Agency Reporter

Zimbabwe’s foreign affairs minister Sibusiso Moyo died on Wednesday, a day after testing positive for the Coronavirus (COVID-19), acting chief secretary to the president and cabinet George Charamba said in a statement.

A close family member of Moyo also confirmed the death to Xinhua.

“It’s true my brother. COVID-19. He tested positive yesterday,” the family member said.

He becomes the third government minister to succumb to COVID-19 since the pandemic hit the country in March 2020.

READ ALSO: Zimbabwean journalist re-arrested for using Twitter

The retired army Lieutenant-General was the face of the military operation that ousted former President Robert Mugabe in Nov. 2019.

He went on to be part of current President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s administration.

(Xinhua/NAN)

By Zuhumnan Dapel and Ishmael Ogboru

Nigeria is 60 years old. It has so far been through a three-year devastating civil war, two economic recessions (and now in its third), a leadership crisis in form of power switches in six military coups, and many other besetting challenges.

In this opinion piece, we provide a concise account of how these challenges – relating to the economy – have evolved and we argue that Nigeria will one day rise like a Phoenix from the ashes!

There is no question, the Nigerian economy – the largest in Sub-Saharan Africa and bigger in size than 31 other economies on the continent, combined – was healthier than 10 years later. Two major forces led to this: the 2014 bust in world oil price and the foreign exchange policy regimes pursuit from 2015.

However, by 2030, the economy may emerge the best it has been since the return to democratic rule in 1999. Two forces are expected to drive this rebound: the ongoing unprecedented infrastructure investments and the coming on stream of Dangote Refinery.

What are the forces that shaped the Nigerian economy in the last decade and, what are the forces that may shape its outcome in this latest decade?

Our expectations are not chiselled in granite. Unforeseen events may shift the course of the economy.

But before shedding light, these are the facts on how the economy has evolved in recent decades.

The value of the local currency has depreciated nearly 200 per cent in the parallel against the US dollar since 2015. In response, the inflation rate has soared into double digits. After peaking in 2014, net inflows of foreign direct investments plummeted by 76 per cent (it declined from 8.43 billion in 2011 to roughly 2 billion dollars in 2018, the lowest in 13 years.) And, in tandem, the average living standards – measured in terms of GDP per capita – declined by 7 per cent, with the unemployment rate hitting its highest level in almost 50 years: roughly 23% as of 2019, which is equivalent to roughly 21 million people losing their jobs. And all this occurred before the
COVID-19 pandemic hit. The IMF and the World Bank are predicting grimmer prospects in the early years of this new decade. The IMF has projected an average per capita growth rate of about zero in 2019–24.

Why and how did the Nigerian economy go off the rails after experiencing two growth miracles since its independence in 1960?

In the first episode, the economy grew roughly 14 per cent per year between 1969 and 1980. This period coincided with the end of a three-year civil war and a boom in the world oil market. In the second episode, between 2000 and 2007, the economy grew an average of 8 per cent a year following the end of military juntas and transition to democratically elected governments. This was a period when Nigeria’s fiscal position was strengthened, and external reserves rose steadily from barely nothing in 1999 to about $51 billion as of 2007.

Meanwhile, external debt of about $18 billion in 2005 and an overall debt stock of $30 billion – was written down (forgiven) by the Paris Club under a discounted buyback. Also, the government instituted aggressive banking sector reforms that boosted the flow of investment capital to the private sector.

These developments were accompanied by welfare gains: roughly 13 million Nigerians were lifted out of poverty by 2004 as the level of income inequality in the country fell. And, after remaining flat for more than a decade, the life expectancy at birth rose by more than five.

The Nigerian economy from 2010: why and how it went off the rails

In the last decade, Nigeria has had two heads of state from the country’s two major political parties. Each dealt with the country’s economic challenges differently during the half- decade they were in power.

