Pat Utomi: An economic buccaneer flirting with intellectualism

By Sunday Dare

Professor Pat Utomi has once again chosen to dance naked in the public square, playing to the gallery with a familiar cocktail of grandstanding and gloom. This time, he has come to dismiss the reform programme of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as “ridiculous,” “poorly structured,” and, in a flourish of intellectual overreach, a “Ponzi scheme.”

At this point, the issue is no longer what Utomi is saying. The issue is why his interventions consistently collapse under the weight of their own exaggeration, under the slightest scrutiny or interrogation.

Any reflective — indeed, discerning — mind would note that, after all these long years of sophistry and vacuous pontifications, all Utomi can possibly point to as his bonafides or bragging rights in the civic space today are the ruins of Volkswagen Automobile Ltd and BankPHB where his much touted “academic wizardry” was exposed as “Ponzi scheme”.

An Economy of Words, Not Results

Utomi’s public persona has long rested on the alarmist aura of a “political economist.” But strip away the titles, the panels, and the endless commentary, and a more uncomfortable question emerges: where is the evidence of all his posturings in the public space?

Nigeria’s economic distortions did not emerge in a vacuum. They were sustained over decades by a rotating class of commentators and advisers who:

* theorized dysfunction instead of dismantling it

* intellectualized failure instead of correcting it

and, crucially, found relevance within a broken system.

Utomi was not outside that ecosystem. He was part of it. Contrast this with measurable shifts under the current reform cycle:

* Fuel subsidy removal (May 2023): eliminated a multi-trillion-naira fiscal drain, freeing up revenues for subnational allocations and deficit reduction.