The Nigerian economy took a deep plunge this year but make no mistake, it’s not a sudden twist, it’s been long coming and every discernible mind should have seen it coming. However, the un-foretold hardship the current situation of the economy has put on Nigerians have really taken a toll on their memory. The struggle to survive is naturally frustrating millions of Nigeria into believing there should be a quick fix.
Compatriots, there is no quick fix to an economy that took decades to achieve its present dilapidated form.
Nigeria is a middle income, mixed economy and emerging market, with expanding financial, service, communications, technologyand entertainment sectors. It is ranked as the 21st largest economy in the world in terms of nominal GDP, and the 20th largest in terms of Purchasing Power Parity. It is the largest economy in Africa; its re-emergent, though currently under-performing, manufacturing sector is the third-largest on the continent, andproduces a large proportion of goods and services for the West African sub region. Nigeria recently changed its economic analysis to account for rapidly growing contributors to its GDP, such as telecommunications, banking, and its film industry.
Apart from the fact that Nigeria, over the years became overly dependent on the Dollar which is as a result of the failure to rejuvenate its manufacturing/production sector, corruption played a huge role in the decay of an economy that was pitched to take over the globe.
Corruption is a form of dishonest or unethical conduct by a person entrusted with a position of authority, often to acquire personal benefit. Corruption may include many activities including bribery and embezzlement, though it may also involve practices that are legal in many countries. Government, or ‘political’, corruption occurs when an office-holder or other governmental employee acts in an official capacity for personal gain.
Our economy was touted to be a very buoyant one basically because there was a huge chunk of free money floating around.
Padded budgets, inflated contracts, embezzled contract funds, nepotism amongst many other corruption vices flourished and created that mirage that gave people the impression that the economy was just fine. That right there is aresult of the fact that majority of Nigerians onlythink in Naira.
Nigeria’s economy is struggling to leverage thecountry’s vast wealth in fossil fuels in order to displace the poverty that affects about 33% of its population. Economists refer to the coexistence of vast wealth in natural resources and extreme personal poverty in developing countries like Nigeria as the “resource curse”, although “resource curse” is more widely understood to mean an abundance of natural resources which fuels official corruption resulting in a violent competition for the resource by the citizens of the nation.
Now, take some out to think about it. In October 2005, Nigeria and the Paris Club announced a final agreement for debt relief worth $18 billion and an overall reduction of Nigeria’s debt stock by $30 billion. The deal was completed on April 21, 2006, when Nigeriamade its final payment and its books were cleared of any Paris Club debt but as at 2015, Nigeria was borrowing again to pay worker’s salaries. Can you imagine? What a travesty!
Lessons learnt? No! That ridiculous feat does not align with the expected results of a buoyant economy. Projects that were included in the budget were not being executed due to lack of funds. Isn’t that a red flag? We export crude to import Petrol, Diesel and other by-products. Is that a good economic policy?
We were dependent so much on Crude Oil when we have Natural Gas, Rubber, Cocoa, Tin, Columbite, Taolin, Talc, Tin, Quartz, Iron Ore, Gypsum, Zircon, Calcite, Tantalite, Chalcoprite, Mica, Copper Ore, Limestone, Tourmaline, Beryl, Garnet, Muscovite, Aquamarine, Topaz, Marble, Bismuth, Wolfromite and others. We had all the opportunities to diversify the economy and look at other alternatives to revenue generationwhich in turn will simultaneously rejuvenate the manufacturing sector, yet we failed to take those chances but we kept on rejoicing over a pseudo-buoyant economy.
The largely subsistence agricultural sector hasnot kept up with rapid population growth, and Nigeria, once a large net exporter of food, now imports a large quantity of its food products, though there is a resurgence in manufacturing and exporting of food products. In 2006, Nigeria successfully convinced the Paris Club to let it buy back the bulk of its debts owed to the Paris Club for a cash payment of roughly $12 billion (USD).
The fall of the Naira against the Dollar can be simply traced to the disability to manufacture enough to saturate the local market, let alone export. Hence, our over dependence on the Dollar basically because we import almost everything we use in this country. At that point where we decided to feed only on imports, we threw away the purchasing power of the Naira to the Dollar on a platter. Today, that “Unconscious” decision has come back to haunt us and then all of a sudden we are in a frenzy, expecting a miracle to happen in one year, pretty hilarious.
If there should be a time to revive the economy,it should be now!
–Abayomi, a Lagos-based content expert wrote in from Lagos
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