Henry Boyo, renowned economist and social commentator is worried that poverty has since become a metaphor of existence with majority of Nigerians suffering a lot of privations, no thanks to what he described as incurably defective policies of the past and present governments. He spoke with Ibrahim Apekhade Yusuf. Excerpts:
I don’t make political statements. But what is clear to everybody and I believe should be totally uncontestable so to speak, is the reality that poverty has been ruling in Nigeria for so long. There’s no doubt about that. Over the years, especially since we returned to civil rule in 1999, the ordinary Nigerian has become much poorer even though over the same period of time we’ve earned sometimes stupendous income. So there is definitely a disconnect between the amount of revenue we’ve earned as a country and the level of poverty in the country.
Specifics
If you really want to know what the economy of this country’s prospects are, the best way to do it is to look at the common man. What’s the purchasing power of their income? You find that our young people are all making plans to run abroad, we hear so many of our doctors are abroad while we’re suffering here. What’s the main driver? Of course, it’s value purchasing power of money. Many years, precisely in 1975, l came back to this country from abroad. My salary was between N700-N1, 000 a month. But that salary was so attractive to expatriates that they were prepared to come and work here at the time. Now we even make a song and dance of the fact that investors should come here because labour is cheap. Are we well? Should we deliberately and consciously be attracting investors based on the reality that their participation would continue to impoverish our people? Does that make sense to anybody? So if you continue to extol the fact that one of the big attraction for a country like Nigeria is that labour is cheap, it means that you’ve consigned your people to the dregs of society in the world.
Possibly the best indicator of what is happening is when you look at something like for example the N18,000 minimum wage. I don’t think there was N18, 000 minimum wage by 1999 but then if you use that as a base, you’ll find that N18, 000 in 1999 would have been something like $200 or more because the rate of exchange then was about N80 to a dollar. So in other words, $100 would be N8, 000 and $200 would be N16, 000. So N18, 000 was much more than $200.
I’m shying away from using the popular indices that people talk about like GDP and all that. I’m talking now on the impact of the average Nigerian. You find that the same N18,000 now is not even up to $50.So you can understand that truly the ordinary man in Nigeria who is constrained to earn the basic salary of N18,000 or more, has truly been suffering. So it’ll be unfortunate if we don’t recognise this factor. The reality is that the Nigerian citizen has become much poorer. Incidentally, the basic driver of this social poverty can be traced to the shenanigans they’ve in the forex market. It’s a market where the Central Bank itself consciously and deliberately inundates the market with excess and surplus naira, which it proceeds to borrow at 10-16 per cent as the case may be.
What the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan means
If you want to believe that it’s up to you. I have told you the truth. What you’re asking me to talk about doesn’t mean anything. Has it impacted in your life? Do you even understand what it means? Somebody is taking your money or the treasurer of your purse is borrowing money he doesn’t need and storing it away at 15 per cent and you yourself is looking for money to borrow and he says you should go and borrow from elsewhere and you don’t think that is serious enough? You’re talking of the ERGP which you yourself don’t understand. It’s a case of the more you look the less you see.