Remarks by his excellency The Vice President at the public presentation and First annual lecture of "The Interview" magazine publication on September 6, 2016.
PROTOCOLS
Most of us are here to support a dear brother and friend of many years, a very insightful columnist, Azubuike Ishiekwene. But I am also here to support a dear brother and friend of many years who many of us call Azu. Azu has always stood for something; a strong social conscience, strong values and sound ethics. He is a man who has consistently shown strength of character which brings me to the theme of this commemorative lecture; "Why Start-Ups Fail And Strategies To Save Them",
Without meaning to pre-empt what l
know will be an eminent, and erudite presentation by Mr. Ncube, let me
say that the success formula for a start-up, whether it is in the
business of starting a newspaper or landing a robot on mars 350 million
miles away are essentially within two broad issues that will ultimately
determine success or failure. One will be an enabling environment and
the other will be concept; in relation to what I just mentioned about
Azu, which is strength of character.
Strength of character is what l find
very fascinating because it is an attribute that is so important, so
crucial, yet so hard to find. It is the patience to do routine things
properly, everyday; the focus to start and finish a project. And all of
that involves some adherence to values, sound moral principles and to
principles, even sometimes when those principles work to your own
disadvantage.
You must excuse me if l sound like a
preacher, but commitment, focus and values are everything. Anybody can
start a business or any kind of enterprise, but the truth is that most
people will never see it through for a variety of reasons. But in
several cases just as in a daily drudgery of building a business, most
of course are unprepared.
One of the most amazing facts for me
on assumption of office as Vice President was the sheer number of
abandoned projects in every ministry and government agency; such a sheer
number of things that were started, but never completed and have
remained uncompleted.
Another amazing fact for me was just
the sheer number of excellent ideas that are available to you every
single day. As a matter of fact, l do not know and l had always assumed
and I suppose many of us assume, that there are not enough good ideas,
but there are just an incredible number of great ideas.
I attended a lecture just a couple
of months after l was sworn in and before l got back into the car from
the lecture, l had thirteen bound proposals from different people. They
were well bound, well prepared proposals and practically about any
subject that you could imagine. And l read these proposals every day.
There is absolutely no shortage of good ideas in Nigeria. As a matter of
fact, what l do is that any time l think about anything, when anything
occurs to me, l just call up the right ministries and always invariably
somebody will answer. Our problem really is never (that we are ) short
of great ideas, well thought ideas; the question is how to start and
ensure that you finish.
Sometimes, it's just being
unprepared and that has applied to individuals and to business, just
being unprepared. I remember a lady who worked with me while l was in
the Ministry of Justice in Lagos State. A woman of great faith, she had
been believing God for an opportunity to go abroad to study, to do a
Masters in Law, in a particular area of Law, and she believed that one
day this would happen.
Indeed, the day came, it was the
United States of America Embassy that eventually offered about three
different scholarships in three different disciplines and everyone was
so excited for her because she had practically told everybody that she
wanted this particular opportunity to go abroad.
This came on a platter of gold and
she didn’t have to pay as it was on scholarship, but the US embassy gave
us just two days to bring all the documents. So, l asked her for her
passport, but she didn’t have a passport and she had never bothered to
get a passport. To cut a long story short, we missed that particular
opportunity because we couldn’t get the passport and sort out every
thing within two days.
But what was amazing was that here
was someone whose life, as it were, was totally devoted to this
objective of going abroad to study and yet when the moment came she was
just unprepared because she just couldn’t get the passport. I suppose
it is a failing, that we have not just in an individual but also in
business; just quite not being ready to do what needs to be done.
How about integrity, that overused
and abused but that relevant concept whenever we're building a business
on ethical principles. Does integrity pay in a corrupt environment?
In my practice both as an Attorney
General and later as a litigator in corporate life, l found several
examples that clearly demonstrate that building a business on sound
ethical principles will look stupid in the short term, but eventually
does make sound business sense.
I am sure many of us who are here
who are active professionals in the past thirty years or so, are
familiar with the rise and fall of many banks in Nigeria. Many of those
banks were rated the largest in assets size and deposits for several
years and suddenly they failed….of course many were involved in several
sharp practices. Many relied on the network of bribery of public
officials to attract public sector deposits. Those who didn’t do those
deals looked foolish at the time. There was a particular popular
Nigerian bank whose name of course l will not mention, whose founder
decided from day one, that they would insist on high ethical standard
and they did it. Everyone probably know that bank in the banking
industry.
So when the CBN cracked down in
2009, most depositors, mostly corporate and individuals moved to that
bank in one of the most dramatic flights to safety that we have seen in
corporate life in Nigeria. Clearly, the reason why most people moved is
because they suddenly realized that well, this bank may not have looked
very good, but they realized that the safety of their resources was best
assured in that particular bank and of course the bank had continued to
grow from strength to strength.
