'Oil Curse’: Nigeria Has No viable Future As A Petrostate

 By Olu Fasan

The latest foreign trade data show that Nigeria recorded a trade balance of N6.52 trillion in the first quarter of this year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS. Expectedly, President Bola Tinubu seized on the figure as evidence that his economic reform is working. Given that the positive trade balance significantly reversed the negative balance of minus N1.4 trillion recorded in the fourth quarter of last year, one should cut Tinubu a slack. After all, a trade surplus, any trade surplus, is better than a trade deficit! 

However, dig deeper, there’s little to gloat about: for nothing has changed in the structure of Nigeria’s export trade. Crude oil exports, at N15.5 trillion, account for 80.8 per cent of the total exports. If you add other petroleum oil products, including natural gas, at N1.9 trillion or 9.92 per cent, oil and gas represent 91 per cent of Nigeria’s total exports. Thus, non-oil exports, at N1.8 trillion, account for a minuscule nine per cent of Nigeria’s total exports. Surely, then, Tinubu’s economic reform has done nothing to change the structure of Nigeria’s export trade, which remains almost totally dominated by crude oil and natural gas. 

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.

Buharism: As The Naira Collapses, So Does Nigeria

 By Tony Eluemunor  

I may not be an Economist but I don’t need an Economist to tell me that as the Naira tumbles in the foreign exchange (of curren­cies) market, thus Nigeria collapses. Or to put it in a proper perspective, thus the quality of the livelihood of Nigerians collapses, degrades, van­ishes, disappears, is tarnished, is destroyed. I added that really need­less second sentence because there could be some people out there that could claim that the country Nigeria is totally different from the citizens.

As strange as that may sound, some people actually think that the coun­try Nigeria is different from her cit­izens, or that the health of her econ­omy does not really impact on the lives of the citizenry. If not, the cost of necessities such as petrol, cement, electricity tariff, food, transportation, books, newsprint, even sachet water and bread, should not be rising ev­ery day and our leaders would be congratulating themselves for a job well done. Also, no government offi­cial has seen it fit to resign. Yes, they also tag themselves as “progressives”!

Buharism: As The Naira Collapses, So Does Nigeria

 By Tony Eluemnor

I may not be an Economist but I don’t need an Economist to tell me that as the Naira tumbles in the foreign exchange (of currencies) market, thus Nigeria collapses. Or to put it in a proper perspective, thus the quality of the livelihood of Nigerians collapses, degrades, vanishes, disappears, is tarnished, is destroyed. I added that really needless second sentence because there could be some people out there that could claim that the country Nigeria is totally different from the citizens.

*Buhari 
As strange as that may sound, some people actually think that the country Nigeria is different from her citizens, or that the health of her economy does not really impact on the lives of the citizenry. If not, the cost of necessities such as petrol, cement, electricity tariff, food, transportation, books, newsprint, even sachet water and bread, should not be rising every day and our leaders would be congratulating themselves for a job well done. Also, no government official has seen it fit to resign. Yes, they also tag themselves as “progressives”! 

Nigeria: Budgeting For Abject Poverty

 By Jerry Uwah 

Nigeria’s unemployment and poverty problem has assumed catastrophic proportions. In a country with a workforce of less than 100 million people, more than 22 million are jobless. In the two years since Nigeria replaced India as the world’s headquarters of abject poverty, 15 million more have been pushed below poverty line. In fact, Nigeria manufactures six extreme poor people every minute. 

           Senate President Lawan, President Buhari, 

                            House Speaker Gbajabiamila

The result is frustration and hopelessness. The story of Solomon Okon, a porter with Havana Hospital in Lagos, who lost his job during a rationalisation exercise is a sad reminder of a nation that has lost all sense of care and protection for its citizens. 

Nigeria And Oil: Looking Beyond Price Collapse

By Austin Okere

The mistake we keep mak­ing as a nation is failing to anticipate and plan for our oil windfalls. There have been many boom oppor­tunities since Nigeria joined the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 1971; oil prices increased by 400% in six short months after the Yom Kippur War following the Arab Oil Embargo. Crude prices doubled from $14 in 1978 to $35 per barrel in 1981 following the Iran/Iraq war. 

The price of crude oil spiked in 1990 with the uncertainties associated with the Iraqi inva­sion of Kuwait and the ensur­ing Gulf War – the so called ‘Gulf War windfall’ under then Head of State, Ibrahim Baban­gida. Data from the U.S. Ener­gy Information Administration show that the latest windfall happened between February 2011 and August 2014, under the Goodluck Jonathan pres­idency, when oil prices were much in excess of$100 per bar­rel. Another golden opportuni­ty was squandered.

During this same period, Saudi Arabia has amassed a whopping $593b in foreign exchange reserves and has re­cently announced that it is cre­ating a $2 trillion mega-sover­eign wealth fund, funded by sales of current petroleum in­dustry assets, to prepare itself for an age when oil no longer dominates the global economy. Coming closer home, Algeria, the second biggest African oil producer, with 1.9mbpd has ac­cumulated foreign reserves of $156b and a sovereign wealth fund of $50b. Nigeria, by far the biggest producer in Africa with 2.5mbpd has only man­aged foreign reserves of$28b and a sovereign wealth fund of a paltry $2.9b – about 5% that of Algeria. The major difference being that while the Algerians saved for a rainy day during the boom years, Nigeria was busy squandering her wealth, with nothing to show by way of in­frastructure or any solid invest­ments.