Dele
Sobowale explores the economic realities of Nigeria and why President
Muhammadu Buhari, a former military dictator is realising that the laws
of economics don’t respect who is in power.
“The president cannot make clouds to rain, he cannot make the corn grow, he cannot make business to be good”, President William Taft, 1857-1930. (Vanguard Book of Quotations).
Taft was
American President from 1909 to 1913; meaning he served only one term
during which the US economy was in a recession. He paid the price for
coming to power at the wrong time. Taft was not the first, and he would
not be the last president, to learn the age-long lesson that economics,
like rain, sun or earthquakes etc, respects no president’s wishes.
When Karl Marx, 1818-1883, pronounced
that “Men make history, but not just as they please”, he must have had
leaders like Muhammadu Buhari in mind.
Nigerians were aware that Buhari, until
he went to London for “God-knows-what”, was adamantly opposed to the
devaluation of the naira for reasons that were badly explained because
he is not an economist. He returned just in time for the governor of the
Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, to announce a new foreign exchange policy
which effectively devalued the naira. And the President had been silent
ever since.
The old General had finally met a force mightier than all Heads of State put together. The obvious question is why?
However, before answering that question,
it is pertinent to point out that all those who had supported Buhari is
his obstinate opposition to devaluation had also surrendered; just as
they retreated when fuel price went up to N145 per litre despite
threatening fire and brimstone if it did.
Buhari would be best advised to select
the people whose views he takes seriously. A vice president of the US
had made the observation that “The right to be heard does not
automatically include the right to be taken seriously.” (Hubert
Humphrey, 1911-1978).
For too long our president listened to
people who should not be taken seriously. The country has paid a heavy
price for the delay and it will pay a lot more. Delay in providing
economic remedies is always dangerous. Presently, we should examine the
consequences of delay.
Why, then, did Buhari meekly surrender
to the CBN? It is totally out of character. But, the reason is not hard
to discover. Our president was shown, among other things, the rapid
decline of our external reserves and the inevitability of more erosion
unless he reversed himself. If not, the external reserves might reach
such a critical stage that Nigerians would experience the return of
“Essential Commodities” and the hardships associated with it during
Buhari’s first term as Head of State – despite being a military regime.
Back in 1984-5 Buhari’s government could
not decree provision of sufficient milk (even infant milk), detergents,
sardines etc. Housewives had to struggle when army trucks came to
supply OMO, sugar, Geisha etc, at control price, and get whipped
mercilessly by soldiers. Somebody must have told the president that
unless he relinquished his stubborn opposition to devaluation (which
fuel price increase had partly accomplished anyway) , he would live to
see ugly history repeating itself during his second tour of duty.
It is also quite possible that somebody,
who had access to Buhari, must have pointed out to him the Chinese
proverb saying “Nobody steps into the same river twice”. The Nigerians
he and Idiagbon bullied successfully in 1984-5 are related to Nigerians
today in name only. Then armed civilians could not be up to ten
thousand.
Today, over six million small fire arms
are in private hands in West Africa – with the bulk in Nigeria. The
Nigerian civilians of 2016 can no longer be pushed around by the
military as they please. Buhari must deliver on the economy as well as
other promises or suffer the consequences.
Policies and programmes that are not
grounded in good economics will imperil his government. At any rate,
while it might be possible to bully some of the people some of the time,
he can’t bully reality.
One reality lurking in the background
and which cannot be scared is famine and food scarcity in 2016 and early
2017. With poor rainfall in the country, farmers are devastated
everywhere. The harvests will be poor and we will need food imports if
catastrophe is to be avoided.
Neither Taft nor Buhari can make rain to
fall or corn to grow, but, unlike early 20th century, in the 21st
century, presidents better know when crops will fail and plan ahead for
intervention food imports before food riots erupt.
If the erosion of external reserves had
not been halted, there would have been no money to import the food
needed later in the year and early 2017. For this reason, he might need
to swallow more devaluation than he intended or would like to occur.
This warning had become necessary because his former supporters will
soon start to point to high inflation as justification for their
opposition to devaluation. The fact is, given our situation, inflation
is inevitable. We either suffer it now or experience worse later when
the external reserves might have been depleted further.
It is like a driver slamming on the breaks before a vehicle out of control crashes into a wall. The damage is less.
Finally, the writer of Undertow in the The Nation on
Saturday, June 25, 2016, remarked that “the president had responded [to
journalists interviewing him] …that most of the time, the economists
spoke above his head when they explained why the economy was
experiencing turbulence”. Pity and the fault does not lie with Buhari
alone. It is collective.
In the last elections, we were
confronted with a choice between “corruption incorporated”, as
represented by the PDP, and a candidate weak in understanding economic
principles in a world where no leading nation can afford such a leader.
We are being visited by consequences of that limited choice.
Dele Sobowale is a columnist with Vanguard Newspapers, where this article was first published.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. 
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