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| President Muhammadu Buhari |
The central theme is the current economic situation which can be likened to a national epidemic – an epidemic caused by the profligacy of the leaders of the past regime and our collective guilt arising from our own complicity in their gruesome crime against the fatherland. We were complicit, to say the truth, willy-nilly, but it’s complicity that arose from fatalism, that sense of helplessness commonly shared by us, almost all of us. In fact, you can say this was the only thing we had in common in the face of the egregious cruelty of corrupt leadership.
Look back now. Can you figure out how the common man profited from the sharing of their loot? No. It was like the people who were elected to govern us and pilot the affairs of the country unanimously agreed to share our collective patrimony at our own expense, leaving our welfare to the dogs. We were told last year, one year after the debut of President Muhammadu Buhari administration, that the economic consequence of the activities of the aforementioned marauders, was the economic recession that was about to set in.
The bad news was broken by the two economic managers of the Buhari administration, those who were in the best position to know. After due diagnosis, they confirmed that the difficulties the nation was experiencing, evidenced by people buying essential goods for housekeep and using their children as collateral, was the onset of this terrible economic phenomenon called recession. Mrs Kemi Adeosun, minister of Finance, broke the depressing news to senators at one of their plenaries. Her stable mate, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, the nation’s budget minister, had earlier hinted at this disturbing calamity when he addressed the National Economic Council.
The good news, however, was that the two of them were optimistic that though what was facing the country was bad enough, but its prognosis did not suggest that it was life threatening. Meaning that, if well managed, these symptoms would wear off in a matter of months. Already there were some palliatives. The measures to stave off the impending calamity, they assured, were already yielding results. The non-oil sector of the economy, they said, had started to yield appreciative revenue. For a start, the Audu Ogbeh-led “green alternative” a drive to make agriculture replace oil as the major foreign exchange earner, had been launched. Minister of Works, Babatunde Fashola, had also mobilised contractors back onto the abandoned roads to resume repair work. That was going to put a lot of people back at work. As of July last year, other ministers were developing their road maps.
Unfortunately, these initial efforts proved to be nothing but a prophecy that failed. In July last year, it was not yet a full blown recession. There was a negative growth in the first quarter which Adeosun characterised as technical recession that could be contained. But if it got out of hand and the economy recorded another negative growth in the second quarter, then we’ve had it. It would have drifted into full blown recession.
And that is exactly what happened. And it happened in a manner of the prophecy foretold, a prophecy that came to pass with all its dire consequences. For the past one year we have had to live with the consequences of the profligacy of the past. The economy went into a tailspin with inflation at unprecedented high.
Prices of goods and services had spiralled through the roof. For majority of the people, living, since then, has become a life of breath taking anguish - a heart-breaking and gut-wrenching experience that has seen the untimely death of many fellow citizens. Daily, the newspapers are awash with the unbelievable stories of mothers selling off their children to keep the family alive. One such mother, having searched for money in vain, confessed that she sold her six year old daughter to raise money to bury her own mother while another one in another far-flung part of the country recently sold her baby to raise money to pay for a motor-cycle she would use to eke out a living.
Children of poor parents have been sent home from school because they can’t afford school fees while some workers – those lucky enough to retain their jobs - have not been paid salaries in the last one year. This situation has bred a new gang of criminals. Kidnapping and armed robberies have not reduced despite assurances by police and other security agencies. A new dimension has been introduced into the money chasing business – the 419 dimension to kidnapping. In the last one month not less than two or three incidents of fake kidnapping have been reported when so-called victims master-minded their own kidnap to extort money from relatives and other loved ones. A traditional ruler in Lagos has been suspended for faking his own kidnap. A woman kidnapped herself by going into hiding and got her accomplices to make contact with her relations and demand ransom. This melodramatic situation provokes laughter but it is not a laughing matter.
Today, Nigeria has reached the level of Ghana during the inglorious days of Ignatius Acheampong in the late 70s when the Ghanaian economy, buffeted and battered by the military men’s remorseless pursuit of raw power, became comatose sending its proud citizens out as refugees in other countries where they turned beggars and menial job seekers.
It took us a long time getting here. Though the signs were all over the place, we lacked the discipline and the political will to halt the march into doom. Now that we are already in the uncomfortable land of want and destitution, getting out of it no longer requires the usual blame game - no matter how politically attractive. There is nothing to gain from blaming the men of yesterday and their political and economic shenanigans, to say nothing of their well-oiled looting machine.
What is left to be done is to get them to embrace their comeuppance in the court of law with diligent and single-minded prosecution. And for the men of the moment to learn the correct lessons and avoid the pitfall of their predecessors. And, finally, for the economic team not to relax the measures that have proved efficacious so far. The CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, has given the assurance that the nation would be out of recession latest by the end of the year. It may not suddenly translate into food security and an end to scarcity and high prices, thanks to the persistent menace of Boko Haram and the perennial clash of the cattle herdsmen with farmers that have taken many of the farmers off their trade and their means of sustenance and livelihood.
With the Central Bank’s intervention in the exchange rate regime, the naira has improved dramatically against the dollar and prices have begun to come down in the market but not considerable enough to have a major impact on the people’s living conditions. CBN’s end of the year projection for the death of recession is a source of hope and good music to the ear. But it should not end as another hope betrayed or another prophecy that failed.
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