Someone shared this with me and I feel it's a great piece, please read.

Plunging Naira - before you blame Emefiele look at yourself

It is either I do not understand economics and how exchange rates work or a vast majority of us Nigerians still don’t get how we have wrecked our country with our own curious choices. Just this morning I was listening to the radio and the lady on air went on and on about how she thought CBN governor Godwin Emefiele was incompetent and should be sacked because the naira was now exchanging at 309 or so to the USD. That view pretty much echoes the sentiments expressed by many people I know and it amazes me that there are Nigerians who actually think there is some magic POLICY that can make the naira strong in the near term. If my economics and my understanding of the way the world works are right, then that is as far from the truth as President Obama is a Kenyan.

The simple fact of the matter is that apart from oil that accounts for over 90% of our revenues, we really don’t have much of an economy. We hardly produce anything, we import even toothpicks, so exactly what policy is going to be implemented that will turn Nigeria into a top exporting economy in the near term? Where are our Apples, IBMs, Disneys, GMs, General Electrics, Coca Colas, Empire State buildings, Statues of Liberties, Lockheeds, Citibanks, JP Morgans, ExxonMobils, NBAs, Super Bowls etc? 

Let me bring that closer home. There was a time long ago when Nigeria had a truly strong economy and the naira was one to the dollar - even exchanged for higher than the USD, but that Nigeria is not this Nigeria. Sadly that Nigeria was laid by the British, and this Nigeria (if you don’t believe in the nonsensical imperialist conspiracies like me) - fueled by the DAMAGING Indigenisation Decree, has been the creation of us Nigerians.Back then we had a booming economy. We were either the top, or among the top exporters, of timbre, cocoa, groundnuts, rubber, palm oil, etc, in the world. Nigerians not only holidayed at home in their villages, at Yankari Games Reserve, at Obudu Cattle Ranch, at Oguta Lake, at Ikogosi springs, at Gurara Falls, at Mambilla Platueau, etc, we attracted international tourists who brought in loads of foreign exchange. Even Nigerian schools were foreign exchange earners because they attracted foreign students. We had different car assembly plants - Peugeot, Volkswagen, Anamco etc. Nigerian government officials only bought vehicles assembled in Nigeria for official cars. We had a thriving sports industry. We were not Man United or Chelsea fans, we were Rangers or IICC fans. We had the Nduka Odizors, people made money from sports. We also had companies like Lennards and Bata producing school shoes in their thousands, we had the thriving Nigerian Airways and the Aviation School in the north that produced some of the best pilots in the world. In those days if you were brilliant you were respected much more than the crass money-miss-road contractors of today. Most of the Aje Butters I knew had fathers who were university dons. Back then it meant something to ‘know book’. Our textile industry was alive and well. Just recently I watched a news report on the textile industry in Nigeria on CCTV News. Though the main focus was on the comatose status of the industry, I was stunned by the gigantic Kaduna Textile Mill built in 1957. I could go on and on.

Today however, no thanks to our parents (and we must call them out the way Wole Soyinka did his generation) and many of us (and we should be remembered for failing our children if we continue like this), we have destroyed everything. Today for instance Nigerian football (which comes easy to me obviously) doesn’t appeal to us, we have to fly across thousands of miles to watch ‘our’ clubs play. Every year we collectively burn billions of naira being fans of clubs that give us nothing back, but some ‘entertainment value’ - simple pleasures for which we are ready to destroy the future of our children. Well people, payback time is here. Even with our ta-she-re money we all want to wear designer clothes and carry designer bags, Armani, Givenchy, Louis Vuitton etc. We all want to drive jeeps with American specs, our children must now school overseas and acquire the necessary accents to come back home and bamboozle their ‘bush and crass’ contemporaries that they left behind. Who holidays in Nigeria anymore, is there Disneyland here? No one buys made-in-Nigeria school bags for their children, after all no Superman or Incredible Hulk or Cinderella on them. We are no longer top exporters of anything and the demise of oil means we have zilch... zero. A country of 170m fashion-conscious people has no textile industry. We take delight in showing how our made-in-Switzerland Aso Ebi is different class to everyone else’s. When we help our musicians grow and pay them millions, they repay us by immediately shipping the monies overseas to produce their “i-don-dey-different-level”music videos. It makes no difference that distinctly Zulu dancers are dancing to a Nigerian highlife song. As stars concerned they also wed and holiday overseas to impress us all. All the musicians who acknowledge their Ajegunle roots now speak in a cocktail of strange accents to symbolise how much they have blown their monies overseas.

