FACT: We are \u2018technically\u2019 in a recession.
\nFACT-CHECK: Kemi informed us that Buhari\u2019s administration inherited the
\nbiggest economy in Africa
\nREALITY-CHECK: The Buhari administration have plunged that economy down the
\nabyss of recession.<\/p>\n
Call the first two assertions a contradiction, you may be right, refer to
\nthem as metaphors, your may not be far from the truth. They may even be
\nhyperbole, who knows, this government is used to poking fun at serious
\nissues. It\u2019s no more news that we are in a recession. The minister of
\nfinance has informed us that we are \u2018technically\u2019 in a recession. What does
\nit mean; our economy is contracting. Imagine a child that is suffering from
\nkwashiorkor, instead of growing, the child is depreciating because such a
\nchild lacks adequate nourishment. Our economy is suffering economic
\nkwashiorkor. You do not need to be an expert neither do you need to be in
\nthe opposition nor dislike the president to know that we will be here
\napproximately one year after May 29th 2019. However, the administration has
\nspent its first year in office heaping blame at the doorstep of the Dr.
\nGoodluck Jonathan\u2019s presidency accusing that administration of profligacy,
\nmonumental corruption, battering our image home and abroad, recklessness
\nand mismanagement and if care is not taken; they might have blamed him for
\nthe fall in oil prices too.<\/p>\n
Sometime in 2014, I carried out a research on energy outlook for Saudi
\nArabia. In the process, I learned about shale gas and how the US was
\nharnessing that alternative source of oil to orchestrated significant
\nchanges to global oil supply by depending on local production to shore up
\nimports. I learned that the US could even overtake Saudi Arabia as the
\nworld’s top oil exporter.While the predicted year for this paradigm shift
\nwas 2017, some believed it would happen earlier while others thought it was
\na myth. I would classify Buhari and his team to belong to the later group
\nor perhaps ignorant of such knowledge that was in public domain. The signs
\nstarted to emerge with the US lifting embargo on oil exportation and shale
\ngas oil production rigs increasingly dotting the US landscape with positive
\nimpact on local US crude oil production. It was not rocket science to know
\nthat the fall in oil price was good for Western countries which are the
\nmajor consumers of oil from Organisation of Petroleum Exporting countries
\n(OPEC) which Nigeria is an active member. All they needed was some
\nalternatives like shale gas and Tesla, the electricity car producer and oil
\nprices will plunge. Given the recession which has hammered their economies
\nin the past few years, countries like the US, needed some relief for their
\neconomies to rebound completely from the 2008 Great Recession. A
\npresidential aspirant in an OPEC country should have a clear strategy to
\ncounter such inevitable future which portends negative outcomes for his or
\nher home country.<\/p>\n
During the elections in Nigeria, Buhari didn\u2019t have any visible economic
\nteam. Who knows, he did have some invisible squad which the physical eyes
\ncannot behold. I want to believe so because the Minister of Information,
\nLai Muhammad recently asked Nigerians to look \u2018closely\u2019 if they wanted to
\nsee Buhari\u2019s economic plan which ordinarily should be very obvious, well
\ndocumented and available in soft and hard copies. The president won the
\nelections based on the promise to wage war on corruption, bring security
\nfor Nigerians against the rampaging Boko Haram terrorist, revitalize the
\npower sector and create employment for the teeming Nigerian youth as
\nreflected in his inaugural address. While this is not a comprehensive
\nassessment of the Buhari\u2019s presidency, I want to categorically state that
\nthe outcomes we have today are not strange. Any person who has observed the
\nNigerian polity since May 29th, 2015 should have the inkling that we were
\nheading for a cul-de-sac. Funny as it may seem, the first few weeks of this
\nadministration, there were improvements in areas such as power and
\npetroleum products availability, given the narrative from the presidency
\nand APC which demonized everything about 2011-2015, they coined a term
\nknown as the \u2018body language\u2019 of Buhari which was attributed with the
\nmagical powers of keeping everything in good shape and working well as
\nexpected. Those who felt concerned shouted themselves hoarse that such a
\nridiculous attribution spelt doom in the near future<\/p>\n
Then the president started his foreign trips with the fleet of presidential
\njets that he had condemned when his predecessor used them. According to his
\naides, he was up and about, flying up and down from one country to another,
\nrepairing our battered image. Whenever he came back, his senior media aide
\nreleased a press statement which he started with \u2018take away\u2019 from our dear
\npresident visit to the US, France, and many other countries he visited.
