10:35happened we're going to prosecute
10:38them we're going to put them in jail and
10:41we put one of them in jail and we're
10:43going to recover these assets because
10:45the way the Central Bank operated in the
10:47past was these guys take all this money
10:51and the Central Bank says the bank has
10:54failed the banks that we saved had 4. 4
10:59trillion Nara in
11:01deposits they had 8 to 10 million
11:05customers but the government and the
11:07system has always bettered on the side
11:11has always bet on the side of the rich
11:13people because these 8 million customers
11:16the old woman in
11:18Boo or in Yan or in muguri who has been
11:23told to save her money and who saved
11:25money for 40 50 years wakes up one day
11:28and all her savings are
11:29gone the civil servant who work for 35
11:3240
11:33years kept his pension money in the bank
11:37the school fees of his children the
11:39medical bills wakes up one day and he
11:42finds that his bank is barricaded
11:44because the bank has failed Banks do not
11:49fail when people say banks have failed
11:52it's like seeing a man whose throat has
11:54been slit and you say the man died he
11:57did not die he was killed
12:00and those that murder the banks those
12:02that destroy these deposits have always
12:04walked away they become
12:07Senators they become
12:09Governors they become captains of
12:12industry they set up new Banks and they
12:16continue and the millions of poor people
12:19who don't have a voice that's it nobody
12:22knows the number of Nigerians who have
12:24died from failed
12:26Banks because they were sick and could
12:29no longer pay their medical bills
12:32because those bills were the money was
12:34locked up in a bank that has
12:37failed Nobody Knows the number of
12:39children whose parents could very well
12:42afford to pay their school fees who are
12:44to drop out of school because Banks were
12:47mismanaged so we use this as one
12:50instance as one example of what you can
12:53do if you're willing to confront these
12:55vested interests and deal with them and
12:57protect the poor for the first time
13:00but the banking industry is just one
13:02part of
13:03Nigeria what is happening in other
13:06areas so take the oil industry we
13:10talking about fuel
13:11subsidy in 2009 this country paid 291
13:16billion Nara as subsidy for petroleum
13:19products by 2011 this number had jumped
13:24to 2.7 trillion
13:26Nara did we start consuming me 10 times
13:30as much petrol do we have 10 times as
13:33many cars did the population of Nigeria
13:35multiply 10 times I did not believe
13:38those numbers I screamed against those
13:41numbers and people screamed of course we
13:42tried to move subsidy there was
13:44occupying Nigeria there have been
13:47investigations and what did we discover
13:50that a lot of that money never
13:53went to fuel subsidy that was consumed
13:56by
13:56Nigerians there are people in this
13:58country C that produced pieces of
14:02paper and brought to PPR and somebody
14:06stamped those pieces of paper and said
14:08they brought in petroleum products and
14:10actually paid them
14:12subsidy and those pieces of paper said I
14:15brought 30,000 metric tons on Soo ship
14:19and we discovered that that ship was
14:21nowhere near the coast of Nigeria on
14:23that
14:24date we have seen vessels that did not
14:27even exist that had been retired on
14:30bills of Len and money has been
14:33paid and you know what none of them as I
14:37speak to you has gone to
14:40jail this is the only country in the
14:42world where you have something called
14:44all
14:45theft where vessels can simply come and
14:49take crude oil and literally just um
14:54drive out of the
14:56country you see the numbers every day
14:58100,000 ,000 200,000 400,000 barrels a
15:01day nobody even knows 7.3 billion Nara
15:04how does anybody take oil in a vessel
15:08and leave a country we've got the
15:12Navy we've got
15:15nimasa we've got Security
15:17Services you've got the all companies
15:21themselves and every day we complain
15:24about the lack of development we don't
15:26have development because vested in
15:29continue to rape this country and to
15:32take the money out and the only way
15:34you're going to move from potential to
15:36reality it to stop preaching and start
15:39asking yourself how can we overcome the
15:42fear of Ved interest and how can we
15:44confront them and if there's one thing I
15:46learned from banking it is that they are
15:49not to be feared they stand on quick
15:52stand they've got only two tools they're
15:54not very intelligent people it doesn't
15:55take much intelligence to steal if they
15:56were smart they probably would not be
15:57stealing they find other things to
16:04do they have two weapons and two weapons
16:09only first
16:11is how much do you
16:15want and if you don't want anything then
16:18I'm going to destroy you if you don't
16:21want their money and if you're not
16:23afraid of them you destroy them there's
16:26nothing else in there you're more intell
16:29ENT and we've got to ask ourselves as a
16:32country how have we allowed
16:36ourselves to be reduced to a level that
16:39is so far below our potential a few
16:43weeks ago I was illegal at U's birthday
16:45at the colloquium and I spoke to young
16:47people I said we have 65 million young
16:49people in Nigeria I'll give you one idea
16:51you have 65 million youth in Nigeria
16:54what does it take for one of you to get
16:57your votes and be the president of the
16:58this
17:00country what does it take for you to say
17:03you're tired of my
17:05generation I'm going to get one
17:0940-year-old intelligent committed
17:11patriotic Nigerian and we're going to
17:14ask all the youth to vote for
17:16him what does it take for you to address
17:18this issue sector by sector identify
17:21these interests one by one and confront
17:24them why does it have to take fuel
17:27subsidy removal for us to come come out
17:29and challenge the rot that is in our
17:32country what are we afraid
17:34of we're afraid of losing the security
17:37that we have today we may not lose it
17:40today we will lose it tomorrow so if
17:43there's one thing I have one message I
17:45have for every Nigerian is to remember
17:49that the problems of this this
17:51country are enormous the solution is
17:53simple and that solution is we must
17:56overcome we must recognize that as at
17:58the heart of the problem of Nigeria at
18:01the heart of 90% of our issues from Boko
18:04Haram to religious crisis to ethnic
18:07crisis to unemployment to the lack of
18:09Education to the lack of healthare is
18:12that there are people who profit from
18:15the poverty and underdevelopment of this
18:18country and these people are called
18:20vested interests and so long as they
18:24remain entrenched and so long as we not
18:26overcome our fear of them and L them we
18:29are not going to find a solution to this
18:32problem and we're not going to reach our
18:34true potentials my time is up thank you
18:37very much
18:42[Applause]