By Cecilia Edicha
Tuesday, August 30, 2005

According to him the country needs about 25 billion dollars to enhance education and about 50 billion dollars to bring it to internet level.

In addition to education, he said, the government should lower taxes to bring Nigeria to the threshold of a nation that will attract foreign investors. He said Ireland's case was worse than Nigeria sometime ago but they rose from "the sick man of Europe to become the rich man in less than a generation" because their government made secondary and university education free. The government in conjunction with the industrialists, main trade unions and farmers were united on a programmed fiscal austerity to cut down corporate taxes as low as 12.5 percent and that was far below what the rest of Europe offered. They moderated prices and wages, and wooed foreign investors which led to a leap in their growth such that Ireland is currently leading the world in pharmaceutical and medical devise companies and also software designing.

Randle spoke at a lecture delivered on August 16 to mark the 40th anniversary of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, ICAN, Ikeja district society and to honour Ololade Fadeyibi, its late past chairman who died about three years ago. He said President Olusegun Obasanjo should consider the importance of having young chartered accountants with vision for the country with him as members of his cabinet on debt issues. According to him opinions of accountants were treated with scorn in the past and recalled how opinions of young charted accountants disregarded some 20 years ago has thrown the country in great debt, stressing that history was on the side of the accountants because the government was reverting to some of the issues it ignored twenty years ago. One of such golden advices was one he suggested in his book titled God Does Not Live in Los Angeles Anymore... where he predicted that by 1994 a large number of third world countries would default on their debt service to the developed world.

Randle pointed out opinions of several analysts which suggest that the debt relief granted Nigeria may have actually been a trap because of some of the underlying conditions which have some hidden clauses. One of such opinions leaked from a document in which an activist group exposed Willy Kierkens, Belgian IMF representative who said "rather than giving full, irrevocable and unconditional debt relief...countries would receive grants," and IMF would be able to withdraw such grants if such countries failed to meet their conditions of implementing poverty reduction. This, he said, was contrary to what campaigners and G8 countries were told.

He said Mansur Muktar the director-general of the Debt Management Office, DMO, in the presidency warned Nigerians to prepare for hard times because from past experience the nation's debt appreciates as payments were made. For instance after some payments were made in 2002 the debt stock rose from 28.7 billion dollars to 30 billion and went further to 31.9 billion, then to 36 billion dollars in 2004. In view of the current questionable debt relief granted the nation, Nigeria is expected to pay six billion dollars arrears in September on outstanding debt balance, 8 billion will come under debt- buy-back after six months at a discount of 25 percent.

Randle extolled the late Fadeyibi and praised his widow and children who were present at the lecture for holding forth to the legacies of the deceased. Babayemi Osho, chairman of the Ikeja district of ICAN said the district adjudged as the best in the country was celebrating the institute at 40 and at the same time "the life and times of a general within the army of professional accountants, a leader in the comity of administrators." Jaiye Oyedotun, managing director of Marina Bank referred to the late Fadeyibi as a professional colleague while Ade Ashaye Babington, deputy vice-president of ICAN described him as a gentleman.

ICAN also used the occasion to iron out its differences with the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria, CITN. Ade Babignton Ashaye, ICAN's deputy vice-president said CITN was the brainchild of ICAN to protect the nation from any porous western laws and wonders why the CITN wants to kill ICAN. He advised CITN that it should not "kill the goose that lays the golden eggs."