Nigeria is indeed a strange place to be! This is a country where nothing is working... education does not work, power does not work, healthcare does not work, infrastructure does not work, security does not work, the system is practically broken down, and yet we still smugly carry ourselves about as though everything is fine and ok. If you tell a Nigerian that his country is poor, he would deride you and shout down on you, meanwhile he does not even know where his next meal is coming from. This is a place where people suffer and smile, a place where self-deceit and self-delusion flourish and arrogant ignorance reign supreme. Our system is not the only thing that has broken down, our conscience, our consciousness, and all our societal values have also gone down with it. I want to state it here and now that I have no sympathy for Nigerians, we get exactly what we deserve.
For the past 36 hours, I've received several messages from friends and foes alike, reminding me that Nigeria is in a recession and I have said nothing about it. And the question I ask is, since when did these people started noticing that Nigeria is in a recession? Was it in the first month of Buhari's reign, or his first 100 days in office, or his one year in office, or was it yesterday when the minister of finance announced it officially? Was Nigeria in recession in April 2015 when 27 states were unable to pay salary, with some of them owing for as much as 9 months? Was Nigeria in recession when we were borrowing money to survive and the economy was giving Okonjo Iweala and her team a high BP? was Nigeria in recession when 23 Million Nigerians were unemployed, 60 million behind poverty line, inflation rate 7%, foreign reserves depleted to $29 Billion with another $6 billion as pending request? Excess crude account was depleted to just $2.4 billion, we had debt profile of about N10 trillion, and over N400 billion owed to oil marketers. Why did Nigerians not scream then, why did we not show our outrage and protest that enough is enough then? Could it be because we're a docile society of people without any soul, without a will, and without a way? Like I said before, we deserve exactly what we get.
Helloooo! Nigerians, good morning to all of you. It appears as though some of you just woke this morning but quite frankly, a number of you are still sleeping, you're somnambulising. And that is why I want to break it to you that Nigeria is not only in recession but had been in depression since god-knows-when. If you put 1999 date to it, you won't be wrong... if you say in 2010 after Jonathan took over, you will be even more correct... Whatever you say, we've always been in depression and that is why we're Nigeria, a place where nothing works.
In the past 16 years, the past 6 years, oil price increased to an unprecedented level, and whatever growth in GDP we thought we recorded then was merely a cosmetic growth reflective of that high oil price. If you removed the high price of crude, you would have a streak of negative GDP growth as we have not been producing anything. We are a consumer economy, we have been living on oil money and using it to paper over the cracks. We should've invested in production in the knowledge that the high oil price would eventually come to an end, but we decided to increase wages and cost of running governance, we increased our spending habit and now that oil price has fallen, we can no longer sustain it because cashflow has dropped drastically.
What is happening in Nigeria today is akin to what happened in the global economic crises of 2008, when people took loan to invest in the US House Market and when the price of houses fell, their whole investment went down with it. At least those people were trying to invest in something, our own is worse because we were just increasing our spending habit without any form of production. No business is sustainable that depends on artificial money.
When a country spends without producing, where then are the products they spend on coming from? We import them... Brazilian hair, tissue paper, even tooth-pick... We import them. The unprecedented earnings from oil would've helped to grow our foreign reserves but because we refused to do that, our huge spending habit is now a heavy pressure on the reserve, so much so that Nigeria would collapsed in the next 2 years if we continue at our current rate of importation. This is why Buhari is placing ban on many things including food items. Anyone who truly have an understanding of these things will know that we're in a deep shit, and that the symptoms of our bad habit will only get worse. This is why Father Mbaka said recently that things will get worse; Soludo says we will have to spend about N19 trillion to come out of recession, a money we don't even have.
This is a problem that most of us have known for a long time now. When Buhari was running for the presidency, he said, "How can Nigeria be importing virtually everything? How can we be importing even tomatoes? If I am elected, basic items like rice and tomatoes, which we have the capacity to
produce, will be banned from being imported". And I ask again, where were all these noise makers then?
