ON THE NIGERIA ECONOMY Nigeria economy is one, which has continuously been on the slide, since 1966, following the first military incursion to politics. And worsen by the oil boom of 70s and the Udoji cash payout, owing to inept, incompetent, ill prepared, inexperienced and visionless managers of the Nigeria state who then said “money was not Nigeria’s problem, but how to spend it”. Before then, precisely at independence in 1960, agriculture was the mainstay of the country’s economy, we have all heard of how cocoa was used to build the first broadcasting station known as the Western Broadcasting Corporation, the University of Ife, now known as Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-ife, and the cocoa house in Ibadan, then the tallest building in Nigeria. We have also heard of the groundnut pyramids in Kano, which was used to build the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. And the palm oil which was used to build the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Agriculture was also the major source of employment generation at that time and main source of taxation to the regional governments that made up the federating units. But today, despite the huge potential of agriculture and other solid minerals to national development, they are most neglected in the country in favor of oil. Following the Nigerian industrialization drive in the 70s, which got to its peak with the nationalization policy of the Obasanjo regime in 1976, when several companies were forced to nationalized e.g BP, UAC, Leventis, John Holt, Guieness, Unilever e.tc. Several industrial estates sprung up in Agbara, Ilupeju, Ogba etc in Lagos, there were also industrial estates in Bompai, sharawa and Sharada in Kano, Trans Amadi in Port Harcourt and Kankuri in Kaduna, just to mention a few. But today this industrial estates that were once the beehive of the real sector activities, have long be sold and premises converted to warehouses, place of worships and residential areas and the plants and machineries sold as scraps, no thanks to the high interest rates, lack of electricity, non-competitiveness of local goods, government policies somersault and high cost of doing business in Nigeria. This situation was made worse with the oil boom in the 70s during Yakubu Gowon’s regime as a result of the Israeli-Arab war which led to an oil embargo on the United States in 1973 by Arab members of OPEC, made oil prices to skyrocketed. With the enormous income stream from oil our leaders and managers of the Nigeria nation were easily blinded and the resultant effect was a sudden shift in emphasis from agricultural exports to oil exports with its attendant petro-dollars. This is also the beginning of severe corruption, politics of oil, injustice and neglect, nepotism, systematic imbalance and creation of jobs for the boys. This was elevated during the regime of Gen. Olusegun Obansanjo who left an emptied treasury for the government of Alhaji Shehu Shagari in 1979, his Operation Feed the Nation never fed anyone except him and his colleagues. Shagari and his team were so incompetent, visionless, ill-prepared and naive, with total lack of public entrepreneurial skills, completely mismanaged the Nigeria economy, the hangover still been felt to date, Shagari’s regime was free for all looters as the government was busy importing food, awarding licenses to briefcase businessmen loitering at the nations port in Lagos, thus had a grotesque program called Green Revolution, yet completely neglected agriculture and the economy. Gen. Mohammadu Buhari and his Deputy Gen. Tunde Idiagbon in 1984, during their short stint in power, introduced the economic self-reliance program in their effort to navigate the economy out of the brink and put it in good stead. But the regime was short lived as they were booted out by Gen Ibrahim Banbagida and his co-travellers. When Banbagida came to power in 1985, he had a golden opportunity to turn the tide of the economy of the country, Nigeria earned a windfall of over $12billion from oil as a result of the Gulf war in 1990/91, however, the monies were stolen and stash away in foreign banks. The Pius Okigbo report on this monumental national tragedy is yet to see the light of the day! Settlement and chop and chop became the order of the day, with corruption institutionalized, alongside a wasteful and endless transition program full of experimentations that cost the nation enormous resource that could have been used to rejuvenate the economy. His Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) destroyed the economy and brought untold hardship on Nigerians, the naira was devalued resulting to inflation, monetary and fiscal instability in the economy, the effect we still feel today. The late Gen. Sani Abacha reign can simply, best be described as years of the locust! So I won’t bother myself to dwell on that regime, as it was a ruthless regime full of fatalities. Now back to the subject matter, from 1999 to date the various elected government has kept on with all forms of deceptions regarding the state of health of the Nigeria economy, while conscientiously hatching the policies and programs of multi-lateral organizations like IMF, World Bank and world powers all in the name of economic reforms, which have never yielded any positive results, rather, the various reforms only succeeded in stifling the economy and the masses, while breeding super billionaires with rabid taste for private jets, thereby creating an unjust society and same time singing slogans; Vision 20:2020, Seven Point Agenda, Transformation Agenda. The different governments, since the advent of democracy in 1999, have been churning out economic statistics and indices that does not in any way represent the realities on ground, Nigeria is the only country we are told that the economy is growing at an average of 7% GDP and yet with an inverse employment growth, low life expectancy, high child maternal mortality rate, a shrinking real sector, high interest rate, unstable currency, declining capacity utilization of industries and a huge deficit in infrastructures needed to support development. The poor man in the cities and the ones in my village are tired of window dressing. What they want to see is an egalitarian society, diversification of the economy, rule of law, jobs creation, housing, good and affordable schools for their children, vibrant economy for their businesses, food on the table for their families, affordable healthcare, portable drinking water, roads; and not this current ‘Asonto’ dance by clueless politicians and their cohorts. The prosperity of an individual is tied to that of a state, hence, the reason why citizens of countries submits their sovereign to states to act on their behalves, believing that the state would always act in their best interest, but what we have seen in the Nigeria state and its managers are bunch of people at the helm of affairs that hardly believe in this philosophy rather in the philosophy of their personal enrichment and that of their neo-colonialist collaborators. Today, Nigeria is a pure import oriented country with a very unfavorable balance of trade. Virtually everything is imported from abroad, even goods like tooth picks, tooth brush, matches, toys, fairly used cloths, foot wears, electronic gadgets, fairly used automobile, processed foods, agricultural produce, other household goods, building materials and even refined petroleum products, name it. The only thing that is not yet, been imported into this country presently is sand!
Posted on: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 11:24:25 +0000