Were we a more serious people, the highly popular Kingsway Stores of the past would probably have a thousand outlets pan Nigeria today supporting a massive agriculture industry among others, but today we have the likes of SPAR, Shoprite, dominating the retail industry while Kingsway is dead. And we Nigerians make it a special point to shop from the Oyibos who have ‘cleaner shops’, ‘better this and better that’. For our personal pleasure we don’t mind them dominating us in our own backyard and shipping proceeds overseas. 

I could go on and on, but I don tire. Even as you are reading this, stop for a moment and look around you. What you see will probably explain why we are lucky it is not N1000 to the USD yet. And don’t think for a moment that it cannot get there. Just continue to wear your Armani gear and Swiss-made lace, continue to spend your money on Man United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Barca and encourage your children to do same. (My article tomorrow in my Saturday column in This Day is on the Nigerian champions Enyimba FC - Nigeria’s most successful club - not having a sponsor, yet Nigerian brands pay over N600m to Man United and Arsenal for sponsorship to impress us.) Ehhh, no problem, continue to tell me the NPFL is rubbish or the clubs should clean up their act if they want sponsorship, mo gbo. Don’t curtail your interest in choice wines ( we were the number one champagne consumers in the world in 2015), continue to love your American specs, cheer the education ministry for letting schools sink to pitiable levels, don’t fight them to improve our schools, don’t chide them for letting schools drop Nigerian history and embrace British, America and whatever else curricula. Carry on with your love of French wines and Chinese silk, don’t bother about Jamiu Alli when there is Roger Federer. Stock up on your Italian, American, British products which you cannot live without, including the ‘baby soft’ toilet rolls produced only in that small unique village in England - the days are long gone since you were a broke student who used wet newspapers to wipe your butt. Don’t even consider holidaying in Nigeria, it’s too dangnnerous - you have to fulfill your dream of being Nigeria’s Henry Ford. Don’t listen to people like me who have a wardrobe full of only cheap adire that is actually cheaper than just one of your Tom Ford blazers. Please keep dressing in fine silk made in some exotic place so you can be addressed accordingly. Finally keep letting corrupt leaders who have looted your commonwealth and shipped all the monies overseas get away because to attack them does not fit your political narrative. Let us continue with the fine life But don’t forget that there is payback time and Emefiele is not your problem. Time for us all to look in the mirror

It's a call to change our perspective which is a recipe for the great nation we crave for.

Great ?iece.

Naija will surely be great again.

Ok heard...

May GOD help us, if not.....................………………

Bravo.......Bravo.

You have said the painful truth so that we may all hear.
But we are Nigerians nah, we no dey ever hear.

We will wait till we reach Zimbabwean levels before we start taking things serious.

and the statement that keep us where we are is "may God help us" without action as if na only us get God

Nobody is denying there is a crisis.but whrther it is properly managed.

It is being badly managed.

With the massive drop in dollar earnings, the naira should naturally devalue. This is what happened to other oil producing or commodity exporting nations. Nigeria however has refused to devalue because Buhari hates devaluation. It is the economic equivalent of a child who wants 1 + 1 to be 3.

A nasty black market has developed. It is like when government fixes the price of petrol. When government can not provide enough petrol at the control, a black market develops. The longer it is unable to supply enough petrol at the regulated price, the disparity between the official price and the black will worsen.

That is what is happening in the forex market. Government can't meet demand at the price it has set and the excess demand has gone to the parallel market pushing up the rates there.

Government needs to devalue. Soludo and Sanusi have both condemned these governments policies

Secondly, imports have never been the problem of Nigeria.

Impirts are very beneficial to the economy. The lower your import duty, the more you open the country to trsde, the faster it grows. If you think this is false, simply have a zero % import duty on all goods including tokunbo cars and even cloths. Economic activity will pick up with zeal.

Wheat imports for instance provides income for a million people. Rice as well. Textile fabrics for over a million. So import bans are counterproductive and is why smuggling booms.

The problem Nigeria Faces is that it does not export.

For instance, tourism brings $41bn a year to Switzerland. This is the 4th largest source of foriegn exchange for a country of just 8m people. That is more than what Nigeria, a country with 170m people will earn from crude oil this year.

By the way Switzerland makes more from watches. Just remember that when next youu buy a swatch watch

Where while u all this year's is now that u knw that Nigeria is....m...