In a 1972 Hollywood film entitled The Candidate, Robert Redford acts as<\/p>\n
Bill Mckay, a political neophyte who is drafted out of the blue into a
\nrace for the U.S. Senate. With no chance whatsoever of winning, Mckay is
\ngiven a free hand to say whatever he likes on the stump. Therefore, he
\ntweaks the political establishment at every turn.<\/p>\n
However, as a result of a series of unexpected developments, he keeps
\nrising in the polls. By Election Day, he is neck and neck with his more
\nseasoned opponent and the race goes to the wire. To everyone\u2019s surprise,
\nhe pulls off an incredible victory and is elected senator of the United
\nStates.<\/p>\n
The last reel of the film is on the night of his election. On hearing he
\nhas won, Mckay becomes flustered and confused. Victory was certainly not
\npart of the plan. As media men gather, eager to get his reaction to his
\nfamous victory, he pulls his campaign manager into a room and asks him in
\nconsternation: \u201cMarvin, what do we do now?\u201d Before he can answer, the
\nmedia close in on them, drag them out of the room and the film ends.<\/p>\n
The satire of the film, which received an Oscar for Best Screenplay of
\n1972, is that while Mckay might have succeeded in fooling the electorate
\nto vote for him, he did not have a clue what to do as a United States
\nsenator. It was all a bit of a joke for him, but then the joke backfired.
\nHe never expected to win and had no contingency plan for victory.<\/p>\n
Groping in the dark<\/p>\n
The Candidate could easily have been a made-in-Nigeria movie in 2015. To
\nall intents and purposes, the opposition APC won an implausible victory
\nagainst all odds. But in the presidential election, APC was more prepared
\nfor defeat than for victory. The party did not expect to win and clearly
\nhad no agenda for victory. This is what accounts for the cul-de-sac we now
\nfind ourselves in Nigeria. If anything defines our current predicament, it
\nis that we have a government that, in the middle of an economic crisis,
\ndoes not have a clue what to do.<\/p>\n
The APC did not plan to govern. The party-members told Nigerians what
\nmayhem they planned to unleash should they lose and what parallel
\ngovernment they would establish. But concerning government, they proffered
\nno solution on how they would address Nigeria\u2019s urgent economic problems.
\nOn the contrary, they made wild unrealistic promises that were totally out
\nof kilter with the situation on the ground; promising to do extravagant
\nthings that could not even be entertained by previous governments in more
\nbuoyant climes.<\/p>\n
How else can one explain the fact that, in the context of a drastic
\neconomic downturn, the APC came out with a \u201cFather Christmas\u201d manifesto,
\nloaded with such pies in the sky as paying unemployed graduates, or giving
\ncash handouts to the poorest 25 million Nigerians? Foolishly, Nigerian
\nvoters failed to determine where APC hoped to get the money for such
\nlargesse.<\/p>\n
Because the APC was not prepared to govern, no agreement was reached
\nbeforehand by the legacy parties of the coalition about how to distribute
\nthe spoils of office. This provided the basis for the free-for-all fights
\nthat ensued once the election was over.<\/p>\n
Because the APC did not expect to govern and was not prepared to govern,
\nit took President Buhari five months to choose his cabinet. Five months of
\nsquabbling and in-fighting, while pretending to Nigerians that the delay
\nwas needed to find technocratic saints and angels. But the saints and
\nangels turned out to be the same old \u201cdevil you know.\u201d While the president
\ndawdled, the economy went from bad to worse and investors voted with their
\nfeet; leaving Nigeria in droves.<\/p>\n
Nigeria in sick-bay<\/p>\n
We are now confronted with the fact that there is definitely a
\ntechnocratic deficit in the president\u2019s new crew. Needing to make up for
\nthe time we lost while the president kept everyone waiting, we have now
\ndiscovered that the people he laboured to choose bring little or nothing
\nto the table in terms of their capacity to address expeditiously the grave
\nissues currently confronting the country.<\/p>\n
So what do we have now? Nigeria is a sick patient currently lying comatose
\nin a hospital emergency ward. Her condition is critical. A surgical
\noperation is urgently required. However, there is no doctor on duty. The
\nnight-nurse only works at the hospital in her spare time. In the daytime,
\nshe is the proprietress of a \u201cmama put.\u201d The other nurses are also
\npart-time workers. They are a collection of cooks, tailors and groundnut
\nsellers.<\/p>\n
This raises grave concerns about the fate of the patient. What is going to
\nhappen to Nigeria? If we are not careful, this patient might not make it.<\/p>\n
When President Buhari finally chose his ministers, he chose by his own
\naccount \u201cnoise-makers.\u201d These turned out to be economic illiterates.
\nInstead of putting together a coherent economic policy that will stop the
\nfree-fall of the naira and encourage monetary inflows to supplement the
\ndrastic cuts in our foreign exchange income, the government\u2019s answer has
\nbeen to do nothing but blame the past administration for everything. Its
\nblueprint, if it has any at all, has been to ignore the economy and
\nconcentrate instead on anti-corruption propaganda while the president
\njunkets around the world.<\/p>\n
No economic blueprint<\/p>\n
Before Lai Mohammed was appointed, Adams Oshiomhole was the self-appointed
\nminister of Information. His job, was to attack Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the
\nformer minister of Finance, at every turn. This assignment involved
\nre-writing the history of the Jonathan years.