Between 2010 and 2014, the GDP per capita grew an average of 3.6 per cent per year but later slipped into a steep downturn: it was shrinking by an average of 1.6 percent every year between 2015 and 2018. The decade’s average growth was about 0.5 per cent. This implies that the economic gains recorded throughout the first half of the decade were almost completely eroded as the decade proceeded. This was fueled by two major forces.

Force 1: The 2015 collapse in world oil prices. Nigeria’s finances have always been susceptible to the vagaries of oil prices because over 70 per cent of the country’s revenue is from crude oil exports. Thus, the currency depreciation, declining reserves and mounting inflation we witnessed as the decade progressed.

Had the price of oil not collapsed, estimates show that Nigeria would have been, on an average, roughly $1 billion (per month) richer in oil revenue than it is.

Force 2: Unintended flaws in economic policy, in particular, the foreign exchange policy response to the oil
price crash.

In its effort to defend the local currency and clamp down on the black market in foreign exchange, the Central Bank of Nigeria rationed the supply of dollars, restricting access to many importers. This policy move did not pay off and the currency further depreciated. As a result, factories that could not obtain dollars to import raw materials and capital goods shut down and eliminated tens of thousands of jobs. By mid-2016, the economy had fallen into a recession. This prompted a different approach to managing the exchange rate.

This time around, after it failed to lean against the wind of popular opinion, the Central Bank allowed the local currency, the naira to float. This was a huge policy error that opened the currency to speculative attacks, resulting in the further depreciation of the value of the Naira of over 200 per cent. We show evidence of this using the two charts below:

That sparked unprecedented price increases, with the inflation rate rising to more than 30 per cent. The combination of depreciation and inflation was considered a major contributor to the 2016 recession, the first contraction in 25 years.

Had the government and the Central Bank rushed to the IMF and World Bank for emergency loans to help replenish the depleted external reserves—exacerbated by the 2015 presidential election—the recession would have been averted, or the extent of its economic damage lessened.

What may shape the 2030 economy

Despite the current economic situation, we argue that the Nigerian economy may emerge, by the end of this decade in the best shape since the return to democracy in 1999. Our claim is based on two grounds:
First, the unprecedented infrastructure investments are expected to come to fruition by 2030. There are three ongoing multi-billion-dollar infrastructure investments in railroads, energy or power generation, and. These projects, IF completed, will free the economy., thus making Nigeria a bastion of economic freedom.

A study by Dozie (Dalhousie University), Roland (Harvard University) and Tite (MIT) found that colonial railroads in Nigeria raised the level of economic prosperity (but mainly in the northern part of) the country with limited pre-rail access to ports for exports and that these effects, despite the railroads no longer being fully operational, persist to date. If the impact of a non-longer-functional rail system endures to date, imagine the extent of the benefits that the current rail projects, if completed, will release.

At this juncture, it’s important to consider a caveat on the benefits of the railroads and poverty in the country: the period coinciding with the end of functioning railway service in the country overlapped with the period when the gap in poverty between the poor north and the relatively more prosperous south opened after 1980. A Center for Global Development study on poverty mobility in Nigeria shows that much of the poverty in the country is chronic and that 75% of this is in the north. It, therefore, makes sense to conclude that the railroads
to some extent benefited the welfare of the northern residents. We can infer that the north-south poverty divide gap may start to shrink with the resurgence of a functioning rail system in the country.

If done right, such public investments in infrastructure can help boost more inclusive growth and create more economic opportunities. The return on infrastructure investment cannot be overemphasised. In addition to boosting public capital stock in the long run, according to estimates, each $100 billion in public
infrastructure spending could generate roughly one million jobs. And that each $100 spent on infrastructure raises private-sector output by an average of $17 in the long run.

The railroad which includes the $12bn coastal railway, connecting cities in the oil-producing region will create up to 200,000 local jobs during construction and about 30,000 permanent posts once the line becomes operational. One of the rail projects links Nigeria’s two commercial capitals: Lagos in the south near the Atlantic Ocean and Kano in the distant north, the region with a comparative advantage in producing food items. This will potentially lower inter-state trade costs: allowing buyers to purchase goods from the cheapest locations, and producers to sell more of what they are best at producing, as has been the case in India, according to a study.

