Nigeria: Plunging Down A Dark, Bottomless Hole

 By Adekunle Adekoya

For the Tinubu administration and majority of hapless Nigerians, it is a long season of unending downpour in terms of misfortunes. Things were already bad, with no respite in sight before May 29, 2023. For the major part of Buhari’s presidency, things decidedly took turns southwards.

Insecurity worsened as bands of kidnappers terrorised the entire nation without let or hindrance; cultists unleashed an orgy of killings all over the country, while the nation’s lifeblood, crude oil, became fair game to cabals of oil thieves. Not that stealing of crude was new. Under Buhari, it just worsened to the extent that the nation could not even meet the production quota alloted it by the oil cartel, OPEC.

With reserves draining fast and petrodollars drying up, the nation’s exchequer took a beating. Rather than do the needful, our government resorted to the laziest approach of generating resources through the infamous Ways and Means. For a long period of time, Nigerians were just spending money that government rolled out of the mint, money not backed by any production activity.

To worsen matters, government continued to borrow from just any creditor that could lend money. Within a very short time, Nigeria was back in the debt trap that the Obasanjo administration worked tirelessly to unspring her from.

The most disheartening side of the loans was that they were mainly used to fund consumption — paying salaries and meeting recurrent bills. Meanwhile, farmers had been driven off the farms by marauding bands of herdsmen that government found impossible to rein in. Famine was in the land.

Meanwhile, the Buhari government had been unable to deal with the racketeering through which emergency billionaires were created, just like his predecessors.

Against this backdrop, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu came in as president and on his inauguration day, announced removal of subsidy on petrol. That declaration immediately sent the economy into a tailspin that resulted in prices of food items and other things quadrupling almost overnight. We are still reeling from the effects.

With inflation at almost 28 per cent, it is becoming VERY difficult for the ordinary Nigerian to generate just two meals a day. Forget whether the meal is square or rectangular, or any other shape. Where we are now, a meal is a meal, especially when something is available to be eaten. Collapsing the foreign exchange windows was actualised, and in a structured economy, would have yielded desired results. Instead, we have seen the opposite. It cannot but be like that in a country where arbitrage yields fantastic returns.

To get to grips with issues, government has embarked on a series of diplomatic initiatives targeted at attracting Forex inflow so that the free fall in the value of the Naira may be arrested.

And so, President Tinubu found himself in Saudi Arabia as participant in the Arab-Africa Summit. Before him, Buhari had attended the China-Africa summit and a host of similar gatherings. My take is that these efforts may not yield desired results if we don’t do what we need to do first. That is simple: government must get the country back to the production line, and away from the import dependent, consumption-driven profile that we have generated.

If we don’t get back to the production line, FDI, no matter how substantial, will help us only in the short term. It will be a good thing if local refining of crude can resume as soon as possible. That will help us conserve the billions we are currently dashing out to other countries. But our leaders know all these, don’t they? Then why are we not seeing action in that direction?

We need to see that government is really working to bring relief to the people. Right now, most Nigerians feel they are just plunging down a dark, bottomless hole. That feeling must be banished. 

*Adekoya is a commentator on public issues