\nOkonjo-Iweala is a seasoned economist with vast technocratic experience.
\nAt one time, she was in the running for President of the World Bank. As
\nminister of Finance, she had an economic blueprint for addressing
\nNigeria\u2019s economic morass; something sorely lacking in Oshiomhole and his
\ncolleagues today. Since leaving office, she has been snatched up as Senior
\nAdvisor at Lazard.<\/p>\n
Okonjo-Iweala stressed the need to reduce Nigeria\u2019s recurrent expenditure.
\nShe insisted Nigeria could not afford the petroleum subsidy. She wanted
\nits trillion naira leakages plugged. But Oshiomhole and his former labour
\nunion colleagues would have none of that. They mobilised Nigerians against
\nher; so the hemorrhage continued. Okonjo-Iweala wanted Nigeria to save for
\nthe rainy day by establishing an excess crude account and a sovereign
\nwealth fund where incomes above budget estimates could be saved.<\/p>\n
However, Oshiomhole and his governor colleagues would also have none of
\nthat. They insisted all extra money earned must be shared and spent and
\nnot saved. They even went to court to force the minister\u2019s hand. Now that
\nthe national oil cookie has crumbled, the same Oshiomhole and his
\nmisguided colleagues are holding Okonjo-Iweala responsible for not
\nbuilding sizeable foreign reserves in times of plenty.<\/p>\n
However, nothing justifies Okonjo-Iweala\u2019s earlier postures more than
\nNigeria\u2019s present predicament. Indeed, what Nigeria desperately needs
\ntoday is Okonjo-Iweala or an Okonjo-Iweala. We need a seasoned and
\nexperienced economist to head a team of hard-nosed economists to work out
\nan economic policy to get Nigeria out of the woods. No such team exists
\ntoday in the Buhari government. Instead of constituting an economic team,
\nthe president is appointing social media aides to help launder his image.<\/p>\n
As a result, the naira is in free-fall and nobody in government seems to
\nknow what to do. It is now 400 to the dollar and the president keeps
\nsaying he is against devaluation because it will affect the masses.
\nSomebody needs to tell Mr. President that the masses are already adversely
\naffected. Everybody is raising prices, using the free-falling naira as
\nexcuse. It is not inconceivable that by this week-end, the naira might be
\ntrading on the parallel market at 500 to the dollar.<\/p>\n
Big government<\/p>\n
In many respects, Nigeria\u2019s economic situation today is god sent. It
\nenables us to do what we failed to do when the oil market was booming \u2013
\ndownsize the government and transform the economy away from oil
\ndependency. However, the tragedy of today is that we are saddled with a
\ngovernment that refuses to face reality. It refuses to entertain the harsh
\nadjustments that need to be made.<\/p>\n
The first economic blunder of this government was to bailout the states
\nwith salary arrears. The bailout did not address the fundamental issue of
\nthe insolvency of those states. It just postponed dealing with them. Since
\nthe bailouts are not grants but loans, with repayments to be deducted from
\nthe monthly allocations of the states, it means even less money will be
\ncoming to them now that there is far less money to share.
\nThe truth is that most of Nigeria\u2019s states cannot survive without
\ngovernment handouts. Better now than later, we need to re-visit the issue
\nof Nigeria\u2019s unrealistic states structure and face up to the fact that we
\ncannot afford 36 states. Neither can we afford a federal legislature that
\ngobbles up over N100 billion per annum. In addition, we can no longer
\nafford a situation where billions of naira is spent every year just
\ncatering to the president.<\/p>\n
Padded budget<\/p>\n
One of the strange things about this government is that it refuses to
\nentertain the need for austerity in the context of our drastically reduced
\nincome. Instead, it comes up with a bigger budget than when our economy
\nwas far more buoyant. Nigerians refuse to see the 419 in this. If you were
\nearning six naira and your income drops to four naira, you don\u2019t then
\ndecide to spend eight naira. This is what the economic illiterates
\ncurrently running our economy are proposing to do in 2016.<\/p>\n
The APC refuses to accept that after 16 years in the political wilderness,
\nit has to make do with lean resources now that it is its turn to be at the
\nhelm of affairs. Therefore, it decided to pad the 2016 budget by basing it
\non oil selling at $38 dollars per barrel; when the commodity has already
\ndropped far below $30. It has also decided to pad Nigeria\u2019s reduced income
\nwith borrowed money.<\/p>\n
Sums are allocated for fake items, others are inflated beyond measure.
\nAlthough civil servants have been made the sacrificial lambs for the
\nbudget mess, one wonders if a number of the inflated items were not
\ncamouflaged backdoor paybacks for APC\u2019s dubious election campaign
\nexpenditures.<\/p>\n
The hard choices we continue to refuse to make today will still come back
\nto haunt us tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a 1972 Hollywood film entitled The Candidate, Robert Redford acts as Bill Mckay, a political neophyte who is drafted out of the blue into a race for the U.S.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exclusive"],"yoast_head":"\n