Killing Nigerian Economy And Killing Nigerians!

 By Kenneth Okonkwo

John Locke was a renowned human rights activist of the natural law school of thought. He wrote that certain rights, self-evidently, pertain to individuals by virtue of their being human beings. In his words, man entered into a social contract by which he surrendered to the sovereign, not his rights, but only the power to preserve order and enforce the human rights of man. The individual retained the natural rights to life, liberty, and property for these were the natural and inalienable rights of man.

According to him, the purpose of government is the preservation of the lives, liberties and possessions of members of society. He warned that as long as government fulfills this purpose, its law should be binding. When it ceases to protect or begins to encroach on these natural rights, laws lose their validity and the government loses its legitimacy.

These well thought out theories were to become the harbinger of the enthronement of successful democracies in the world, major among them, are those of the United States of America, France and Great Britain. These countries, in obeying meticulously the dictates of the social contract have emerged as the leaders of the world, and even permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. They are the first world, with their citizens enjoying the best standards of living and are highly respected all over the world.

The country that was in the forefront of observing the ethics of this social contract, which is the United States of America, emerged to become the most powerful nation on earth. They successfully established a republic which was founded on the view that the authority of the government derived from the people, not the King. Thomas Jefferson, who asserted that his countrymen were a free people claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature and not as the gift of their government, gave poetic eloquence to John Locke’s theory of social contract in the Declaration of Independence proclaimed by the thirteen American colonies on July 4, 1776. 

He summed up the Democratic ideas of the enlightenment in a sentence which has become immortal: We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government.

These rights and purpose of government have since found their way into the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Section 14(1)(2)(a)(b) states that the Federal Republic of Nigeria shall be a State based on the principles of democracy and social justice and accordingly sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through this Constitution derives all its powers and authority and the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government. These security and welfare have been codified in Chapter four of the 1999 Constitution as the fundamental rights of Nigerians to include right to life, dignity, liberty, fair hearing, privacy, religion, expression, assembly, movement, property and right not to be discriminated against. 

Other countries that have similar provisions have utilised such provisions to climb to the highest heights while Nigeria is going down the drains everyday which is now threatening to take Nigerians down with it. The problem is no longer with our laws but with the administrators of such laws, whether as legislature, executive or judiciary. It then follows that any government in Nigeria that fails to protect these rights of Nigerians and secure their welfare has lost its legitimacy to continue as a government.

Summarily, our situation in Nigeria today is that naira is N1,100.00 to a dollar. Our debt service to revenue ratio is 97%, meaning that all our generated revenue is used to service our debt. Petrol price is officially N617.00 per litre and the product is still scarce. There is no steady power supply. Officially, the minimum wage is still N35,000.00 per month. This government since its inception borrowed the initial $800m and is now borrowing another $1.5b dollars before six months of its inauguration. Soon, we will need to borrow to even finance our debts. The principal reason for all these borrowing is to provide Special Utility Vehicles (SUV) for politicians worth about N160m each for the members of the National Assembly, about 469 of them, totalling the sum of about N75,040,000,000.00. 

These vehicles are hundred per cent imported with no benefit whatsoever to our domestic economy. Whenever, they need to be serviced or repaired, their parts will be hundred per cent imported. In the midst of this tragedy of scarcity of financial resources in Nigeria, this government employed the services of about 48 Ministers for its regime, making it the most bloated government since the creation of Nigeria. The poorest regime in history now has the largest wasteful Ministers in history. Our petroleum refineries are still comatose necessitating our importing hundred per cent of the refined products we are using. As a foremost oil producing country in Africa, whenever international price of crude oil rises, the masses that ought to be rejoicing, rather start weeping because their pump price will jump up. Meaning that these leaders have even turned what ought to be blessings for the people into curses. 

The most unacceptable leap into economic abyss that has been unleashed on the economy by this government is the lifting, few days ago, of the ban on sourcing of foreign exchange from official market for the importation of 43 items, including rice, cement, palm oil products, vegetable oils, processed meat, steel drums and pipes, tinned fish, wheelbarrows, vegetables, soap and cosmetics, cellophane wrappers, tomatoes, and tomato paste and even toothpicks. This is scandalous. That a government will give an incentive to foreign companies to produce toothpicks and give incentives to domestic importers to import toothpicks into Nigeria is the height of dereliction of duties and absolute failure of government to protect the livelihood of Nigerians. 

A lot of people do not know that protecting the value of naira is a fundamental human right of Nigerians and any government that fails to do that has lost its legitimacy to govern. The only reason Dangote may not be the richest man in Africa today is the mindless devaluation of the naira by incompetent and dishonest leaders not that his investments have reduced. He has the unfortunacy of having a government which cannot protect his property for him. By the incentive granted to all the importers of rice, toothpicks, cement etc, all the progress we have made in our domestic sufficiency will be reversed, thereby leading to more depreciation of naira because more naira will be chasing less dollar. 

We have said it over and over again that improving the value of naira is nothing magical. The secret is that strong currency is predicated on strong economy and strong economy presupposes an industrial productive base and a steady export market. With the absence of electric power and cheap fuel energy, in addition to expensive cost of capital and lack of patronage from an insensitive government who imports everything it uses, production abroad will be cheaper than production at home, making importation more attractive and profitable than exportation, leading to the closure of more domestic industries. Naira will continue to slide until we stop patronising imported products, stop importing hundred percent of refined petroleum products, provide electricity for our people and chief among them, provide efficient security for every citizen. 

In a poor country, naira can also be preserved if the government fights corruption, reduce waste, and evolve efficient and honest civil service. There must be an immediate ban not only of granting access to foreign exchange by the government to those 43 items on the list, but the total ban of importation of the entire items. The government must jettison the importation of exotic vehicles for political office holders in a depressed economy and if it must buy them vehicles, the vehicles must be locally manufactured to improve our domestic industrial base and stimulate our steady exports. Nigerians are wallowing in abject poverty and the least they expect now from this government is to embark on policies that will destroy their source of income. Denying Nigerians, the opportunity of even making and selling cheaper toothpicks than imported ones is not only insensitive but also incompetent. 

The only people who are smiling now in this government are those privileged corrupt few who have unrestricted access to deploy presidential jet to ferry them to go and have launch in another town; those who are part of the bloated cabinet that are doing nothing except sharing the money and employing only the people from their Geo-Political Zone to fill up every available vacancy in government. It’s unfortunate that even the natural right Nigerians have to change their government, if it does not fulfill its side of the social contract, is being taken away from them through rigging of elections. All these problems are killing Nigeria and killing Nigerians and it’s the duty of Nigerians to resist these unfortunate affront to the enjoyment of their fundamental human rights. 

Of note is the letter written by the National Broadcasting Commission to a media house threatening to sanction it for allowing freedom of expression on its station, even mentioning the names of some eminent Nigerians that spoke on the TV station in a bid to intimidate or embarrass them. Bawa is still in prison without trial. A government that cannot guarantee the life, liberty and property of Nigerians has failed and should remove itself from office to make things and life easier for Nigeria.

*Dr. Okonkwo, a lawyer and actor, is a commentator on public issues