Femi Orebe
Crisis times require bold reforms and you must now be seen to take up the challenge of saving Nigeria.
ON December 31, 2019, Chinese authorities informed the World Health Organization of an outbreak of unknown pneumonia in Wuhan, in the Hubei Province. Experts have identified the causative agent of the disease as a new type of coronavirus. The World Health Organisation recognised the outbreak as an emergency of international importance and gave the disease the official name COVID-2019. The number of infected in China has already exceeded 70 thousand people and so far has killed over 1,800 people. After China, Thailand, the United States, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, France, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Nepal, and Canada, have recorded the virus, while Egypt becomes the first African country to confirm the coronavirus case. (Nigeria already has two, the index being an Italian consultant to a Nigerian company who did not manifest the symptoms on arrival -my addition). When an epidemic breaks, there are always consequences, thus; the coronavirus epidemic has a significant impact on the economies of China and the world. The epidemic hasn’t only affected the economy of China but also affected Chinese trade and cooperation with other countries. Temporary shutdown of air transportation, businesses, delivery of goods and the termination of activities of a number of world companies are detrimental to states, from Southeast Asia to South America and the fall in the number of Chinese tourists is starting to penalize trade. Nearly a month after the first cases of the coronavirus emerged, more than twenty countries have been affected by the epidemic and so far, China has recorded 1,800 dead, while taking quarantine and containment measures.
The epidemic has forced shopping centres and shops to remain closed, including the ‘Apple Factory,’ the producers of the iPhone. According to rough estimates, in the short term, the first wave of the epidemic had a direct impact on the Chinese economy in the first quarter of 2020, resulting in losses of almost one trillion yuan -$ 143.1 billion, the source said. Throughout Europe, Chinese shops and restaurants continue to record low sales since the outbreak of the epidemic. However, it is certainly too early to take stock of the damage of coronavirus to the European and the global economy, according to experts”. – Joel Savage in Modern Ghana.
Collins Nweze of this newspaper recently wrote as follows:”Nigeria’s economy is facing turbulent times over the drop in crude oil prices to $35 per barrel on Monday. The impact on foreign reserves, exchange rate stability and equities market will be devastating to the economy. These scenarios could lead multilateral institutions to revise downwards their 2020 projections on Nigeria’s growth. Analysts insist that with growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) still fragile, and foreign portfolio investment inflows low, Nigeria needs more than sound economic policies to pull out of the rubble”.
The die is cast, and for me, the rate of growth could very soon be the least of Nigeria’s problems if President Buhari would not immediately take the bull by the horns and jolt us all out of our years of obscene revelry and the unaccountable lifestyle of the politicians, especially our federal legislators who, as if Nigeria hasn’t a worry in the world, continue to live in obscene opulence.
For far too long, their stock in trade, whilst attired in flowing babarigas, Saville row suits, with some in native beads, looking more like masquerades, has been to satiate their enormous greed. Their latest fad is to buy limos costing $35,000 each, totalling over a trillion naira in which they will cruise, without a care in the world, on the wretched roads that predominate the country. Nigerians sincerely hope that President Buhari will immediately halt that nonsense.
We are talking here of a people who earn more salaries and allowances than either the U S President or the British Prime minister, whilst Nigeria continues on a borrowing binge, with the now beleaguered China as its greatest saviour.
It is time we critically examine the reasonableness, or no, of having a senate in place because necessity is the mother of invention and we are now at that historical juncture when we can no longer afford to deceive ourselves. We must ask the question as to what Nigeria will lose if the senate is scrapped, which for me, is nothing. Should Nigerians decide that both chambers remain, then their abnormal, totally unreasonable, mountain high earnings that drive their ambition to be in the National Assembly, must be brought to mother earth but that is not something the legislature can be expected to do against itself. Citizens must drive the executive so hard, and all the way, it will not be able to tolerate a continuation of the status quo of wanton, unaccountable and reckless life of these federal legislators. They are so amoral, they did not even as much as offer a penny reduction in their humongous salaries and allowances when the country was in recession a few years ago.
In 2015, Quartz Africa wrote, with data from the Economist, that they are among the world’s topmost earners, getting paid between 150,000 – 190, 000 dollars,(54,821,850 -N69,441010 Million naira, @ the rate of N365.479 to the dollar, earning much more than British MPs. This in a country famously known as the poverty capital of the world and you don’t want kidnappers to over run the country?
If Presidents Umar Yar Adua and Goodluck Jonathan were such weaklings they became playthings in the hands of the National Assembly, it is obvious Buhari suffers no such debility.
He should put a stop to all these rot, forthwith.
It is even worse when it is realised that most of these allowances were self-awarded by these legislators and not on the recommendation or approval of the appropriate federal agency.
Unfortunately, the legislature is not alone in this regime of outlandish and conspicuous living. The executive is worse in many areas. Insecurity dots the entire Nigerian landscape, yet there are state governors who allegedly dip their hands into the monthly federal allocation to their states to yank off, every month, as much as half a billion naira as security funds. Nigerians haven’t seen this colossal sums make a dent on insecurity especially in the Northern and South south states where daily killings, in numbers, have become the norm. Some state Chief executives are so unthinking, even when their Internally Generated Revenue profile cannot, in any way support it, they appoint between
500 -900 personal assistants. And, whereas, I know a state governor who takes no more than one or two assistants on trips abroad, some go with a retinue.
The efforts of the Buhari government, through the Central Bank’s fiscal, and investment policies. especially in agriculture, which have resulted in food security and, ipso facto, massive savings in the import bill and additional foreign exchange earnings, may at the end of the day come to nothing if President Buhari does not make a determined effort to rein in the greed of our politicians which is one of the greatest challenges bedevilling Nigeria.
Mr. President, Sir, I am the fartherest thing from being an economist but it should require no robotic science to know that with COVID-19, and a daily shrinking crude price, fuel subsidy removal has become an economic necessity; indeed, a fait accompli. Given the consequences of coronavirus, top of which is the increasing global financial crisis and our own increasing debt challenges, funds for infrastructural development in Nigeria, especially from China, may soon dry up completely. It will therefore make a lot of sense if we start to look inward to finance our developmental needs but we would have nowhere to turn to if we continue to pour billions into fuel subsidy. A state of economic emergency has also become an absolute desideratum so that your government can put in place the needed policies without being unnecessarily disoriented especially by the opposition. Crisis times require bold reforms and you must now be seen to take up the challenge of saving Nigeria. Otherwise, history will not forgive you. For instance, the N305B which you have earmarked for fuel subsidy in the current year, which incidentally benefits only a few, should immediately be put to more beneficial purposes for the benefit of Nigerians in general. It must now be productively invested in programmes and projects that will relieve the millions in abject poverty, the IDPs and others in critical needs while the rest of us moderate our fuel consumption. These times call for deep and sober thinking, and Nigerians, especially our leaders, must be seen to think outside the box.
If I may come back to this, why, for instance, do we have full time legislators who mostly lay about in Abuja chasing contracts? Why don’t we abrogate the senate and make the House, part time? What purpose do they serve sitting 24 hours on inanities like Hate bill or bill against discrimination against victims of insurgency? Now what sense is in those bills and which other country in the world, would foolishly pay the hundreds of millions of naira Nigeria pays to its legislators for those kind of obtuse thinking? I listened to the Speaker try to rationalise the latter bill the other day, and I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh.
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