Thread by @OrjiUka

I am happy with the groundswell of opposition to the latest senseless policy by Nig Govt through its agency NIPOST. Apart from being antithetical to the Govt's ease of doing business grandstanding, the timing of the policy could only have emerged from someone who is tone deaf.

That said, without trying to play the "I told you so" card, to the discerning it was only a matter of time before we got here. For long we have been shouting that Govts have no business in business. And one Govt in particular that has historically proven that is the Nig Govt.

For decades Nigerian Govt agencies, who ought to restrict their remit to effective regulation, have viewed themselves as competitors of businesses and have never hesitated to use every opportunity to introduce policies designed to kill the competition [businesses].

The posterchild of this unconscionable conduct is the trailblazing MM2 Concession between Bi-Courtney Ltd and FAAN/FGN. All that I am going to say in subsequent tweets are public knowledge already and do not constitute a breach of my confidentiality duty to my erstwhile client.

Following the fire outbreak that razed the domestic wing of the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Bi-Courtney Ltd ultimately won the concession to build a new terminal. The company had the responsibility of raising all the funds for the project + they had to pay concession fees to Govt.

As a business entity, that the company entered into the venture to make money was a no brainer, or at least ought to be for the Govt. Accordingly, the terms of the agreement included the means through which the company was to recoup their colossal investment.

Not long after the project started, the same Govt devised all mechanisms to make the project impossible to fulfill. The biggest [and relevant challenge for today] was FAAN, the Govt agency and regulator breaching the agreement to constitute itself as a competitor to Bi-Courtney.

For example, FAAN built a separate terminal, took the then biggest domestic airline + some others, slashed the passenger charges to undercut its private sector competitor etc. They could do this because they didn't invest huge sums of money, and didn't borrow from banks.

Thus, the project succeeded, to the extent that it did, because of the resilience of the investors, and in spite of the efforts of the govt agency who ought to have provided an enabling environment for the private sector to thrive. Instead they saw themselves as competitors.

It is for this and sundry reasons that much needed FDI inflows to sub- Saharan Africa remain comparatively low & why Nigeria, despite its enormous potentials, consistently fails in its quest to attract FDI, in spite of the consensus that FDI is a major catalyst for economic dev.