The Nation Newspaper

Tag: crossroads

  • At a crossroads

    At a crossroads

    Eminent Nigerians warn the president over our rapidly receding economy

    Emir of Kano Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Professor Chukwuma Soludo, Anthony Cardinal Okogie … they do not come any grander in any one country, and when they raise their voices on an issue, then government had better listen. Economists, columnists and analysts have also been expressing concerns about the state of the nation and President Muhammadu Buhari’s approach to managing the polity.

    But the calls gained momentum and added stridency in the last two weeks when the afore-named grandees weighed in more audaciously, setting the polity abuzz.

    Former Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and currently Emir of the ancient kingdom of Kano, Alhaji Sanusi Lamido Sanusi led the pack. He pulled no punches in addressing President Buhari concerning the dire consequences that awaited him if he did not retrace his steps. Indeed, he warned that the sitting president risked failing and falling like his immediate past predecessor if he did not change some of his policies.

    “We should not just keep blaming the previous administration; we also made some mistakes in the current administration.

    “They must retrace their steps. They have to retrace those steps all the way. We should not fall into the same trap we fell the last time when the government was always right.”

    In a nutshell, Sanusi charges the government to hone its budget and planning arm so it can think for the government. He suggests that the country needs to pursue policies that would attract investment. The government must allow the currency to float and eschew a rent economy that allows influential people like him to make stupendous gains by making mere telephone calls from the comfort of their palaces.

    Speaking a day after Emir Sanusi, another former governor of the CBN, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo raised the alarm that the economy was in deep trouble. He stated that inflation was galloping while Gross Domestic Product index was falling sharply. According to him, GDP has compressed by 50 percent; per capita income too has also dropped from $3,100 to $1,500.

    Soludo recommended a restructuring of the economy from consumption driven to production-based and consistency in micro-economic policies.

    “Nigeria is facing unprecedented and tremendous political and economical challenges with global and local dynamics. Regardless of these challenges, opportunities and possibilities abound if we address some fundamental issues. The key to achieving this is to have a developmental plan that is anchored on realising inclusive and sustainable growth.

    “Encouraging fiscal federalism in ways that allow states to have greater control of their resources, evolution of a master plan for mass export-oriented industrialisation that answers the economic questions and realities of today.”

    For the Emeritus Archbishop of Lagos, Anthony Cardinal Olubunmi Okogie, it required a plaintive open letter to the president to call his attention to the ills ravaging the citizenry. “Nigerians are hungry,” he seemed to have screamed.

    He says: “Today, cries of hunger could be heard across the length and breadth of our vast country. Nigerians hunger not only for food, but also for good leadership, for peace, security and justice.

    “This letter is to appeal to you to do something fast, and, if you are already doing something, to redouble your effort. May it not be written on the pages of history that Nigerians die of starvation under your watch.

    “As president, you are the chief servant of the nation. I therefore urge you to live up to the huge expectations of millions of Nigerians. A stitch in time saves nine.”

    The revered clergy urged the president to retool his administration. He admonished him to take another look at his cabinet, his policies and programmes. He raised eyebrows over the manner of appointments and noted that Nigeria’s economy has never been in such dire straits as it is today.

    When personages as quoted above begin to speak up in exasperation and even anger, the sitting government must recognise that something is truly amiss. Government must therefore initiate urgent measures to remedy the situation.

    It is remarkable that a day after Prof. Soludo raised the alarm over the state of the economy, the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, told the nation that the economy is indeed in recession. She confirmed all the gloomy indices that Soludo had highlighted, further setting the nation on edge.

    We aver that economic recession can come upon even the most developed of nations but the difference often is the know-how and resolute reassurances on how to exit the stormy weather. We dare say that we are not reassured by the responses of the finance minister.

    To admit it is the worst possible time in the history of our nation and to follow it up with a bland, “We must make sure we diversify our economy” hardly brings cheer to the populace. We ask that the economic team be fortified and it must urgently present the nation with a clear plan of action.

    This is our very minimum expectation. And the time is now!

  • Nigeria at the crossroads

    The traditional “wise-men” of Yoruba civilization (respectfully known as Babalawo, ‘Father of the Secrets’) used to say, “Koro-koro la nrofa aditi” –that is, when consulting the oracles for someone who cannot hear well, the message needs to be clear and said loudly and repeatedly. It is difficult – extremely difficult – for Nigeria to hear well or to hear the truth. And that is because Nigeria’s multiplicity of nationalities and cultures intervene between Nigeria and any important message; they   make it impossible for Nigeria to hear important messages clearly and to benefit from them. If Nigeria is dying today (as it is), that is the most fundamental reason.

