plaetton:

First and foremost, remove this notion that GEJ depleted the foreign reserves. That was just an APC propaganda talking point. It obviously resonated and still resonates well with unthinking Zombies. That's why they are call Zombies.
The foreign reserves went down from its peak during the OBJ era to slightly shy of $30b when GEJ left office. In the case of GEJ, almost $7b of that was raw cash in the form of excess crude oil account ( ECA).
That hardly be described as a depletion.

OBJ grew the foreign reserves in many different ways.
First, rising oil prices meant more earnings and more reserves.
Secondly and most importantly, OBJ first renegotiated, then rescheduled and eventually got rid of $38b of foreign debt.
With $38b off our necks, and no multi-billion dollar interest payments and penalties, Nigeria was free to keep much of its foreign exchange earnings.

In the case of GEJ, rising crude Oil prices also meant rising revenues and reserves. But also meant commensurately rising cost of fuel subsidy payments.
GEJ was also prosecuting a very costly full fledged war against Boko Haram . The other tiers of government, the states and local governments, also demanded and got a commensurately higher allocations in line with the higher revenues.
As the economy grew year after year , so grew consumption , particularly imports, year after year. It is also worthy of note that a significant portion of the foreign reserve drawdown occurred from the transition period to the first 3 months of the Buhari administration , when Buhari scared away foreign capital with his uninformed and unguarded statements as well his intended declaration of war on Capital, as projected by his body language.

GEJ depleted the foreign reserves pure and simple. It was done at two levels (i) outright stealing at NPDC and NNPC and (ii) at the policy level via uncontrolled importation of Dubai consumer goods, petroleum products and food.

The truth was GEJ was always too weak and unintelligent to manage anything properly. If there had been no NOI , Nigeria's problems would have been more serious and would have started in 2013.

He excuse that Nigeria fighting Boko Haram was a cause of Forex depletion is a shameful lie. Look at the defence budget through out GEJ era, it was loaded on the recurrent side. It was food, diesel and allowances that consumed the money. These items were bought in Naira. Nigeria was under some arms embargo and we never spent at Forex depleting levels to buy arms.

All in all, GEJ era was a very stupid, loose, undisciplined and wasteful period in Nigeria's history. The man was slack and too grateful to be President so he could not crack the whip and institute austerity measures.
The most unwitting insult to the simpleton of a man is this new one that he "initiated" BVN, TSA and others but he did not implement them because of the consequences or dome rambling idiocy along those lines.

First of all, he did not initiate any of these things. Some civil servants or their consultants did. Why we elect Presidents is to muster political will to implement favourable programs for the people. The guy failed, pure and simple and the country is in PAIN now for it. Only God can forgive the suffering and family dislocations caused by the wasted opportunity of >$80per barrel oil for at least 5 of the 6 years.

Meanwhile they continue to borrow billions because they take their orders from Queen eliza

honeychild:
@RZArecta2 from what I understand from your post, the foreign reserves we have now are not cash money available for the government to spend, because the government has already collected the Naira equivalent from CBN (correct me please if I am wrong).

But is it still available for the average importer who needs forex?

If so, then I will say it's still a positive development from 2015. I remember in 2015 my business was at a standstill because I couldn't get forex to pay my manufacturer in China, even though of course I had the Naira equivalent.

From what I understood then, the government could not support local forex demand because the foreign reserves were low.

Please do correct me where I am wrong because I actually have a very rudimentary understanding of this.

I'm not the author of the article, it was written by a Mr Feyi Fawehinmi. To your questions, I believe everything was explained in the post. There is forex available ie foreign reserve available but not as much at hand as the FG wants you to believe, when you need anything, your bank handles the transactions for you. So yes, the situation is not as bad as 2016 when all banks had a very limited amount of forex per month to disburse, your demands will be met by your bank, the question is for how long ?

SternProphet:


GEJ depleted the foreign reserves pure and simple. It was done at two levels (i) outright stealing at NPDC and NNPC and (ii) at the policy level via uncontrolled importation of Dubai consumer goods, petroleum products and food.

The truth was GEJ was always too weak and unintelligent to manage anything properly. If there had been no NOI , Nigeria's problems would have been more serious and would have started in 2013.

He excuse that Nigeria fighting Boko Haram was a cause of Forex depletion is a shameful lie. Look at the defence budget through out GEJ era, it was loaded on the recurrent side. It was food, diesel and allowances that consumed the money. These items were bought in Naira. Nigeria was under some arms embargo and we never spent at Forex depleting levels to buy arms.

All in all, GEJ era was a very stupid, loose, undisciplined and wasteful period in Nigeria's history. The man was slack and too grateful to be President so he could not crack the whip and institute austerity measures.
The most unwitting insult to the simpleton of a man is this new one that he "initiated" BVN, TSA and others but he did not implement them because of the consequences or dome rambling idiocy along those lines.

First of all, he did not initiate any of these things. Some civil servants or their consultants did. Why we elect Presidents is to muster political will to implement favourable programs for the people. The guy failed, pure and simple and the country is in PAIN now for it. Only God can forgive the suffering and family dislocations caused by the wasted opportunity of >$80per barrel oil for at least 5 of the 6 years.

utter rubbish, like I said earlier on, it's a waste of precious time schooling you simpletons