Opeyemi Agbaje is the CEO of RTC Advisory Services Ltd, a leading strategy and business advisory firm in Lagos, Nigeria. He worked in the banking and finance sector for 16 years before founding RTC in 2004. He has built RTC into a prominent indigenous Nigerian brand in strategy, economy and policy, and business advisory services with clients in diverse sectors.
Mr. Agbaje served between 1999 and 2004 as adjunct faculty at the Lagos Business School, and joined the faculty between 2004 and 2008 as Senior Fellow, teaching Business Strategy and Social, Political and Economic Environment of Business (SPEB). He holds Masters Degrees in both Law (1989) and Business (1997) from the University of Lagos and IESE Business School, Spain respectively. He graduated from the University of Ife in 1985 and was called to the Nigerian Bar in 1986. He has been a member of the Strategic Management Society since 2011.
At the meeting of the Governing Board of Integrity Organisation (consisting of Integrity and The Convention on Business Integrity, CBI) which held on Tuesday, August 23rd, 2016, Mr. Opeyemi Agbaje who had in the past year acted as the Vice-Chairman of the Board was appointed the new Chairman of The Integrity Organisation; taking over the mantle of Chairmanship from His Excellency, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, GCON, Vice-President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Over the years, Agbaje has distinguished himself as a selfless and committed member of the Governing Board. In July 2018, he became the first individual to declare his intentions on Monday at the SDP secretariat in Abeokuta. He was received by Bayo Adenekan, state steering committee chairman, Kunle Majekodunmi, state exco chairman, and Leke Mabinuori, national assistant secretary. His popularity became very obvious on Saturday, February 9, 2019 when 6 paramount rulers in Ogun States attended his housewarming ceremony in Sagamu. City People’s DAMILARE SALAMI was there and had an exclusive interview with him. Below are excerpts from the interview.
Your house looks beautiful. How do you feel achieving this great feat?
Well, I’m happy, I’m very happy. This is my community. This is my root and so I’ve always wanted to have my real home, my foundational home in this town and I’m happy to have been able to achieve that.
Sometimes in 2018, you decided to join the Ogun governorship race, why?
At that time, I concluded that we have been talking for too long and I had been talking for too long as well, I had been been writing that column since 2006 and even before then, I was writing OP-EDs in ThisDay, Vanguard, Guardian and before then also, I was writing letters to the editor, just talking basically. So in late 2016, I started thinking is this how we just going to be talking? The talking was not effective, at a point it was satisfying because people were acknowledging that you said this and that but beyond ‘you said this’ I was not seeing any tangible impact so I decided to get involved. And so from very late 2016 all through 2017, I was working. I started my project ‘O sese’ which was focused on the development of Ogun state, and in the end I went into a political party in that 2018. It was because I concluded that it was not enough to just talk, persuade question and all of that it was necessary to try and directly make an impact. So that was what I was trying to do in 2018. In the end, I joined the Social Democratic Party (SDP), I ran for governorship, didn’t win the ticket for many reasons some of which I don’t want to dwell on. I don’t regret that experience, I believe I gained from it, and I believe that we now know some of the realities of the Nigerian politics beyond academic knowledge and we are now in a position to learn more and still continue on that path of trying to influence my state for the better.
The presidential election was held last weekend, what is the impact on the economy as an expert?
I was just talking yesterday in a business context about the political uncertainty and the economic implications of it. If you look at the capital market, it’s been going down since the last three years, if you look at the foreign direct investment, it hasn’t recovered beyond the level it was before 2015, GDP growth is still 2 per cent, so we have a severe political risk discount in several aspects of our economy, investments, bureau, capital market, stock market. So we need two things to happen, we need to resolve the political uncertainty by doing the elections peacefully and do it without undue controversies, but more importantly, beyond resolving the elections, we have to chart a clear policy direction for Nigeria that investors will be happy with, that will produce growth, reduce crises, inflation and all, and that will make for improvements in the lives of Nigerians; that means it will generate employment and reduce poverty. So those are the real challenges of our nation and as soon as we get past these elections, we have to return to those critical issues.
Looking at the performance of President Buhari led APC government, what can you say about his scorecard?
Frankly, from my point of view, it’s not been a successful performance.
