Our two dollar economy
By Sam Omatseye

Last week, two news reports told the story of Nigerian desperation and the Jonathan presidency. The first news story was the assertion from the lips of the Central Bank Governor, Lamido Sanusi, that 90 percent of Nigerians live below two dollars a day. On the same day, a news report had it that the Presidency was going to spend N1.2billion to build a clinic in the State House.

All the information was unveiled as Nigerians are on the verge of potentially the most drastic lifestyle change since the introduction of the structural Adjustment Programme during the Babangida administration. I refer to the removal of the so-called fuel subsidy.

If Nigerians live below two dollars a day, it means that most people cannot spend up to N320 a day, and it is sad to imagine what N300 cannot afford. It means that most Nigerians cannot afford basic health care. A fruitful visit to the hospital would require thousands of Naira at the cheapest.

It means that most Nigerians cannot afford a square meal a day. That is even sadder, and it implies that most of the people we see on the streets who eat and participate in the rituals of the day like work and play do so without the requisite nutrients in the body. Is it really a surprise that Nigerians do not live longer than their forties? We are a young nation, and a huge chunk of the population dies before they get to the age of majority. Many die at birth, and it is hard to encounter the really old in this society because they don’t get the body intake of food and healthcare required to live long.

If we factor the provision of shelter into the N320, it means that 90 percent of Nigerians live in inhabitable homes. If they have to go to school and give their children good education, it would mean that most Nigerians spend probably less than N100 a day on food.

In the midst of all these, the Jonathan presidency is spending N1.2 billion on a state clinic. Is this his view of transformational leadership? Is it about the transformation of an elite class? The denizens of the State House often have enough to afford healthcare because they have enough cash. Most of them go abroad for the smallest check anyway. Maybe they do not want to go abroad, and they want the services now in the country. But why can’t they concentrate on primary healthcare. I wondered aloud at the office when I saw the news report about how many primary health centres N1.2 billion can build in the country. With N10 million, a small health centre will be in place with at least a nurse and small generator and a few basic medications. Many Nigerians die for lack of such rudimentary care. How many N10 million do we have in N1.2 billion?

Another news report said the Presidency runs a budget of about N1 billion on food and entertainment. I also wonder what amount of food and how many people gorge on the food in the course of a year.

How much would it cost to have three square meals a day? Somebody told me it could cost a person in the region of a N1,000 conservatively. So, those in Aso Rock have a surfeit of balanced diet? Somebody needs to explain to us how so much money goes to so few people when the majority cannot enjoy the basic of subsistence living.

It all shows that Jonathan does not really get the issue of governance. In his anaemic media chat last week, he could not articulate any salient point. He stumbled rhetorically from one point to another as though words were a burden or ideas were too profound or governing Nigeria was too complex for him.

He said many projects were on and he could not mention one, and he could not show why the so-called subsidy should go. Yet, he wants sacrifice for Nigerians. He wants the teeming majority who live on less than N320 a day to sacrifice. So how about the sacrifice of the helmsmen? If the subsidy goes, the average Nigerian would then live below a dollar a day.

Sanusi’s assertion of two dollars was generous. Less than a decade ago, a research reported that Nigerians lived on a dollar a day. Today, the infrastructure is poorer, more people are out of job, power supply has not stopped more companies from shutting down and packing their all to Ghana and other countries, the borders are more porous. The value of the naira has dropped steeper than those years.  The implication is that the standard of living has plummeted.

But with subsidy gone, Nigerians would be living under a dollar and that will translate to below N160 a day.

Is that not scary? Yet, President Jonathan still wants us to believe he is a transformational leader. I don’t believe he is. The year 2011 is the year of the great deception. It began with many feeling that Jonathan deserved to be the president for no other reason that he did not come from the North.

As I noted on this page when he won the polls, most Nigerians who voted him in ought to accept whatever he anoints as policy. No one voted him in to change Nigeria. According to those who voted him in, his election was the definition of change. Now, things are on the downswing. They should not complain.

Violence has become a metaphor for Nigeria. He won what his spinmeisters called a pan-Nigerian mandate. Now the North boils. Christmas boiled over with the blood of the innocent. Some of his men have argued that top Northerners are quietly gloating that the man cannot tackle the crisis.

Some have argued that northerners suffer from sour grapes because the North did not get the crown, having lost it at the demise of Yar’Adua. No one has evidence of this, but their point may well be true.

Prominent northerners have not really spoken with any stridency about the Boko Haram outrage. They should. But we should not forget some salient points though. Boko Haram did not begin in April this year. Jos and the plateau had burned long before he became acting president.

Two, President Jonathan did not make a concerted effort to reach out to the North, especially after the acrimony that shot through the zoning debate of the past year. He probably assumed that he had a pan-Nigerian mandate.

The basic thing is that the flowering of Boko Haram is a failure of governance. Jonathan’s intelligence and security strategies and institutions have failed over and over again. He seems clueless.

We came to the year with many hoping things would be better. But things got worse. We are ending the year bowled over by the breakdown of security. We are going to enter the new year worried over another security: food and other basic amenities. With subsidy gone, we cannot predict the agonies ahead. Ironically, the partisans of these bombings were driven to such acts of violence by the lack of basic provision. 

It is because 90 percent of us cannot afford N320 a day that we have Boko Haram and all the other security nightmares. This is especially so when they see obscene displays of plenty like spending N1 billion for food in the State House and N1.2 billion for a clinic in which facilities will also be provided for pets.

In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Prospero inspired the line: “Our revels now are ended.” In the midst of the Christmas jollification and new year gusto, the bard probably had 2011 in mind when he minted those words.

http://www.thenationonlineng.net/2011/index.php/columnist/monday/sam-omatseye/31058-our-two-dollar-economy.html

Nigeria is a country that's sitting on time bomb. The very reasons that created Boko Haram are still there. The very factors that led to the menace of Niger Delta militants are unresolved. Worse still, is anyone even lifting a finger to solve the root problems?

Boko Haram, etc are just symptoms of a deeper problem which root causes are still being ignored. Until the root problems are tackled, the time bomb continues to tick.