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