The economic hardship and insecurity facing everyone in the country continue to raise a multitude of probing questions in the minds of many rational people in the Nigerian economic space. For instance, how did we get to this abysmally low ebb in our national life? The whole situation looks like an unimaginably real life situation! Yet, it is real! It is happening, and it is experienced like a performed drama script because this is not a conventional life situation. The painful part of all these events is that many lives and souls are being lost in the course of this socioeconomic hopelessness.
Governor Babagana Zulum of Borno State has been lamenting about the unknown number of abducted women in the state. Likewise, 287 students were abducted in Kaduna State in broad daylight (about 57 escaped the kidnap). More than 20 university students were kidnapped in Zamfara State two months ago. This insecurity challenge is not peculiar to just one geopolitical zone; it is a monstrous social malaise all over the country. We keep imagining horrors being part of today’s life in our society on a daily basis. Nigerians are not safe at home, neither are they safe on the streets of Nigeria. It is even worse in the farms where food is supposed to be produced to save the citizens from hunger. This is most embarrassing.
Hyperinflation that has manifested in high cost of food items persists in all markets without any meaningful shift in the disposable incomes of the people; and there is no hope of an improvement in the purchasing power of the common man in the streets. Food insecurity appears as if it is worse because food is among the three basic needs of man; and we all know that “a hungry man is an angry person”. Some leaders who have been identified as being responsible for these entire shenanigans appear not to be shifting grounds, nor do they appear to give a hoot (with their heart of stone) about the impact of their mismanagement of the economy through bad governance. This is, indeed, wickedness (man’s inhumanity to man). The only strategy to change the tide of food inflation is to embark on massive food farming involving every family in their respective home gardens (subsistence agriculture) within the farming season. Such momentary strategic step can reduce the pressure of the food crisis and on the disposable incomes of families facing high cost/hyperinflation on food items. Nigerians cannot afford to be dying of hunger, while we have very conducive petty farming factors all around us (in terms of free space for gardening and seeds, be it vegetables). We cannot just fold our hands, and rely on food supplies from professional farmers (who are presently being decimated in their numbers through harassment and all manners of threats, raping of female farmers, torture and massive killings perpetrated by the bandits) for consumption.
Productivity is not funded in the recent politically influenced economic programmes of the tiers of government. Neither was it promoted nor encouraged by the political leaderships for decades in the past through private partnership with investors in the organised private sector. Rather, the abuse of power, recklessness and all forms of financial illegality, through misrule and bad governance took the centre stage. The economy, no doubt, suffers colossal setbacks and failures (like the recent embarrassing deep tumbling of the local currency, the naira) because of irrational decisions that are not favourable to other people’s oriented economic plans, programmes and activities.
Today’s turbulent business environment is as a result of poor management of the economy. no doubt. Local manufacturing of goods for exports, starting with value addition to our naturally sourced raw materials in all the sectors (upstream petroleum subsector, agricultural produce, the blue ocean economy, mineral resources, intellectual properties in the entertainment world and hospitality business, information technology, and so on) would have long created a turnaround or paradigm shift from our mono product, import dependent economy through an “import substitution” strategy, to a self sufficient economic status; that would have eased off pressure and tension on our foreign exchange reserves, which invariably will equally strengthen our local currency, as time progresses.
Crude oil theft is another serious exacerbating pain in the nation’s economy; looking at what is presently playing out in the upstream petroleum industry, where the country cannot meet up with its daily OPEC output quota, and is not capable of servicing local demands of crude for domestic refineries (Dangote Refinery and the other private modular plants). It clearly exposes the challenges being faced in the industry to protect the humongous quantities of the extracted crude oil that are not accounted for on a daily basis, but are stolen by those sabotaging the economy from making financial progress and economic growth through foreign exchange accruals to the nation’s coffers. The government should know how best to tackle this problem and plug such leaking holes, as part of its security measures towards the emancipation of this financially troubled economy. It beats the imagination to know that crude oil is presently being imported by the Dangote Group from the United States when Nigeria is still the largest oil producer on the African continent. Something very drastic and urgent needs to be done towards the nation’s economic growth and better management of the economy through good governance.
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