TINUMBU-LET NIGERIANS BREATHE. -Kilanko
#Iroyinominira
In lieu of the present economic situation in the country, it is imperative to call on PBAT to free Nigerians from this economic bondage. The survival of over 200 million Nigerians rest on his palm.
His economic policies are just glaringly and obviously not working.It is there for everyone to see, no spinning around the issue, this position is arrived at with zero politics at play.
The pill prescribed for Nigeria for its ailments comes with the instruction-one tablet in the morning and one in the afternoon for three days.
President Tinubu administered the medication on Nigeria, 6 pills all at once . Nigeria is currently dazed, depressed with confusion everywhere in the country.
The subsidy removal and Naira convergence along with other measures are the overdose with which the government drugged Nigeria and by extension the people of this country.
These are policies if at all there is a need to implement them should have been in phases and never executed simultaneously.
To this end we have been agitating, screaming at the peak of our voices to the point of shouting our voice to hoarse that “TINUBU SHOULD LIVE AND LET NIGERIANS LIVE “.
For now, there’s still a chance for survival as we can inject the body with enough fluids to reduce the concentration of the overdosed drug in our system and flush the toxins out of the body.
One wonders if this administration is working with data at all. The local economy is in a state of turmoil. The linked chains of economic activity at the informal level has been broken ever since, same with that of the formal sector.
Is it not when both commercial and private vehicles are constantly on the road that a vulcanizer would have a chance of fixing tires for customers, mechanic fixing clutch, breaks and the rest?
The same goes for the electricians to panel beaters and painters and a host of other artisan connected or unconnected to this group, every business is in plain language struggling.
The importers are not encouraged to bring in vehicles at this time.In a nutshell, this #617 per liter has frozen the economy at the local or informal level where it feeds into formal and vice versa thereby the main link to the formal level where GDP records has its root and are taken, is missing.The GDP figures for this quarter is bound to be hmmmmm!
The 3 billion dollar loan secured by the NNPCL would only address some problems on the supply side on a temporary basis while the local economy remains in lockdown.
It is pertinent to ask what is the difference between $3 billion for future crude just secured and the Oil Swap- DSDP deal that was abandoned.
As alluded to above, the $3 billion is to puff up the reserve temporarily as the funds are depleted as needed over time for importation of the same product, fuel-PMS from crude that we export.
The microeconomic level is where you have the participation of over 200 million Nigerians which you cannot ignore and surprisingly this is a reality this administration is yet to grapple with.
Farms, businesses are scaling back while some are closing down before our eyes and this government is acting like all is well with its no going back slogan on the subsidy scheme.
For the country to move forward economically, there has to be a recalibration of government’s policies around subsidy and foreign exchange.
The home truth is that Mr President would have to act fast and stop moving around in circles bounded by obstinacy on one side and grandstanding on the other.He needs to swallow his pride and stop punishing the people of this country by doing the needful.
The pump price per liter of PMS has to be scaled back to around #350 by any means necessary for the local economy to be unlocked .
If Mr President has an inkling of an idea of the damage he has done and still doing to the economy may be he would have acted faster than he is currently doing.
The time to act is now before it comes to the exhaustion of the patience of Nigerians thereby sending people to the streets .
The time to act is now before the nation is plunged into recession where negative GDP numbers would keep rearing its ugly appearances quarter by quarter, back to back with attendant gruesome pain on top of the present hardship.
The usual flow of event and mantra would be an attempt to spend ourselves out of recession.
That translates into the nation going aborrowing again.
PMB didn’t start the economy on a good note more or less the same way President Tinubu started.
Bad decisions and policies or lack of it pervaded the economic space of Buhari’s government.
As our misgivings about the trajectory of Buhari’s policies were being pointed out, Buharist were busy calling us names, wailers, losers and so on.
Then came recession with its anguish, stagflation: recession plus runaway inflation .There comes the reaction and desire for the suffering to come to an end.
Unfortunately the antidote to recession is to spend your way out of it and this connotes borrowing, a heavy and desperate borrowing at that in 2016/2017.
Projects embarked on before recession engulfed our economic landscape and the ones engaged in during recession became an albatross on the neck of Buhari government.
An instance is the Lagos-Ibadan expressway by ex minister Fashola financed by loans here and there.The funds were just sinking including Sukuk loans but the project was unfortunately not just rising.
It led to the seeking of bad loans for it and many other infrastructural projects because of our bad credit in order to compete the job and it is an open secret that the project is yet to be completed as at this moment.
The cumulative cost in terms of debt is the present reality regarding our foreign reserves.
We were being told all the while that it was $34 billion only to be taught a lesson later that it was actually $17 billion considering some debt obligations here and there.
As we are grudgingly trying to assimilate the above information, we got the all important message that we should hold our breath before receiving the main details :the JP Morgan Chase data that puts the value at $3.3 billion. This is where the 2016/17 , 2021/22 recession and liabilities has brought us.
With this much mess on the ground ,President Tinubu came in acting as if he has secured the best of AI’s in AI CHAT GPT assuredly suited to solve Nigeria’s economic challenges by declaring arrogantly “Fuel Subsidy is Gone” the very moment he came to power.
Imagine the country being plunged into recession again with President Tinubu’s economic agenda, we would have to dig our way out of recession again by borrowing on top of our present indebtedness.
Is that not an imagination too scary to entertain?
The solution to the problem at hand is a leadership with brute determination that is raw in all its natural essences.
Agriculture has been contributing immensely to our economy as evidenced by Cocoa House built from cocoa proceeds.A huge percentage of our GDP comes from Agriculture.
All our leaders, our Presidents have jostled for in this political dispensation, is the petroleum portfolio alongside the C in C position.
None has ever murmured a single word about retaining the Agriculture Ministry for himself, it has always been regrettably an obsession and fixation on crude oil .
The panacea to the problems and issues around our economy is that we need a leadership that would go raw in terms of agricultural pursuits, in way that it has never been followed in the history of the country.
There is no sin in using funds through ways and means to provide adequate financial support to secure our agricultural zones with the ultimate goal of facilitating and enhancing best agricultural practices in the regions.
Not until we have a leader who is ready to choose Agriculture portfolios over that of Petroleum, the signals that we are ready for the way forward will continue to elude us.
Mr President should stop criminalizing SUBSIDY, he should come clean, because as it is, not allowing price of PMS to go up as announced by the government’s spokesperson in this deregulation era with Naira in forex market sinking points to the fact that there is an indirect SUBSIDY the administration is not ready to admit BUT the message here is more SUBSIDIES is needed to the tune of about 350 Naira per liter of PMS to unfreeze the economy once and for all.
If MANAGED float is the formula at the forex end, there is nothing wrong with the same rule, MANAGED subsidy on crude-fuel exchange end.
If this done and the economy responds positively to the low PMS price of say #350 and some other economic activities (Wage increase) that ensures automatic injection of life into the economy,subsequently the government can begin considering
raising the PMS in a phased, gradual manner until the desired zero subsidy PMS price is reached.
This is supposed to be the reasonable approach instead of the implementation of a bunkum theoretical classical economics of the IMF and the WB because as it is, it is believed and so evident that it is only with the tweaking of the policy that NIGERIANS WOULD BE ALLOWED TO BREATHE.
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- 29 Aug, 2023
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