By Omoh Gabriel
In this column in August last year, I had cause to
ask how far President Buhari can go in managing a tough economy. There has been
growing concerns about this government’s handling of the economy. At the
moment, there seems to be no clear cut economic blueprint for which government
policies are framed. It appears to me that every minister is working by
intuition without any economic guiding principle.
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| *President Buhari |
The President is yet to appoint his Chief Economic
adviser, have an economic management team or a think tank that meets regularly
to discuss what is on ground, what measures needed to be put in place to
address them quickly. It is like the focus is all about looking for thieves,
catching them, and recovering what they have stolen. This is good and fair
enough. After the President has finished the recovery of the looted funds, what
next and how will the looted funds be channeled into the economy to benefit the
ordinary Nigerian?
What the ordinary Nigerian is interested in is food
on his table, good school for his children, good medical care and shelter and
security of life and property.
In any economy, the goal of macro economic policy
is to achieve full employment of resources, balance growth, stable prices of
goods and services; and a stable currency through a healthy balance of payment.
As it is today, all four macro economic indices are
pointing south. This government seems not to understand or know what to do to
address the situation. The government does not need to go too far to know what
to do. Nigeria
has several development research documents that speak of ways to better manage
the economy. But the problem has always been that leaders are often not focused
enough to implement them faithfully.
In most countries today, the economics of the
middle class has taken the center stage. This is because if the middle class is
doing well, the purchasing power in the hand of this class will make the
economy to grow. When in 1986, General Babangida introduced the famous
Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), it was with good intention. But half way
down the line of implementation, the programme was derailed by Nigerians who
kept crying of the hardship the programme was putting the nation through.
President Babagida before coming up with SAP had a
retinue of very bright minds as his advisers. Babagida had a team then that was
called the Presidential Economic Advisory Council. This body was busy preparing
documents and seeking informed opinion from operators in the private sector. He
went to the point of instituting what was then known as Corporate Nigeria — a
yearly gathering of captains of industry to tap their knowledge of the economy
before any policy initiative.
