President Muhammadu Buhari said the right thing when he noted that Nigeria out of recession is meaningless unless it translates to better living conditions for Nigerians. The president was reacting to the National Bureau of Statistics report of the second quarter Gross Domestic Growth, GDP, which indicated that the country is out of economic recession. Buhari spoke when he received the President of Niger, Alhaji Mahamadou Issoufou, at his country home in Daura, Katsina State on September 5. “Certainly, I should be happy for what it is worth. I am looking forward to ensuring that ordinary Nigerian feels the impact,” President Buhari said as he commended the managers of the economy for their hard work and commitment. He added: “Until coming out of recession translates into meaningful improvement in peoples’ lives, our work cannot be said to be done.”
This is the way he ought to speak. It is instructive that the president himself realised that there is still a lot of work to do to make the Nigerian on the street understand that really, recession is over. One message my wife passes across to me every month for onward transmission to the president is that food prices remain high. Whether we talk of the staple, gari, semovita, elubo (white or brown/black), palm oil, groundnut oil, meat, fish or what have you, the prices remain astronomical. This is the view across the land. Indeed, I keep wondering how the poor are coping when even the so-called middle-class (some people will insist there is nothing like that in Nigeria anymore) are not finding things funny concerning feeding their families. I keep asking myself how anyone can be living on a dead minimum wage of N18,000 per month, which is not enough for some of our politicians to feed their dogs in one week.
There are no two ways about it; the government must do something about the food question. I cannot remember how many monthly supplementary budgets I have had to fund in the last one year or so. All I do every month end is to threaten at home to bring in auditors to see what is happening to the upkeep allowance, despite the fact that I already know the reason it is not buying much in the market. Our accounts have hardly balanced in the last few months. Yet, one must feed the family well because it is cheaper in the long run. The consequences of doing otherwise are grave. As they say, those who say education is expensive should try ignorance.
Still on food; because my people say when hunger is out of poverty, we can’t be talking of poverty per se again. I want to dwell so much on rice; it is a staple across the country, just like gari. And there is the equivalent of a revolution in rice cultivation in the country. But I do not know on what basis the government is optimistic that we would become self-sufficient in rice production by the end of this year. What I can see, and which only the mischievous can deny, is that there has been a noticeable improvement in rice cultivation since the Buhari administration came on board in 2015. Give that to the government. With the collaboration between the Lagos State government and its Kebbi State counterpart to grow rice, we have the Lake Rice that has joined the ones on ground; like ‘Abakaliki rice’, and many others, no doubt. They have had some salutary effect on the market price of the commodity as there was a time when a 50kg bag of rice sold for about N20,000; but it remains to be seen whether they are enough to make us project the self-sufficiency in rice by year-end. The same bag of imported rice sells for about N14,000 today whereas Lake Rice sells for about N12,000. If indeed morning shows the day, we should be seeing signs that we would no longer see much of imported rice in the country in the next four months or so.
As a patriotic Nigerian, my prayer is that the government’s projection on rice comes to pass. But we cannot rest on our oars until we start eating only our local rice with a 50kg bag selling for between N5,000 and N8,000. That Lake Rice, for instance, is still being sold at designated centres only (understandably to prevent mass purchase by those who would resell it) shows that we do not have enough in the market yet. When we do, there won’t be any need for that kind of arrangement as rice would flood our markets.
The government should ensure the same thing is done about other staples. When I read a few weeks ago how much we still spend importing wheat, it remains ridiculously high. Definitely, we can do better. Agriculture has a great role to play in taking us finally out of recession and even out of the woods. Government must fix our roads, including the ones in the rural areas through which farmers send their farm produce to the towns and cities. Moreover, storage is vital because even as we speak, most of what the farmers harvest perish due to lack of modern silos. Well, maybe I should talk of the agro-allied industry because we cannot make much money from our agricultural produce if all we do is keep sending them abroad raw. We need to add value to them to reap substantially in return. That is the lesson we ought to have learnt over the years, even with our so-called black gold, crude oil.
We also need to go beyond rhetoric in the power sector. If we could exit recession at this time despite the epileptic electricity supply in the country, we definitely would have done better with a sustained (even if marginal) improvement in the power sector. The government must pay more attention to power supply. There are no two ways about it; it is the surest path to industrialisation which is also key in the mix to bring the economy back on track.
Then the question of attitude. The Buhari administration has to fast track governance. It is too lackadaisical in its approach. This casual approach cannot bring superlative result which is what Nigeria needs at this point in time. These are unusual times. Yet, it does not seem the government appreciates this fact. The excuse of rodents stopping the president from working in his office; or the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting not holding because some people have ‘hangover’ after Easter or Eid-el Kabir holidays is sickening. It signifies that the government is either hiding something or it does not understand the enormity of the job at hand. It was not so in the days of General Buhari as military head of state. No public srvant would not report for work as early as the resumption time simply on account of hangovers from celebrations. Yet, those were still normal times compared with what the locusts have turned the country to today.
All said; it is good that President Buhari realised that there is nothing to celebrate now. At best, our being out of recession is commendable. We cannot be seen to be celebrating mediocrity; which is what the marginal 0.55 per cent growth rate announced for the second quarter by the NBS is. To want to roll out the drums because we exited recession with this low margin would be borrowing from the Jonathan administration when, in what looked like economic abracadabra, the NBS suddenly woke up on March 6, 2014 to tell Nigerians that Nigeria had overtaken South Africa as Africa’s largest economy after it overhauled its GDP data for the first time in more than two decades. Rebasing it called it. Given that things were not looking up for the government then, and with only about a year to general elections, not a few people thought the rebasing was politically motivated. The point that many people began to emphasise was how that would put food on the table of Nigerians. To the extent that it did not translate into any visible benefit to Nigerians, it was of no effect or value. While the economic experts continue to luxuriate in their highfalutin jargons – rebasing and recession – the rest of us, motor park economists (if you like) would insist that we still have a long way to go.
We may be out of recession, but we are not yet out of the woods. Meaning what? Meaning that for now, we are grate, when finally we are out of the woods, we’ll add the ful. Meaning that then and only then can we be grateful to the government for positively impacting our lives. But, if you feel like clapping for them now, you are permitted to do so with only one hand.
