Fatshimetrie Articles: Nigeria’s Economic Challenges
Nigeria’s volatile economic situation seems to have taken a toll on everyone, even the grandees of the former government and a select few who used to profit from the hard work of the struggling majority. Food prices are soaring while the cost of energy is increasingly out of reach. A 50kg bag of rice now sells for N90,000 while a kilogram of gas costs N1,500. A few days ago, former Minister of Aviation, Osita Chidoka, was visibly upset after spending N100,000 to fill his car’s tank.
In the same week that the often down-to-earth Chidoka spoke, Rotimi Amaechi, a former Minister of Transportation under Buhari’s administration, also complained about the state of the economy and the fact that young Nigerians whom his former boss, Muhammadu Buhari, described as lazy, had not taken to the streets to vent their anger at the government. One wonders why Amaechi is not leading the charge, if he feels so strongly about the state of an economy that has been brought to its knees by a government of which he was an integral part.
Before these two ministers, another beneficiary of oil pipeline protection contracts, Gani Adams, complained that he spent an average of about N200,000 to refuel his car when travelling to Ibadan. He said he needed at least N1 million to undertake such a journey, as he usually travels in a convoy of vehicles. The question to ask Mr. Adams is: why does he need a convoy of vehicles?
He is indeed the Aare Onakakanfo, but how does that give him the right to travel in a convoy of five or six vehicles? Is this not part of the wastefulness and ostentatious living that his ilk criticize in those currently in power who ask Nigerians to make sacrifices that they themselves are not prepared to make? Like so many others who complain and wonder why other Nigerians do not fight on their behalf, his case is a kind of self-inflicted pain of the great Nigerian man. Since he is determined to be a great man, he should bear the cost in silence.
Poor Nigerians who are unhappy with the high cost of petrol cannot even afford to go to work or travel by public transport. Those who have cars have either reduced their use or abandoned them altogether. This is how things have deteriorated for most Nigerians who have never been in government and are grateful if they can feed themselves even once a day. They do not have the luxury of putting several cars on the road at once or spending N100,000 to fill up, probably, a V-12 or V-24 engine vehicle at one time. These are people who feel the weight of the economy and who cannot be in the same situation as the overworked, overprotected men and women who spend a Friday in London and the next night in Dubai – people who, for political reasons, haphazardly throw hundreds of millions of Naira at desperate flood victims in displacement camps.
Yet, despite all that Nigerians have had to endure in the last 18 months of Bola Tinubu’s presidency, news from the International Monetary Fund indicates that the screws need to be tightened even more. The IMF’s Vice President and Chief Economist, Mr. Indermit Gill, is calling on Nigerians to cooperate with Abuja’s reform policies. He praises Yemi Cardoso, the Governor of the Central Bank, and asks Nigerians to be patient with President Bola Tinubu, probably two of the least admired people (to put it politely) in Nigeria today. For Nigeria to follow the example of Norway, Poland and Korea that have successfully taken this path, for the same reforms (elimination of oil subsidy, floating the currency that led to unification of the exchange rate), which have essentially impoverished Nigerians, to have any positive impact, we must be prepared to endure them for the next 15 years – 15 long years!
These are Mr. Gill’s words. To mitigate the harsh effects of the reform policies, the funds saved from the elimination of oil subsidy and the floating of the naira, he recommends, should be invested in productive sectors that can impact the most vulnerable. According to this IMF envoy, the Nigerian economy grew at its fastest pace during the reforms launched between 2003 and 2007, when Olusegun Obasanjo was president and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the WTO Director-General, was finance minister.
What this man says not only bears strong similarities but is actually the twin sister of what Okonjo-Iweala recommended in her keynote address at the last Nigerian Bar Conference. For those who are calling for Tinubu’s head while praising Okonjo-Iweala, as if she was preaching a new ideology at the time, I remind them that what they are celebrating in Okonjo-Iweala found expression in Tinubu’s economic reform. Hatred has blinded many to this fact and, more dangerously, to what we all need to get from the government before Nigerians are either wiped out or driven to desperate acts of civil disobedience if the promised benefits of reform are to be realized..
The fact is that neither Atiku Abubakar nor any other politician can provide a silver bullet solution to Nigeria’s current economic situation. It is only by working together, remaining open to the recommendations of experts and seeking long-term solutions that Nigeria can overcome these economic challenges and provide a more stable future for all its citizens.