So, there is a clear sense in which
trustworthiness is still the best currency in business and all over the
world entities that have been able to maintain trust, that have been
able to show themselves to be trustworthy, have proved that integrity is
still the best policy.
I spoken about two things, the
strength of character, the ability to start and finish as well as
integrity. But there is also this question of an enabling business
environment, creating a right business environment; that essentially is
the business of government. It is the business of government to create
the right environment for start- ups, the right environment for doing
business.
The problem in most cases and that
which we have experienced in Nigeria is that approval processes are
needlessly difficult. Bureaucrats generally get cuts in seeing the
process as an end in itself and not as a means to an end.
So generally speaking, a bureaucrat
sitting at his desk just sees the whole processes as his daily work that
he doesn't have to rush. He does not have to be necessarily accountable
for everything would take its time. lf you want an approval, it could
take you three days, three months depending on how he feels.
The bureaucrat does not believe that
it is his responsibility to facilitate the business and of course this
is compounded by the fact that very quickly, all of these processes
become toll gates for corruption in one way or the other.
So, the public official really does
not necessarily see himself as being involved in the business of growing
private enterprise or growing business or creating jobs. But there is
of course a direct link between his own job and successful businesses
because businesses pay taxes and taxes are where the bureaucrat is
usually paid from. But of course with oil money, tax is de-emphasized.
But the most important thing is that
government must and it is the business of government to find the
political will to ensure that it creates the right atmosphere and the
right environment for doing business.
One of the chief aims of the current
government is in creating an enabling environment for doing business
and some of us will be familiar with the fact that about a month ago,
President Muhammadu Buhari inaugurated the enabling business environment
committee which l chair. The mandate of that committee is the mandate
which was given to the Honorable Minister for Industry Trade and
Investment -that Nigeria must go up on the World Bank's ease of doing
business ranking. I think that the mandate is to go at least fifty
spaces before the end of 2017.
Now, how would that happen? How will it create that environment?
The first step that we have taken is
to directly involve the private sector. So, the private sector lead of
the project is a gentleman who is the head of KPMG Nigeria and who will
be working on this project practically on full time for the next couple
of weeks. The secretariat itself will be one that would be challenged
with finding out what needs to be done. It would be challenged with
questions like, what are those important processes that need to be
simplified or in some cases completely excluded so that business can go
on easily.
One of the critical issues
especially for foreign businesses is being able to get visa to come to
Nigeria. I remember speaking with the Ambassador of one these western
countries and I complained that it was getting too long for Nigerians to
get their visa to go abroad, business men or whoever it was. But the
gentleman politely reminded me that it takes possibly double the time to
get a Nigerian visa to come into Nigeria for any business man coming
from his own country.
The truth of the matter is that our
processes are far too difficult because it takes all manners of
bottlenecks and there is a need to free up those processes. Most
countries that have succeeded in attracting foreign investments perhaps
take a second look at their processes before inviting people into their
country. One of the important innovations that would be introduced is
that of getting visa on arrival.
Now, the visa on arrival process is
one that is already in the regulations, but usually involves people
applying ahead of time and then pick up the visa. But the actual
business on arrival process that would free up the process, is one that
once you arrive here, you are able to get your visa on arrival. You
apply on arrival and get it on arrival.
Business registration is also a
process we believe must be much faster. The President is generally
working on a set of regulations for ensuring that business registrations
and business approvals do not exceed a certain time frame that would be
prescribed by a presidential order.
Generally speaking, what tends to
happen in a lot of business approval processes is that a government
agency will ask you for a certificate or for some kinds of documents
that are to be found in another government department. One
of the ways we have tried to streamline the process is to ensure that a
government department does not ask you to get a certification or some
other certification from another government department. It is the
business of the relevant government departments to talk to each other
and facilitate the process for the investor.
Access to credit, land registration
and land reform are some of the other issues we are looking at and we
are talking to state governments, because ease of access to land is a
very important issue especially in the major commercial capitals of
Nigeria. In
those major commercial capitals, one of the major problems which are
being experienced is access to land and when they have access to land
then they can have easily have access to approvals and Certificate of
Occupancy and all of that.
And at the meetings we held with
some of the state governments, in fact at one of the retreats we have
held with the state governments, one of the critical issues which we
discussed is how to facilitate access to land and how to facilitate
government approvals. Certainly, there are measures to facilitate
business and to ensure there is ease of doing business. As l said,
Government is committed to ensure that it is easier for people to do
business and have access for all the different facilities that would
make it easy to do business in this country.
CONCLUSION
It is a special pleasure as I said
to be here to present the "The Interview" l want to say that what we
have seen of publications and what we have seen all over the world is
that they do have great difficulties in staying alive. l think what is
important here is that those who are behind this publication, have shown
consistently through their careers, especially their careers in the
print industry and communication in general, that they have what it
takes to stay the course. They have what it takes to ensure, to see this
through and they have all it takes to start and to finish. So, I am extremely pleased and honoured to unveil "The Interview”.
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