Another game-changing infrastructure project is the construction of the Trans-Nigerian (and subsequently Trans-
Sahara) Gas Pipeline. This is another multi-billion-dollar project, otherwise known as AKK (Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano
pipeline) crisscrossing the length and breadth of the country while transporting natural gas. Not only will this narrow Nigeria’s energy gap by over three gigawatts of electricity – about 25 percent of the current supply – to the national grid, but it will also boost domestic natural gas utilisation by unlocking and supplying more than 2 billion cubic feet of gas to the domestic market. In the future, it will facilitate exports to African countries and Europe, thus, diversifying Nigeria’s income source and earning more foreign exchange.

The gas project will aid the take-off and the operation of two other major industries in the country: (i) the biggest steel mill, known as the Ajaokuta Steel plant, which in turn is expected to provide half a million jobs, directly and indirectly; and (ii) revive and boost the local textile industry which has the potential to generate three million additional jobs.

The third major infrastructure project is the building of seaports. If completed, this project will remove the port-related bottlenecks that are currently hurting Nigerian businesses. For instance, it is claimed that last year alone, “delayed shipment of 50,000 tons of cashew nuts valued at $300 million is threatening future outputs as the traders' cry of being cash-strapped.”

The final reason for our optimism about the prospect for the Nigerian economy is the construction of the world’s biggest oil refinery, which is being built by Dangote Ltd and scheduled to start operating in the early part of this decade. The refinery has the potential to raise Nigeria’s external reserves by replacing imports of refined petroleum products that cost about $7 – $10 billion annually, roughly 80 per cent of domestic demand.

The increase in foreign exchange reserves will then be used to shield and stabilise the value of the local currency, serving as a buffer against future shocks in world oil prices and import-driven inflation. Eventually, the growth in reserves will make available more foreign exchange for the financing of additional infrastructure projects and the importation of capital goods for the manufacturing sector.

On the prospects of the Dangote refinery in contributing towards the economic success of Nigeria. Findings from two recent studies, one by Ibrahim Alley and one by one of the authors (Dapel) of this article, on the impact of oil price on the Dollar-Naira exchange rate supports the claim that cutting Nigeria’s petrol import bills, driven by Dangote refinery, will improve the value of the Naira.

Notwithstanding our hopefulness about the future of the Nigerian economy, we are not numbed to the economic impact of the COVID-led pandemic. There is no question, Nigeria is not immune to the economic crisis. It has been affected through one major channel: declining oil prices, which could cause the
country to lose up to $3.6 billion per month in oil revenue.

However, these infrastructure projects are not substantially being financed by oil proceeds. They are mainly being
bankrolled by external loans. Therefore, the odds that the pandemic may affect the progress and the timely completion of the projects are thin.

We are not hanging our entire optimistic forecast on a group of infrastructure projects. The coming to fruition of these projects and indeed the nation’s economic recovery must be complemented by the government getting a grip on the country’s current security challenges and general improvement in governance in areas of external reserves management, central banking, etc.

 

By Bola Olajuwon

Africa’s journey to market integration is now in full steam under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) with the kick-off of trading on January 1, Secretary-General Wamkele Mene said.

Mene, who spoke during a virtual news conference, dismissed talks that the AfCFTA arrangement was being rushed, saying there’s no trade agreement where all members were ready at the same time.

According to him, countries like Ghana, Egypt and South Africa were in fact prepared with the required customs infrastructure to ensure commercially meaningful trading started.

The AfCFTA Secretary-General said Ghana had on January 4 officially recognised the first consignment of goods to be exported under the AfCFTA – an event other countries would be replicating soon to mark the milestone.

“The most important point that I want to emphasise is that Africa is now trading under new rules and new preferences because we want to build a single integrated market on the African continent. It may take some time before each of us sees the direct benefit. We are not going to be deterred by our critics who say they don’t see evidence that trading has actually started,” Mene said.

