I strongly believe that something is wrong with our interpretation of economic theories or better still our economic planners are perpetually lazy. Either way we are confirmed doomed for as long as the prevailing economic theorist subsist or for as long as the current economic players remain. Or how else can I understand the voluntary strangulating economic policies that we have decided to keep recycling? I still remember the highly respected Professor Sam Aluko, who spent the better part of his tenure as the economic adviser to late General Sani Abacha fighting purely imaginary inflation while the entire industrial estate in Kano and other parts of the north continue to close shops. I said north because that was where I was and where I was witnessing what was happening less I be accused of regional bias. I continue to wonder then as I still wonder now, how do you reconcile inflation in the midst of chronic and glaring poverty? How can you blame inflation when more than 70% of your human and material resources remain fallow? How can you take the glory for combating imaginary inflation when all you achieved was to throw many people into unemployment casket? It was absurd then albeit to me alone. Now there is so much cry that our earning for may fall to N590 Billion, I know this again is deliberate misinformation. First who calculated it? How was it calculated? In a country where the informal sector is bigger than the formal sector, who calculated the informal sector? I know nobody did. If anything was calculated it was our earning from oil export, which I understand was sold in Dollars, how then does that translate to N590 Billion? This is worrisome because the entire government spending for this month will now be tied to that earning. It is also worrisome to think that should the world decide to do without our oil tomorrow, would it means that we would not have money to spend? Would it translate to us not been able to maintain our road or pay our teachers? This is absurd. This practice must be abolished or discarded. We cannot and we need not tie our economic development to the vagaries of external market. That is exactly why the gold standard was discarded and replaced with fiat money. Foreign earnings should be relevance only to the extent of using it for external obligations and not for internal planning. The Nigeria economy as presently run is grossly underfunded. This aside from the overdependence on foreign goods is responsible for the high unemployment we are currently facing. The Nigeria economy need to be stimulated, the people need to be empowered for increase effective demand. We need very low interest rate. We need increase income to stimulate demand. We need to consume locally made goods.
Posted on: Thu, 05 Sep 2013 05:33:59 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015