Casino Club in a Declining Economy
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Nigeria @ 62… Nigeria @ 62… Nigeria @ 62…
Nduka Nwosu argues that the real owners of the Nigerian polity are the people at the helm of affairs with their cronies who, no matter how bad the weather is, will lose nothing. For them there is no declining economy; they are the casino owners of the casino club called Nigeria; head or tail they will always win in this game, this experiment that is 62 years running
In the late 1980s, the London based The Economist magazine sang a dirge for the Nigerian economy. In one of its major headlines: “The Party is Over,” it described how Nigeria celebrated its oil wind fall with a huge party, leaving behind a debt overhang with the global policeman the IMF asking the country to restructure itself, part of which was the naira devaluation, the naira that was once stronger than the dollar!
In one of its interesting headlines in the month of May last year: “Nigeria’s Economy is Stuck in a Rut,” the same Economist reminded us that Nigeria’s economic woes also help to explain a vertiginous rise in crime, mass poverty, illiteracy, and disease.
According to Jose Luengo Cabrera of the World Bank, more people were kidnapped in the first four months of 2021 than the whole of 2020. The spate of kidnapping has not abated in 2022 the 62nd birthday of the nation state. Prices of farm gate products coming to the markets have skyrocketed, no thanks to uncontrollable insecurity and terrorist and herdsmen attack on farmers and their harvests.
After promising and denying he would make one naira equal to one dollar as it was in the early 1980s, Buhari anchored his blueprint of projected achievements while in office on a strong economy, eliminating insecurity in place of a secure business friendly environment that would swing the economy on a positive trend; and the big one, the flawless, corruption free President will wipe away with his big cane, corruption in the system.
It is left for the discerning reader to assess the Buhari Administration and rank its performance on these planks overall. His aides insist Buhari’s performance these past seven years plus is a success story.
Former Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Emir of Kano Sanusi Lamido Sanusi alerted Nigerians early in the day on what was going on, warning the President that two exchange rate regimes with very wide differentials would be an easy route to round tripping. two parallel markets not backed by a buoyant foreign reserve, Sanusi warned, would plunge the nation into trouble. The former Emir of Kano advised for a realistic and balanced monetary and fiscal policy.
In a write up for the Financial Times and at other fora, Sanusi repeated the same narrative advising and warning President Muhammadu Buhari on the danger of running a parallel exchange rate regime against a backdrop of declining oil prices, a low foreign exchange reserve and corruption in terms of round tripping. Sanusi warned that those who had made billions through round tripping, and cronyism, were the real problems in a wobbly economy.
Oil theft, a fake allocation known as subsidy through which many have enriched themselves, big government with big spending, over invoicing of contract papers, huge security votes and squandermania of contract and budgetary allocations, are part of our lifestyle as a people.
The President under his watch has seen the naira exchange for the dollar at a rate of N204 in 2015 to N702 in 2022. Under Buhari cronyism and prebendalism have become the norm, an exception to the rule. An Accountant General who cashed out over a N100 billion will soon be another hero in the Island of Robin Hood if his plea bargain sails through.
Since no economy prospers in an insecure environment, is it any wonder oil, our goose that lays the golden eggs, has become an endangered species, looted by ‘Unknown Gunmen’ conspiring with unknown government officials and their foreign mercenaries, these selfsame officials who would hold a press conference and scream “thief, thief,” after each successful mission at sea with their pirates?
Which economy ever succeeds after being bled, the way the Nigerian economy has witnessed since the end of the Civil War? Former Military President Ibrahim Babangida expressed audacious surprise when he said he was wondering why the Nigerian economy had not collapsed despite the buffeting it had experienced while he was in government.
That partly explains why the average person who finds himself in a position of power is advised by his kinsmen to go with a bag, pluck enough fruits when you climb the palm tree for the rainy day because, according to the squirrel, advising her children, when the owner of the palm fruit arrives, you would not have the opportunity to steal what does not belong to you again. Unlike the squirrel and her seemingly wise counsel, Nigeria is a captive state belonging to a certain breed of human beings-the politicians who migrate from one party to the other ad infinitum, just to sustain their lifestyles.