According to him, market integration is not an event but a process that takes time, pointing out that it took the European Union (EU) almost 60 years to achieve its current depth of integration.

“I have never heard of a trade agreement where all countries were ready on Day One; I don’t know it. Africa’s market integration would take some time but you have to start somewhere,” he said.

The continental trade deal was earlier scheduled to start officially on July 1 last year but was postponed by six months due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read Also: MAN to FG: Position SON for better AfCFTA gains

The AfCFTA provides the opportunity for Africa to create the world’s largest free trade area, with the potential to unite more than 1.2 billion people, in a $2.5 trillion economic bloc and usher in a new era of development. It also has the potential to generate a range of benefits through supporting trade creation, structural transformation, productive employment and poverty reduction.

Only Eritrea out of the continent’s 55 countries is yet to sign the agreement, which has already been ratified by 34 member states.

Through its African Trade Policy Centre (ATPC), the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) has been working with the African Union Commission (AUC) and member states to deepen Africa’s trade integration and effectively implement the agreement through policy advocacy and national strategy development.

The ECA also works with the International Trade Centre (ITC), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and independent trade experts with the financial support of the European Union to support the implementation of the AfCFTA across the continent.

Bola Olajuwon, Development Journalist & Assistant Editor, The Nation Newspapers, Vintage Press Limited, 27B Fatai Atere Way, Matori, Lagos, Nigeria P.M.B. 1025, Oshodi, Lagos. GSM lines: +2348034296895, +2348189045055, +2348055666407 E-mail:bolaolajuwon@yahoo.com

Recent awards:

*Nigeria Ports Authority Maritime Reporter of the Year (Nigeria Media Merit Award 2019).

*Runner-up for Keystone CSR Reporter of the Year (Nigeria Media Merit Award 2019).

By Femi Morgan

Recently, a CNN report introduced into the public domain its own conclusion on the EndSARS Lekki Toll Gate incident in Lagos State. The tragedy of the story is the ‘investigative journalism’ toga ascribed to it.

There is no doubt that the CNN compiled hours of footages aggregated haphazardly online, and deliberately evaded other counter images to come to a conclusion that the Nigerian Government and her security agencies were complicit in the Lekki shootings. Before extrapolating, the CNN immediately indicted the Nigerian Government with its introductory statement, tone and expression.

A lot of the videos have been questioned by many Nigerians who have begun to realise that there are many stories and videos that were deliberately designed, distorted and exaggerated. The CNN footage did not express any scepticism with the videos that they had gathered from online sources. There is also no evidence of critically balancing the entire story.

CNN simply tried to validate the videos it gathered by piecing the puzzles, establishing geospatial timestamps to false representations, and making sure that it achieves a linearity of thoughts without giving room for counter positions that could also be aggregated in the same public domain.

Many voices of the EndSARS protesters have been silenced because they could not effectively corroborate their stories when Nigerians had begun to ask questions. Many celebrities on Twitter had also begun to delete their EndSARS posts because they found that they had used their brands to peddle lies, and to declare dead and missing those who were alive and well.

In fact, accounts and counter-accounts presented at the Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry have shown that the Lekki incident was not a massacre as fabricated and narrated by some of the promoters of EndSARS. These are some of the issues that CNN failed to dig up while it fixated on its usual narrative of a sub-Saharan African nation which silences the freedom of her people.

While the CNN asserts its geospatial evidences, it does not take into cognisance that time stamps and locations could be deceptive, brining to fore similar attacks and clashes such as the deadly cultist clash in Ketu, Lagos within the same period. The CNN also narrowed its narrative of the EndSARS protest into a single story. It is instructive to note that the EndSARS story is in at least four phases – The Digital Media #EndSARS campaign, The EndSARS Protests, The EndSARS Crisis, and The Post-EndSARS Narratives. The four are not necessarily inclusive of one another. The fourth phase especially has been largely an exploration of fabricated narratives designed to suit the continuing agendas of the EndSARS promoters, and this is what CNN bought into and dwelt on.

