Pat Utomi: Time to Fade into the Background, by Temitope Ajayi

Since entering the national consciousness, Professor Patrick Utomi has convinced himself that he is the Nigerian equivalent of Albert Einstein, Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes rolled into one.

For decades, as a public intellectual/commentator on national affairs and economic issues, Utomi has consistently shared his views on the world and how Nigeria’s political economy should be built. Like Peter Obi, his new comrade in arms, Utomi copiously cites examples from South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Chile, among others. While there is no doubt about the amount of economic theories Utomi has memorized, there is always a limit to book knowledge when real-world realities manifest.

In the furnace of the real world, Utomi has been tried, tested, and allowed to demonstrate the applicability and practicality of his ideas. While he has had the opportunity in many forums to defend his record, the verdict remains that he did not cover himself in glory as the Managing Director/CEO of the defunct Volkswagen of Nigeria and as the Vice President of BankPHB of equally blessed memory.

From the sordid details revealed in court after the forensic investigators’ visit, Utomi essentially presided over a bank where depositors’ funds were converted into private pockets in the most primitive manner. Unfortunately, ventures that would have been a feather in the cap or a glimpse of what Utomi is capable of doing at a higher level of public leadership have failed under his “brilliant” watch.

There has also been massive erosion of shareholder value and internal abuse at BankPHB. Francis Atuche, the bank’s chief executive, is serving a prison sentence for mismanagement of a bank where Utomi was on the board of directors. If Utomi were truly capable of a sense of fairness, he should insulate himself in the face of BankPHB’s demise and not continue his often troublesome career of sophistry and peddling untested economic doctrines.

The other side of Utomi was also exposed when Senator Ibikunle Amosun alleged that an NGO controlled by the self-styled political economist had offered him an unsolicited reward, apparently to influence him to approve an unfair consideration in a disputed property case before him while he was governor of Ogun State. So much for a moral crusader!

Overall, there is a pattern to Utomi’s intellectual arrogance. Every four years, he comes out to whip up a moral argument about who should lead Nigeria. He presents himself as a political strategist with an uncanny ability to achieve victory at the polls for whoever he supports. Yet, time and time again, he failed. But rather than accept the loss with humility and introspection as an intellectual should, he will unleash a storm. This is what he did in 2023, using his social media platform to deceive the naive at a critical moment, proclaiming his candidate’s victory before the election results were announced.

As another election season looms, Utomi has taken to firing shots again, even when facts and logic are not on his side, attempting to discredit President Bola Tinubu’s leadership in Nigeria and describe his reform agenda in unflattering terms.

Feeling on cloud nine soon after the convention of his own faction of the ADC in Abuja, Utomi was on television, hurling invectives at President Tinubu and the ruling APC. He also took out the back page of ThisDay newspaper in which he labeled the ongoing economic reform program “ridiculous”, dismissing it as a “Ponzi scheme”. Here is a man who, for political expediency, is attacking the very free-market economic offerings and prescriptions on which he has built his public consensus.

For too long, Utomi and those of his ilk have considered themselves the moral arch of society and their economic prescriptions as canon.

Once an administration refuses to lean on them and their personal economic and political interests do not find an immediate solution, personal frustration is packaged and presented as national outrage. Yet when she found favor in the eyes of Asiwaju, Utomi frequented his home in Bourdillon, extolling her generous host to the heavens as a “visionary.”
In fact, a viral video shows Utomi dancing ecstatically to “Sakara” music in a casual shirt and trousers behind Asiwaju Tinubu at his Bourdillon residence, moments after the APC was declared the winner of the 2015 polls.

He was among those who courted Tinubu to further their political rise. Had Tinubu supported and funded his ambition to become governor of Delta State in 2019, as he wanted, Utomi would be dancing to a different tune today. While for decades Utomi has told us many things are wrong with Nigeria, even as he has failed at the micro level to demonstrate how to make things right, now it is time for him to take a backseat to his selective indignation.

*Ajayi is Senior Special Assistant to President Tinubu on Media and Publicity.