\nSoon after, he was airborne again and trust Nigerians, they nicknamed him
\nthe \u2018flying president\u2019, \u2018ajala the traveller\u2019 and many others monikers
\nwhich the Nigerian people found amusing and a way to ease the pressures of
\nthe economy which was gathering momentum. Either the president on his
\nvisits was soliciting for funds, to buy arms or he was negotiating with
\ncreditors to lend us some money. Back home in Nigeria, there was no
\npolitical leadership, he had faith in civil servants, the permanent
\nsecretaries whose traditional, conventional and appropriate role in public
\nservice is administrationn and management; strategic management and
\ndevelopment of the president\u2019s and his party’s polices which these civil
\nservants are not in a position to carry out were left to them. They are not
\nsupposed to be partisan but to serve any government that emerged; they were
\nmade to become political leaders in their various ministries against best
\npractices and expectations.<\/p>\n
It took President Buhari six months to appoint his ministers; even at that,
\nthere was no comprehensive economic plan, there were no economic advisers,
\nour president in all his numerous foreign trips did not embark on one trip
\nwhich was largely economy stimulating without incurring debts. He went to
\nChina to ask for $2 billion loan instead of to seek long term Chinese
\ninvestments in terms of industry and partnerships. The railway which he
\nrenegotiated predated his presidency and was almost at completion. I would
\nnot want to dwell much on the innuendos of Buhari because that would fill a
\nbook which anyone can title, \u201chow to destroy an economy in one year\u201d. The
\nNaira was defended like an eagle guards its offsprings, our president told
\nus often that he was waiting for people to convince him to implement well
\narticulated policies to make the Naira market friendly, that was a
\npresident who contested for 12 years before clinching the highest office of
\nthe land without any idea on what to do about our Naira. Investor\u2019s funds
\nwere trapped in Nigeria, they couldn’t repatriate their funds, and a policy
\nthat is not favourable could see their investments tumble in value so those
\nwho wanted to come and invest kept their distance. Those who were already
\nhere sought for ways to leave before it got worse. Investors wouldn\u2019t know
\nat what exact value they are transacting and what happens when they came
\ninto Nigeria and this means an exit strategy was not clear. No sane foreign
\ninvestor ventures a foreign direct investment (FDI) recipient country
\nwithout a well articulated and clear exit strategy.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s move on. The lamentations won\u2019t save the situation. However, let\u2019s
\njuxtapose Buhari\u2019s approach to governance with that of Theresa May, the new
\nPrime Minister of the United Kingdom. Imagine Theresa May became Prime
\nMinister and spent one year lamenting and bemoaning the Brexit and
\napportioning blame to David Cameron for not working hard enough to keep UK
\nin the European Union within her first year. Imagine there was there was no
\nstimuli for the UK economy, no serious economic plan to counter the
\nconsequences of the plummeting pound which hit its lowest ebb in 30 years.
\nImagine she delayed appointment of her ministers to six months after being
\nnamed Prime Minister and then allow the economy to go on autopilot for one
\nyear while travelling the world to talk to friends of Britain without any
\nconcrete plans to sustain the economy. Within that period she would just
\ndish out the funds she met in the treasury and trigger Scotland to reignite
\ntheir secession bid creating divisions and resents. What do you think would
\nhappen to the UK economy after one year? If you can answer that, then look
\n‘closely’ as suggested by Lai Muhammad so that you see what happened to
\nNigeria between the periods of May 2015- May 2016?<\/p>\n
After suffering similar fate with Nigeria, Britain boosted its economy
\nbecause the new government is pragmatic and visionary. Businesses were in
\ntrouble, what did the Prime Minister do, instead of bemoaning the Brexit,
\nshe faced the economy squarely, appointed all the relevant minsters and
\nensured there were stimuli for the economy and the tide turned in a few
\nweeks after the Brexit. Last week, the UK attracted $32 billion investment
\nin a takeover of a company by Japanese investors. May\u2019s ministers are
\nmoving around assuring friends and allies that they are on top of the
\nsituation. The foreign minister of UK met with his US counterpart and
\nbriefed the press. It was after addressing the economy and internal matters
\nthat \u2018Mother\u2019 Theresa started travelling to the EU to meet Germany, France
\nand other influential EU countries to negotiate and lament Brexit. What was
\nthe approach here, the exact opposite, the economy was abandoned and what
\nwe did for one year was corruption war and blaming the past administration,
\nNaira policy was on pause for over year without any market-friendly policy.
\nBuhari was visiting countries not to attract investment but to bash the
\nJonathan’s administration, borrow money and buy arms. He didn’t move around
\nwith our business community to attract and negotiate deals. I remember
\nBuhari embarassing a business mogul, because he dared to smuggle his way
\ninto Buhari’s entourage and use Buhari’s image presumably as the president
\nto woo investors. It was just a matter of time before we arrived here
\ntoday. If you know anything about management, you would know that any
\nbusiness left for one year on autopilot will not remain the same. And the
\nmost probable outcome is depreciation instead of appreciation.<\/p>\n
Ask me the major factor behind the recession; I would answer President
\nMuhammadu Buhari, not the fall in oil prices. He can go on blaming the past
\ngovernment for not saving enough for him to come and plunder and become a
\nlazy president, his actions and inaction in the past one year is enough to
\nwreck any economy \u2013 US, UK, Germany, South Korea, Japan, Chile, Canada,
\nSwitzerland- just name any country. There is no country that his undefined
\napproach to governance which defies commonsense and does not follow any
\ntheory or model of free market economy that will survive Buhari in the past
\none year. In the near future, people in democracies may tell their
\ncitizens, \u201cdon\u2019t elect a \u2018Buhari\u2019 for us\u201d, if we find ourselves in 2019
\nwith the status quo.<\/p>\n
I admire our minister of finance because she is physically attractive, I
\nlike her, she is beautiful and has a very infectious British accent,
\nhowever, as we speak, our economy has defied her beauty and is instead
\ngetting uglier by the day. I would not blame her entirely because it takes
\na commander-in-chief to set out his vision for the economy, get his
\neconomic team to set out the economic plan and then work with the minister
\nof finance who should be a member of the economic team to achieve the
\nmission set out in detailed policy directives.<\/p>\n
I hope the president realizes that he is the trouble with Nigeria as one
\nforeigner commentator said the other time; \u2018Buhari is Nigeria\u2019s problem,
\nnot its solution\u2019. I hope the president can make amends soonest; Nigerians
\nneed some reprieve from their contracting economy. Our economy requires
\nsome combination of therapy from a team of doctors led by the chief medical
\nofficer, in this case President Dr. Buhari to help our economy recover from
\nthis economic kwashiorkor.
\n……………………………………
\nThankGod Ukachukwu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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