After the pictorial testimonial of March 15 showing hundreds of thousands of our youths swarming on stadia across the country for the Nigeria Immigrations Service jobs, I could not imagine any official treating Nigerians so soon to meaningless statistical platitudes on the economy let alone one seeking to paint a picture as distinct from reality as the latest one on the rebasing of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Not even the characterisation of Nigeria as a nation of anything goes would explain the wild exultations going on in Abuja over the routine statistical exercise which aside from changing nothing, actually adds pretty little to the knowledge on the Nigerian economy than is not already familiar.
Courtesy of the rebasing exercise, it is like Abuja has suddenly struck diamonds. The economy of the giant in the African sun is not just pronounced as standing pretty tall at $432 billion, it is now deemed to have finally outperformed that of its nemesis -South Africa’s with the GDP of $370 billion. For this, we are supposed to owe a debt of thanks to the sleep-walkers at the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS), for rousing from their Rip van Winkle sleep to give Nigerians an updated GDP which matches their political masters’ version of the Nigerian Reality!
No one should miss what is clearly at the heart of the current obsession with phantom growth by the African giant. It is called hubris. The pattern is by now familiar: the claim about an economy which has maintained a steady growth path averaging seven percent per annum for over a decade. To the Abuja magic has now been added the rebasing arithmetic of throwing the hordes of ‘under-accounted’ sectors like telecommunications, the entertainment and the broadcasting into the mix to give a more realistic sector of the whole package! Talk of wuruwuru to the answer!
The charade must be seen for what it is – a fraud. First, if it is any revealing, it is quantum of catch-up that the managers have to do in terms of their ability to grapple with the dynamics of the Nigerian economy over which they claim to superintend; second is the ignoble agenda of turning what appears to be an institutional lacuna into some advantage.
I could cite nearly half a dozen reasons why the hype and the needless ball in Abuja ought to have been more restrained – or better still – tempered. To start with, the investing world knows the Nigerian economy far more than the managers would care to admit. They appreciate the huge population size – the dormant potentials waiting to be tapped. They know the strengths and the weakness of the economy and the relative opportunities these present – the moribund state of the infrastructure; the harsh reality of doing business, the dearth of critical skills in the economy, the corruption, the red tape and the countless policies which impede business. They are familiar with the state of our agriculture and the difficulties facing the sector.
Indeed, if the latest unflattering scorecard from the World Bank which ranks Nigeria among the countries harbouring the highest number of the poor on the universe is any instructive, it is to the effect that the world knows us more than we seem to know ourselves – far more than a dozen rebasing exercise could ever wash!
I couldn’t therefore agree more with Bismarck Rewane – the chief executive officer of Financial Derivatives when he described the rebasing exercise as moving from reality to vanity. To that I may well add – delusion. Of all the reasons cited for the hoopla about the imperative of the rebasing exercise, the only one that appears to make some sense is that of the Debt to GDP ratio which is now evidently in favour of more ratcheting more debts as elections approach!
All of this no doubt goes to show how far Abuja remains detached from the reality on the Main Street. Delusion is when a country like Nigeria with a population more three times that of South Africa but whose per capita income is barely a third of the latter claims to have its economy bigger in size. Ever heard of market without effective demand – or disposable incomes?
Clearly, if the issue were simply about statistics, Nigeria ought to have arrived at the Eldorado by now. In the last decade, Nigeria has probably pumped more oil and sold at higher price than the two decades before it. Of course, the result in terms of how many has been lifted from poverty has been most disappointing.
While our policy wonks in Abuja have been content to chase inflation, stable exchange rates – the real enablers of the economy, the critical pillars on which a modern economy can be erected have been left unattended to. Whether the issue is transportation infrastructure, power and aviation, the story of slow but steady regression is almost the same. Nigerians have no need for the dubious statistics of a rebasing than they are ready to make sense of the decade of growth without the human component of development.
By the way, who wants the number one position in Africa anyway? A number one that imports anything from textiles to automobiles to basic consumer goods? A country where 80 percent struggle to make ends meet? A country whose educational sector lies in ruins? And where the young, in search of elusive jobs routinely end up in the morgue? Is that what Abuja magic all about?