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While the Lagos Judicial Council of Inquiry has engaged much footage and has so far given prime reliability to the CCTV footages of the Lekki Concession Company, managers of the Lekki Toll Gate, due largely to its coverage and reliability, the CNN relied on random sentimental reportage and video directions and pictures that ask more question than answers.
The Lagos State Government noted that only two people lost their lives at the Lekki shooting, and this is contrary to the Amnesty International report which placed the number of deaths at 38 people. However, this position is quickly evaded by the CNN through its disclosure that the Lagos State Government (LASG) refused to engage its correspondence during its investigation.

Before the inauguration of the Judicial Panel, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the Governor of Lagos State had issued statements, and had had live video interviews with Nigerian and international media organisations. The CNN could have used these to drive a robust, clear and balanced storytelling of events. It, however, found it comfortable to showcase the inaccessibility of the Lagos State Government, despite the fact that its silence at that time aligned with standard legal requirement. The CNN insisted that the Nigerian Army fired directly at the protesters, but it was not sure. It said ‘appear to show that they were shooting toward the crowd’. This tonality of doubt pervades major parts of CNN report.

This shows that the CNN only hoped to raise emotions through its sensational depiction of injustice through a postcolonial gaze. The Army has stated time and again that it shot blank bullets into the sky to scare and disperse the protesters.

There are video evidences to show that the protesters tried to attack the soldiers. Such videos have been evaded by the CNN who did not do an extensive search, neither did it speak to the Lekki Concession Company to obtain clear CCTV footages. The CNN reporter was comfortable with lazily aggregating videos that were readily available without any bureaucracy.

Colonel Hassan Stan-Labo (rtd.), a security expert, had reviewed the footages of the Lekki incident as well as the shells at the Toll Gate, shown by the media during the earliest reportage of the Lekki incident. Stan-Labo had said that given his experience in the Nigerian Army, these were blanks. Many civilians who do not know the difference between blank ammunition and live ammunition must have misconstrued the sound of the blanks for live ammunition. Blanks, according to Wikipedia, “is a type of firearm cartridge that contains no projectile (e.g., bullet or shot), and instead uses paper or plastic wadding to seal the propellant into the casing. When discharged, the blank generates a muzzle flash and an explosive sound like normal gunshots.…”

This fully explains the colourful splashes that emanated from the gunshots of the soldiers at the Lekki Toll Gate. When shot at close range, blanks could cause severe injuries. From the videos in the public domain, the soldiers kept a distance and shot in the air.

DJ Switch’s narrative has so far been problematic. Her representation of events and her posture so far has shown that her videos were made with intentions to bolster up her brand as a hero and to use the situation to advance an asylum agenda. DJ Switch, whose video streaming was the primary source of reportage for many media groups, said that she and her comrades helped place the bodies of the dead at the feet of soldiers who were still shooting. Her narrative extends farce into magic realism, and her cameras failed to capture a single corpse at the incident. Her actions only significantly portray her ambition to popularise her DJ career and escape to the West through the channels of an asylum.

The CNN in collaboration with the Balkan Investigative Network also identified some of the bullets reportedly used at the Lekki Shootings as purchased at the Serbian Weapons Market. It ascribed the ammunition to purchases made by Nigeria from Serbia.
While such ammunition could be in the armoury of the Nigerian Army, it is not exclusively so. There are many interests in the country that make it difficult for ammunition to be imprinted in the name of the Nigerian Army. The Lekki-Epe corridor is a seaward area with cultists, pirates and pockets of illegal businesses. Some of these individuals have access to the ammunition black market.

The Nigerian Army has made constant and consistent efforts through its human rights codes and standard policy practice established in 2016 to strengthen relations between the Army and the civilian populace, and to disabuse the people of perceptions of the army through the lens of a military era. It has made immense improvement in educating the rank and file in the engagement of civilians in several scenarios and has improved communications with the populace in order to respond to their complaints as and when they arise.