They say, oh, Buhari should wait until we're able to produce enough food items before he place any ban on them? But they forget that we spend about N1.5 trillion every year on the importation of food alone. Yet Buhari has not banned all food items, he simply has just placed restriction on the importation of rice that we can produce at home. Nigeria eats about 6 million metric tonnes of rice a year, and by 2018, we will be able to be self-sufficient in it if local production continues at the current pace. What the president has done is to create a need for us to go into production, to force individuals and government to see the need to invest in food and push us back to agriculture where we were before we discovered oil. Those who are wise have started going back to agriculture, Kebbi State will produce 1 million metric tonnes of rice this year, the country will attain self-sufficiency in tomato paste this year.
Nigeria, before the oil, was a country where the South produced palm oil, the west produced cocoa, and the north produced groundnut and cotton. It was a balanced country where everybody was hard-working and contributing to the country until we discovered oil and got lazy. Buhari is now taking us back to that era where every region can contribute to the nation's economy. That is why the central bank is encouraging massive agricultural revolution in the south-east, the government is intensifying discovery of oil and other mineral resources in the north, the west is getting industrialised. We saw the launching of a new Agricultural City, the Integrated Produce City, recently in Edo State. This shows that individuals are beginning to key into Buhari's vision. The president realised that without economic stability, most of our problems will continue, and without suffering ourselves to attain such stability, we would get lazy again and go back to the mess he's trying to lift us from. But because we're a nation of people that are mentally lazy, that prefers to cry about problems than talk about solutions, we have refused to invent and innovate. We would rather wail about Buhari and moan about the effect of the mess he's trying to lift us from. We get exactly what we deserve.
I hear that Buhari has gone to borrow some foreign money to help ameliorate the gnashing of teeth of lazy Nigerians. But if I were the president, I would not do that. We must learn to kill our culture of easy money and easy life, even in the western world, nothing comes easy, people work very hard to get a living. But Nigeria is the way it is today because our forefathers refused to work hard, even when they thought they were working hard, they did so without a vision, without foresight. Any child would suffer that his parents did not work hard, and until the child endures suffering, his own children would suffer too. If Nigeria must realise its full potentials, then we must take advantage of our current economic crises to reposition ourselves as a great nation.
Nigeria is indeed a strange place to be! This is a country where nothing is working... education does not work, power does not work, healthcare does not work, infrastructure does not work, security does not work, the system is practically broken down, and yet we still smugly carry ourselves about as though everything is fine and ok. If you tell a Nigerian that his country is poor, he would deride you and shout down on you, meanwhile he does not even know where his next meal is coming from. This is a place where people suffer and smile, a place where self-deceit and self-delusion flourish and arrogant ignorance reign supreme. Our system is not the only thing that has broken down, our conscience, our consciousness, and all our societal values have also gone down with it. I want to state it here and now that I have no sympathy for Nigerians, we get exactly what we deserve.
For the past 36 hours, I've received several messages from friends and foes alike, reminding me that Nigeria is in a recession and I have said nothing about it. And the question I ask is, since when did these people started noticing that Nigeria is in a recession? Was it in the first month of Buhari's reign, or his first 100 days in office, or his one year in office, or was it yesterday when the minister of finance announced it officially? Was Nigeria in recession in April 2015 when 27 states were unable to pay salary, with some of them owing for as much as 9 months? Was Nigeria in recession when we were borrowing money to survive and the economy was giving Okonjo Iweala and her team a high BP? was Nigeria in recession when 23 Million Nigerians were unemployed, 60 million behind poverty line, inflation rate 7%, foreign reserves depleted to $29 Billion with another $6 billion as pending request? Excess crude account was depleted to just $2.4 billion, we had debt profile of about N10 trillion, and over N400 billion owed to oil marketers. Why did Nigerians not scream then, why did we not show our outrage and protest that enough is enough then? Could it be because we're a docile society of people without any soul, without a will, and without a way? Like I said before, we deserve exactly what we get.
Helloooo! Nigerians, good morning to all of you. It appears as though some of you just woke this morning but quite frankly, a number of you are still sleeping, you're somnambulising. And that is why I want to break it to you that Nigeria is not only in recession but had been in depression since god-knows-when. If you put 1999 date to it, you won't be wrong... if you say in 2010 after Jonathan took over, you will be even more correct... Whatever you say, we've always been in depression and that is why we're Nigeria, a place where nothing works.