    The basic FACT of Nigeria’s existence is that Nigeria is not a nation – a nation being a people group with their own homeland, their own culture and language, and their own self-image, and therefore their own unique expectations, ways of doing things, of enforcing their own national moral laws, of rewarding or penalizing their members, etc. If an event in history creates one sovereign country that combines many of such nations, then that country, to survive for any length of time, must be very thoughtful and careful in managing the inter-relationships among its component nations. If the country’s management of those inter-relationships is poor, unduly demanding and aggressive, and generates stress for some of the component nations, then the country cannot possibly be stable – and it runs the risk of quickly breaking up.

    That is the basic summary of the history of independent Nigeria since 1960. By aggressively pooling all powers and resources together in the hands of the federal government, we have created a powerful demon that will destroy Nigeria. In this column and in other writings, I have said these things repeatedly, and as clearly and loudly as I possibly can – in accordance with the wisdom of the fathers of my Yoruba people. In this beginning of another year, I say them now again. Without restructuring Nigeria, without basing our states on the realities of our nationalities, and without taking away many of the powers and resource-control now held by the federal government and vesting them in the state governments, Nigeria will break up – probably violently, and probably very soon. In fact, as I watch the situation develop these days, I am already expecting my own separate Yoruba country to materialize soon; and I am already thinking of how I and others like me will contribute to making our Yoruba country orderly, progressive, prosperous and powerful in the world. I am also full of prayers for other probable new countries (especially an Igbo country, a Hausa-Fulani country, and others that seem to me increasingly inevitable in the circumstances that have been evolved in Nigeria).

    Everything of significance emphasizes the truth that Nigeria has been destroyed by us Nigerians. As an important example, look at what is happening to our economy. The sharp falls in crude oil prices of these days are having a devastating effect on Nigeria because, according to the moulding of our economy by the federal government, the income from crude oil is the alpha-and-omega of our economy. Before crude oil started to become important to our country in about 1970, our country was doing quite well on some cash crops (cocoa from the South-west, palm produce from the South-east, and groundnuts from the North). We were also, on the whole, fairly productive peoples in food-crop farming, livestock farming, fishing, etc. From the 1950s, we were also beginning to develop as an entrepreneurial and gradually industrializing country.  But just as crude oil was beginning to emerge as a main contributor to our economy, our cash crops were transferred to federal control. The federal government, hugely overwhelmed by the growing oil bonanza, focused its attention on the oil alone and, through inattention, allowed the cash crops to perish. Discouraged and lacking governmental support, our farmers turned away from producing the cash crops. Nobody noticed this disaster as it developed – but it was a process of submitting the lives of our people to poverty. By the 1960s we were the largest exporter of groundnuts in the world; but by the 1980s, we had disappeared as a serious exporter of groundnuts. The same disasters befell our cocoa and palm produce exports.

    We became the poor country that we are now – the country in which 70% of us live in “absolute poverty”, where true enterprise has become unpopular, where all state governments and local governments subsist only on monthly federal dolls from the oil revenues, and where most prominent citizens live on hand-outs or outright robberies from the oil revenues. It is a country also in which the federal government has seized control and destroyed education at all levels, and wrecked the universities that we proudly owned at independence. Worldwide, we became notorious as a viciously corrupt country – a country to be avoided.

    In the process, we have destroyed all love among our various nationalities. Read the letters posted by Nigerians on the world-wide-web daily, and you will be horrified at the perpetual drivel of hate and venom that Nigerians spit against one another’s nationalities. In the past few years, some leading Nigerians have been importing and storing weapons – so as to be prepared to arm their own particular nationals to kill masses of other nationals when the time comes. We are ready for the Rwandan kind of genocidal insanity – only, when it comes, it will be thousands of times larger and more horrific than in Rwanda.  What respectable reason do we still have left for regarding ourselves as countrymen? We have destroyed this country. All that needs to happen is its actual dissolution. And that now appears to be near at hand.

    In all essence, Nigeria’s problems have risen to heights at which they cannot possibly be solved by any election. Some days ago, the respected academic and statesman, Bolaji Akinyemi, came forth with the suggestion that the two candidates in the presidential election should meet and sign an agreement to prevent their supporters from unleashing violence on society before, during and after the election. Although such an agreement would be a good gesture, there is serious doubt that it can prevent the trouble that Nigeria has already prepared for itself.

    During the past week, another highly respected leader, Pastor Tunde Bakare, stood up in the shrine of his faith and made much more far-reaching proposals towards solution and change. He urges that the presidential election scheduled for February 15 should be postponed for six months – so as to allow us to sort out our country’s tangled problems (especially the restructuring of our federation). We would therefore be able to hold the election under the new constitutional structure. Again, this is a wonderful suggestion. The existing constitution allows such a postponement, since, in fact, a substantial part of our country is under invasion by hostile forces. Moreover, we do have the report of a National Conference with some valuable proposals to which we all will be able to add some more.  But there is no likelihood that this proposal too will be adopted. We have sown the wind; we are only motivated to reap the whirlwind.