Having invested several years in building a new human rights outlook for itself, the Army could surely not be inclined to destroy its hard-earned trust by killing civilians. The Army is aware that with the support of Nigerians as informants, patriots and law-abiding citizens, the insurgency in the Northeast would be quelled in no time. It is based on this that the Nigerian Army has stated that there was no way that it would kill its brothers and sisters.

Unfortunately, the CNN played a premeditated script that sought to condemn the Nigerian Government and the Nigerian Army. The media network also asserted through so-called eyewitnesses that the Nigeria Police officers arrived at the scene to shoot and kill the protesters. Even the EndSARS promoters had not said that in their own reported narratives.

When did the soldiers leave the scene and how far gone were they before the police arrived? Such a narrative would have helped to exonerate the soldiers and lay the blame on the police. But the Army is not trading in falsehood, and has not tried to save itself by bringing in the police.

Nigerians are aware of the withdrawal of the police from its duties after it had been smeared with the same paint as the notorious SARS operatives. During the EndSARS protests, especially when the hoodlums hijacked the protests in the Lagos Mainland areas, and other parts of South-west, public infrastructure were torched and police officers were assaulted. The police gradually vacated the scene having imbibed the notion that it could not be an enforcement agency in a case that concerns one of its units. It is therefore a piece of fiction to assert that the Nigeria Police appeared on the scene to ‘finish off’ from where the soldiers supposedly stopped.

In order to convince Nigerians and the international community that many people died at the Lekki Toll Gate, the CNN featured one Elisha Sunday who stated that his brother died at the protests ground at the Lekki Toll Gate. CNN showed a picture of a badly injured Nigerian as Victor Sunday.

The reportage did nothing to prove that the man on the ground who was being administered CPR was Victor Sunday. The reported only expected that the audience would trust its voice because it is CNN. A single photograph of a man that is critically injured, alongside quick flicks of other injured persons, cannot suffice for the many that were said to be killed during the Lekki shootings. While the rabble has asserted that many people died at the toll gate, no one has come forward to claim or demand justice for its family members that passed on during the Lekki incidents. Even prominent lawyers who promoters the EndSARS protests have not come out to seek redress for alleged victims.

CNN failed to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that it did not try to heat the polity by playing to the gallery. CNN also made a hazy presentation of faces and a flippant presentation of narratives from the respondents as quickly as possible. The video was meant to dwell on six persons who would at least tell their full accounts through the footages.

That the CNN story could have been sponsored by the political detractors of the government is within the range of possibilities. Before the report, Reno Omokri, a staunch PDP media personality based in the USA, had used his social media platform to call on the United States politicians to give attention to the Lekki Toll Gate incident if they wanted to gain the votes of Nigerians who had American citizenship.

Without doubt, the CNN manipulates information in order to achieve far-reaching populist visibility across Africa. It allowed itself to be drowned by the cacophony of the EndSARS promoters without digging deep. It has consistently followed the path of consistently promoting a chaotic perception of Africa.

According to UNESCO Handbook for Journalism Education and Training, the ‘purveyors of disinformation prey on the vulnerability or partisan potential of recipients whom they hope to enlist as amplifiers and modifiers. In this way, they seek to animate us into becoming conduits of their messages by exploring our propensities to share information for a variety of reasons.’

The CNN abides by what Martina Chapman calls ‘Fake News’ because it brings to bear in its story elements of mistrust, misinformation and manipulation. It purposefully created a slanted reportage that emboldens the biases of the political promoters of EndSARS. Its reporters presented a sloppy journalistic angle that does not explore all the dimensions of the incidents, therefore creating silences, and currying faulty emotional perceptions. It failed to create the critical balance needed to give journalism practice the global reputation that it deserves.

(Femi Morgan is a Lagos-based writer and media analyst).