In the past 16 years, the past 6 years, oil price increased to an unprecedented level, and whatever growth in GDP we thought we recorded then was merely a cosmetic growth reflective of that high oil price. If you removed the high price of crude, you would have a streak of negative GDP growth as we have not been producing anything. We are a consumer economy, we have been living on oil money and using it to paper over the cracks. We should've invested in production in the knowledge that the high oil price would eventually come to an end, but we decided to increase wages and cost of running governance, we increased our spending habit and now that oil price has fallen, we can no longer sustain it because cashflow has dropped drastically.
What is happening in Nigeria today is akin to what happened in the global economic crises of 2008, when people took loan to invest in the US House Market and when the price of houses fell, their whole investment went down with it. At least those people were trying to invest in something, our own is worse because we were just increasing our spending habit without any form of production. No business is sustainable that depends on artificial money.
When a country spends without producing, where then are the products they spend on coming from? We import them... Brazilian hair, tissue paper, even tooth-pick... We import them. The unprecedented earnings from oil would've helped to grow our foreign reserves but because we refused to do that, our huge spending habit is now a heavy pressure on the reserve, so much so that Nigeria would collapsed in the next 2 years if we continue at our current rate of importation. This is why Buhari is placing ban on many things including food items. Anyone who truly have an understanding of these things will know that we're in a deep shit, and that the symptoms of our bad habit will only get worse. This is why Father Mbaka said recently that things will get worse; Soludo says we will have to spend about N19 trillion to come out of recession, a money we don't even have.
This is a problem that most of us have known for a long time now. When Buhari was running for the presidency, he said, "How can Nigeria be importing virtually everything? How can we be importing even tomatoes? If I am elected, basic items like rice and tomatoes, which we have the capacity to
produce, will be banned from being imported". And I ask again, where were all these noise makers then?
They say, oh, Buhari should wait until we're able to produce enough food items before he place any ban on them? But they forget that we spend about N1.5 trillion every year on the importation of food alone. Yet Buhari has not banned all food items, he simply has just placed restriction on the importation of rice that we can produce at home. Nigeria eats about 6 million metric tonnes of rice a year, and by 2018, we will be able to be self-sufficient in it if local production continues at the current pace. What the president has done is to create a need for us to go into production, to force individuals and government to see the need to invest in food and push us back to agriculture where we were before we discovered oil. Those who are wise have started going back to agriculture, Kebbi State will produce 1 million metric tonnes of rice this year, the country will attain self-sufficiency in tomato paste this year.
Nigeria, before the oil, was a country where the South produced palm oil, the west produced cocoa, and the north produced groundnut and cotton. It was a balanced country where everybody was hard-working and contributing to the country until we discovered oil and got lazy. Buhari is now taking us back to that era where every region can contribute to the nation's economy. That is why the central bank is encouraging massive agricultural revolution in the south-east, the government is intensifying discovery of oil and other mineral resources in the north, the west is getting industrialised. We saw the launching of a new Agricultural City, the Integrated Produce City, recently in Edo State. This shows that individuals are beginning to key into Buhari's vision. The president realised that without economic stability, most of our problems will continue, and without suffering ourselves to attain such stability, we would get lazy again and go back to the mess he's trying to lift us from. But because we're a nation of people that are mentally lazy, that prefers to cry about problems than talk about solutions, we have refused to invent and innovate. We would rather wail about Buhari and moan about the effect of the mess he's trying to lift us from. We get exactly what we deserve.
I hear that Buhari has gone to borrow some foreign money to help ameliorate the gnashing of teeth of lazy Nigerians. But if I were the president, I would not do that. We must learn to kill our culture of easy money and easy life, even in the western world, nothing comes easy, people work very hard to get a living. But Nigeria is the way it is today because our forefathers refused to work hard, even when they thought they were working hard, they did so without a vision, without foresight. Any child would suffer that his parents did not work hard, and until the child endures suffering, his own children would suffer too. If Nigeria must realise its full potentials, then we must take advantage of our current economic crises to reposition ourselves as a great nation.
