Economy, Quick Fix and Enduring Solutions

By

Les Leba

lesleba@gmail.com, lesleba@swiftng.com, www.geocities.com/lesleba

 

There appears to be a consensus across the political party divide that the current administration is still blindly groping for the appropriate tunnel that would eventually usher daylight into our economy. Some uncharitable critics of Mr. President have suggested the unflattering title of ‘Baba Go slow’ in recognition of this apparently snail pace managerial style!

 

However, die hard apologists and PDP spin doctors who are generally well insulated from the ravaging poverty in the land have exhorted the rest of us, whether as individuals or corporate patients in the sick wards of a comatose economy to dig deep into our arsenal for more patience until Yar’Adua’s exhaustive research provides an enduring solution for a reawakening of our industrial and commercial landscape and the realization of its potential collateral of increasing employment and increasing purchasing value, for the nominally paltry income currently paid as the reward for the services offered by the vast majority of our countrymen.

Apart from workers in the preferred sectors of Telecom, Oil and Banking, the remuneration package for the rest of us is generally inadequate to meet the basic necessities of food, shelter, education and healthcare for our families.

The decay in virtually all aspects of our social infrastructure and welfare have further compounded our collective pains and turned most of our citizens into a vast army of walking dead! Regrettably, the absence of comparative statistics makes it rather difficult to determine any underlying pattern or increase in recorded deaths among different segments of the population over time; nonetheless, we may safely conclude that increasing economic hardship may have fuelled the mortality rates amongst all age groups in this country.

 

There is yet no visible end in sight to this nightmare as Nigerians await Mr. President’s cry of “Eureka” for the cure of our economic malaise. Any hope that the drift will be, at least, halted before a gradual reversal to good health becomes possible, has lately been dashed by Yar’Adua’s speech on the occasion of our country’s 48th Independence anniversary.

 

Mr. President, thumbed his nose at the adoption of any quick fix solution to our economic and infrastructural problems. Obviously, the medical strategy of quickly arresting excessive bleeding of a comatose patient in a hospital Emergency Ward before settling down to administer appropriate therapy to aid recovery is not a route that this administration is willing to travel with regards to our economy.

 

Thus, the rising mortality rate induced by the severe economic constraints may prevail unabated until whenever Mr. President identifies the solution that will save the rest of us from early trips to the graveyard.

 

The current reality of dwindling crude oil demand and lower prices can only lead to lower revenue for the federation. The preceding boom years saw our revenue profile increasing over sixteenfold since 1996, yet paradoxically, the standard of living and the international poverty ratings of our people have plummeted like never before! The truth, of course, is that if we could not consolidate the right strategies for social welfare enhancement at a time of plenty, it would require a miracle to transform our lives for the better in a period of austerity! The prospect of success in such enterprise must therefore be very daunting when over 60 million Nigerians remain jobless and the majority of those with jobs go home every month with inadequate purchasing power to motivate them to give their best to this country.

 

The recent shake up of the federal cabinet which saw over 20 ministers losing their liberal access to the National cake have been described by optimists as a signal that the giant may have woken up at last and a prelude to a cabinet with men and women who can deliver Mr. President’s dream!

 

However, hard nosed critics are reluctant to commit to such expectation, they argue that a team is as good as the Head coach; in this regard, English Premiership buffs cite the current case of Tottenham Hotspurs who failed to win a single match for the first 2 months of this season, but quickly bounced back to winning ways with the same team within 24 hours of the appointment of a new coach!

 

These same critics obviously belong to the old school of thought who believe that a bad workman quarrels with his own tools! In any event, these critics argue that the absence of the key administrators of our monetary and economic policies in the sack list is an indication that Mr. Yar’Adua may not be aware that the proper management of our monetary and economic policies is paramount to the successful performance of all other ministries and MDAs. The efficient and effective management of money supply generally determines the success of any economy. Thus, the usual factors of mineral, agricultural and climate advantages may not guarantee that a country’s economy will do well; examples abound in Africa and elsewhere of countries with abundant natural resources, yet these nations remain poor because of inappropriate management of money supply! The current global financial crisis will lead to depressed economies inspite of the tremendous wealth of the United States and European Union countries. The mismanagement of the money supply has been rightly fingered for the current woes of these first world economies!

 

Coming nearer back home, our own economy has refused to grow and actually continues to contract because we have mismanaged money supply continuously for at least the past 2 decades. Our monetary and economic administrators have consciously and deliberately emasculated the value of our currency with the obtuse process of creating huge quantum of depreciating Naira whenever they substitute this cash deluge with our export dollar revenue before disbursement to the three tiers of government and other constitutional beneficiaries of the federal pool.

 

This process began in earnest as part of the IMF/World Bank induced Structural Adjustment Programme, which has religiously guided our descent into the pits of the world’s poorest nations even when our export revenue profile exploded!

 

Today, the chickens have come home to roost as the failure of the US and European economies expose the incompetence of these world class financial missionaries to redeem their own economies. In this event, the World Bank/IMF team and their indigenous surrogates who have become almost permanent residents in our Finance Ministry and Central Bank should now be shown the exit from these shores.

 

Mr. President has obviously been misadvised by those who denigrate the adoption of registered dollar certificates for the disbursement of dollar derived revenue in the Federation Account! Mr. President should express his liberty to simulate the effect of this rejected payment mode on the economy, he does not need to be stampeded by those with huge self interest in maintaining a payments status quo that has ensured deepening poverty with increasing wealth; even if Mr. President is not an economist, he will agree that something is fundamentally wrong with a system that throws up a Naira exchange rate of N80 = $1 with only 4 months demand cover of $4bn in 1996 while a 30 months demand cover of $63bn results in an exchange rate of N120 = $1.

 

Indeed, as a scientist, Yar’Adua has a duty to simulate these alternative payments options and choose which is more beneficent to the economy whether as quick fix or long term solution!

 

SAVE THE NAIRA, SAVE NIGERIANS