Nigeria does not belong to anyone except for those in charge at any given point in time. And the advice: make hay while the sun shines, a declining economy or not, is succinct.
Again, is it any wonder why our President is so much deeply enamoured to Niger Republic, his country of second choice, than Katsina State and the polity as a whole? When priorities such as a road, pipeline and rail networks go to develop a neighbouring country while the dilapidated road networks in the country are daily spilling blood, the consequence would surely be partly found in an economic decline.
Two Nigerian governors taking this matter of misplaced priority in the art of governance made a comparative analysis on how corruption has been a major reason for the declivity of the Nigerian economy. The first attributed his apparent success in government to a moral responsibility. With his pen, he could have ripped off the state using his security vote as excuse because, there is no limit to what constitutes a security vote.
A Governor with the disposition of an armed robber can at the mention of Jack Robinson, loot the treasure with his gun-his biro, regardless of what public opinion feels and the consequence on the general wellbeing of the people.
The other conjecture are two Governors who receive 10 units each to run their respective state governments but chose to pocket part of the allocation. Governor A pockets two and works with eight whereas Governor B pockets eight and works with two. Either way one has a human face and the other loots without looking back. At the end of the day, both are thieves.
This is the background to a declining economy run by people, who met a system that encourages the looting of our common patrimony.
It is intellectually sound for the CBN to operate the economy with the government on a balance of scale between monetary and fiscal policies. There is always need, to apply threshold equation leading to a single digit inflationary trend that will drive growth. A pent-up demand, we are told, leads to a demand-pull inflation. With headline inflation recorded at 20.5 percent and an interest rate or marginal monetary rate of 15.5 percent, the CBN economists are asking for a tradeoff using monetary and policy tools to produce an efficient benefit to the economy. Economic language on parade in a corrupt country where the known policy tools dance the lady dance! This is good projection in an environment where transparency drives the system. The private sector will suffer somersaults in a government whose policies are fake, are anchored on the principle of the more you look, the less you see. All the factors that lead to a productive export economy are comatose and we import to sustain a foreign lifestyle in declivity.
With a projected four trillion-naira expenditure on oil subsidy, a borrowing binge that currently stands at N42. 84tn ($103.31bn) as of June 30, 2022, robbing Peter to pay Paul, borrowing to settle our debt and pay for non-productive ventures such as salaries and maintenance of dead refineries, where lies growth that drives the economy?
On discourse is an economy which under Olusegun Obasanjo and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala commanded the respect of the Bretton Woods and Paris clubs that wrote off a substantial portion of our debts, leaving us to settle the rest, a duo that grew our foreign exchange reserves to a substantial level; an economy that was adjudged healthy and leader in Africa under Goodluck Jonathan
With a global economic decline that is bound to affect us, Nigeria has never had it so bad. But who is bearing the brunt? Definitely not those who govern us, who have brought this calamity on us.
One had often argued that the average Nigerian psyche is mired in the art of shortchanging each other, in being fast to turnaround one’s destiny. Except for the mugus or the mumus if you are not fast to shortchange the system, too bad.
An intellectual treatise on how to revamp Nigeria’s declining economy is the constant hypocrisy of the drivers of our economy. They are the rats that blow air into your flesh when they take a bite.
Many poured adulations on President Buhari as the champion of due process and transparency. Is APC still mouthing its anti-corruption mantra under a Buhari who then was said to hate the good things of life with a barren, zero account, a Buhari who owns nothing and desires nothing? We have seen enough to know that this jolly ride has been an APC Babylon train, a One Chance bus. Despite being mumu-ed by the cheer leaders of this government, at least it is clear to us that this economy is a casino club where though we keep losing our baits with a powdered smile on our faces, the real winners are the owners of the club and their cronies who make a living by gaming others.
Whether the economy is declining or not, they stand to lose nothing.