In terms of the economy, the figures are clear, in terms of jobs, it is shocking we have moved from unemployment rate from six per cent to 23.1 per cent and we have moved from a number of 6 million to over 20.9 million. And even in terms of corruption and insecurity, while there has been much return, impact has been minimal and so I don’t think it is a good scorecard and I think if they get a second term, they need a new focus on a realistic scorecard. They have written a document that could pass for a good plan; the economic recovery blueprint, but they have not implemented it, rather they have focused on modest efforts at distributing money to the people. But what the poor masses really need is an economy that generates growth, that generates employments, that generates prosperity, not handouts. Yes, handouts help in emergencies but the best ways you can really help the poor is to generate jobs, to generate prosperity and economic growths. That will be the challenge from 2019.
Is that to say an Atiku would fare better should he get the mandate?
I think Atiku has a better economic plan and has a better record on the economy without any doubts. I’ve read his documents, it’s clear, it makes the better choices, it’s pr- market, it’s pro-investment, pro-deregulation, and it’s pro-employment generally; so there is no doubt in my mind that Atiku has a better economic plan. And he has some clear agenda on reform and his views on privatising the NNPC are radically correct. They are radical in the context of Nigeria but they are the correct measures for stimulating investments, growths, and job for the Nigerian people.
There is this idea about him (Atiku) being corrupt and all..?
Those are questions he validly has to account for, his record on corruption… in his defence he has said “I’ve been investigated by President Obasanjo, I’ve been investigated by other administrations and nobody has been able to convict me of any corruption charges.”
So, that is his defence but yes, it is legitimate in any democracy for people to ask him, this has been said about you, what’s your response? So I would support that headline of enquiry but I would say that in his favour also, corruption has been a mantra that we use to distract ourselves sometimes. Of course, corruption is a real problem but we shouldn’t turn it into a mantra that prevents us from logical thinking. So we should still be able to think rationally in spite of our concerns about corruption.
A while ago, you said that Nigeria worsened in unemployment from 6 per cent to 23.1 per cent and in terms of numbers, from 6 million people to 20.9 million people are currently unemployed. Where did we get it wrong?
In these three and half years, we had a recession, for five quarters i.e. 15 months, the rest of the period, we were not in recession but we had low growth, our economy was growing below 2 per cent. All of that means we are losing jobs, we are not creating the right number of jobs and we are underperforming essentially as an economy. In that context, you produce poverty, you produce unemployment and you impoverish people and that’s what we’ve done. And I think the problem is simply that we have not had the right focus on economic policy, economic management under the Buhari administration, that’s the reality. We’ve had spots of good things; sadly, whenever the president is on vacation but otherwise, we are moving away from economic development to propaganda and that cannot produce development.
So what is the way forward?
The way forward in my view as I have said earlier is to focus on the economy. If the current president cannot do it, we have to pick another person but if he can change and focus on economic development based on sensible development rather than propaganda, emotions and just playing politics. Then, if we don’t change our policy approach, we could have economic tragedy, we could have a second recession, we could have increased levels of social dysfunctions and we could have an elevated level of poverty and unemployment; so something has to change in relation to policy and the economy. If we have to change the government to do that, let’s change the government.
Finally sir, you talked about a merger, which could challenge the current platforms, (APC and PDP). We had something similar in 2015 and it gave us APC that has brought us to where we are today. Do you see possible solution you proffered working better than that?
The merger that produced the APC in 2015 was amiable in its politics but it was built on something that was more of a lie. It was built on a lie that Buhari was one democrat, competent, a messiah, the one who would bring jobs and prosperity, etc. Buhari’s record, on the other hand, was clear. He was a very parochial person with a sectional mindset, with a very poor knowledge of economics and policy. And he was one who tended to focus on the needs of the Fulani ethnic group than that of Nigeria. And that record is a reality, so we built all of the hopes of this new party that was going to overthrow the PDP (and did overthrow them) upon a lie; it is delusional because that lie was going to be made manifest as not true. So that’s what we have had but on the other hand, if we build the real merger alternatives around the real needs of the youths, around credible people like Fela Durotoye, Kingsley Moghalu, Oby Ezekwesili, Omoyele Sowore, etc, the main challenge here will be the egos of these people. Because they all have big egos, we will have to subdue our egos, all of us; and subsume to a bigger us. If everybody says he wants to be president and we can’t have a rational conversation, we will fail again and we return to the PDP or APC as usual or we have change of names and transfer of persons from PDP and APC and we say we have a new party but with the same people, same formation, same behaviour. So we need a new party structure, who will provide it is the big unknown.
