₦airaland Forum

Lol, this is when he was a graduate of LSE and ABU. When he was on the right side of the political divide.

"Plans to"... .playing on the short attention span of Nigerians. Come back when the project is actually completed.

A lot of Nigerians back home don't realise how relatively easily first class/distinction degrees are awarded in the UK. 1 in 5 undergraduate degrees in the UK are first class degrees - some universities are known to award 1sts to 1 in 3 of their students.

Yes, this is an impressive feat but don't look at it with the mindset of someone who graduated from a Nigerian university where first class is a rarity (UNN had only awarded 5 first class degrees in law in 45 years as of 2005).

This is not sour grapes but from personal experience of being a first class/distinction student in the UK and a 2.2 student in Nigeria. I am more impressed by Nigerians who bagged firsts in difficult courses in Nigerian federal universities. I suspect a lot of Nigerians who ended up with 2.1 and 2.2 in Nigeria would have ended up with a first in the UK if they had the opportunity.

texazzpete:
Rubbish

This racist clown has sensationalized this process. Many people - including myself - have no issues booking and paying online. If the airline website is having issues, third parties like Wakanow are there to ease the process.

Step 4 of the write-up addresses your point. It might be straightforward for you but my UK debit/credit cards won't work on Nigerian airline sites.

Arik has the option of selecting booking from UK but you may not want to, or are unable to, fly Arik. With online payment not an option, I have to ask family/friends to book on my behalf. When I book in person at the airline offices at the airport, it can be a difficult experience with touts/security people amplifying the difficulties.

The write-up is written from a foreigner's perspective: presumably one who has done a fair bit of travelling. So I won't dismiss it as racism (we tend to underestimate the severity of dysfunction in Nigeria).

JustinSlayer69:
When Buhari was insistent on pegging the 200 Naira to a Dollar, all we heard was "FLOAT THE NAIRA"

It was repeated so much that, even i, as skeptical as i was, wondered if it was the solution.

What happened when PMB answered the West's advice? Things got worse.

We don't have the infrastructure on ground to "float". What Electricity do we have for industrialization?

Whether we like it or not, NAIRA has to be defended short-term and then long-term measures that are non-oil dependent would then be explored.

The Naira is not floating. In a floating exchange rate system you won't have multiple exchange rates. So to say that Buhari "answered the West's advice" is preposterous. Na wa for una, such a gullible citizenry.

ovadozes:
Ekweremadu should go and take several seats at the back jhor. They are all thieves, how much does he take home as DSP every month. See kettle calling pot black, imagine how he refused mentioning the bogus amount of money the so called legislooters take home every month.
Our major problem in this country is that about 40% of the budget goes to running of govt. little is spent on capital projects and education, even that little is finally looted by these vagabonds in power.

It's the MO of thieving politicians to unveil superficially pro-people policies like increasing the minimum wage. These serve to distract from their parasitic extraction of national wealth - it's partly why GEJ and Yar'Adua increased the minimum wage from N5k to N18k.

If you keep increasing minimum wage, you will simply fuel consumption and dollar demand as a result. What the country needs is to invest in infrastructure which will benefit all Nigerians and will improve the productive capacity of the Nigerian economy. Increasing minimum wage only benefits the tiny proportion of Nigerians who have government jobs.

pressplay411:
Have you considered the human factor in achieving this?
None of these is alien to govt. But at the end of the day even the best business plan is never going to work when the people you delegate it to are destructive.
I read a post on NL where a guy was so frustrated by how corruption has eaten deep into our very fibre across all levels. From the security at the gate, to the staff all the way up to the management.

Govt needs to tackle this first focusing on the executive and the judiciary before the implementation of your ideas can come to fruition.

Private organisations realise this, which is why unlike govt, they have sanctions to address malpractices immediately (as e dey hot).

If the delegatees cannot be trusted with the implementation of a process of privatisation/deregulation, they certainly cannot be trusted with the status quo which places the Nigerian government at the heart and centre of market function.

The reality is that the status quo is not working as it provides the highly-connected with lucrative arbitrage opportunities. A connected person can buy dollars at N305 at the official rate and sell it in the black market for N440. The highly connected use the government's interference in markets to channel profits towards themselves. NNPC for instance has historically been a lucrative conduit for theft.

Of course, reforms towards privatisation can be hijacked by government officials who sell state assets to themselves at substantial discounts to market value - nothing functions properly in Nigeria. But overall, less government intervention would constitute an improvement over what we have had over the last few decades.

pressplay411:
Interesting.
How do you suggest Govt can achieve this?

By adopting pro-market reforms: privatisation and deregulation. Primarily, the currency market needs pricing to be dictated by the interplay of supply and demand.

This is not by any means devoid of risks but would represent a big improvement on the status quo and improve investor confidence increasing forex inflows.

It is telling that the most liked post on this thread is an emotive outburst admonishing the OP for advising people to buy/hoard dollars. It's a classic Naija resort to framing complex matters in moral terms. Here is the reality:

The CBN has provided dollar liquidity - in contrast to its previous preference to hoard dollars - which has allowed the Naira to appreciate. However, unless the CBN has an unlimited supply of dollars (unlikely except we have a sustained rise in oil prices), the present Naira appreciation is not sustainable. Advising people to take precautionary action (even if motivated by the OP's forex speculation activities as some have alleged) is hardly immoral. This is not a question of morality but one which should be examined through the prism of the soundness or unsoundness of the financial advice.

One can frame the issue instead as follows: if the Nigerian government embarks on wrongheaded and or unsustainable forex policies, one ought to take precautions to insure against the adverse effects of such policies.

For those who accuse the OP and his ilk of causing the Naira's collapse, it is not the OP who is causing the Naira to collapse but the government's policy regime which makes the Naira's collapse inevitable. The OP is simply investing in a way that aligns with his prognosis of an inevitable collapse of the Naira, notwithstanding short-term reprieves as we have witnessed in the last few days. This is not a matter of patriotism/morality. The patriotic thing to do is to ask the government to overhaul its policies so that buying the Naira becomes most investors preference over the long run.

Blue3k:
I agree nobody was expecting much from 2016 numbers. I'm keeping my eyes on 2017 Q1 report. All the politicans are claiming things are improving we'll see if numbers prove this fact. I think they'll scrape by with 1% growth.

I think we are due a nadir soon, if we haven't already reached it. Oil prices have been improving and I suspect if we don't return to growth in Q1, we will do so in Q2 (provided oil prices/production remain supportive).

ezenaija:
I
The road to AVOIDING this current economic situation was paved from 2003 when under OBJ, the beefing up of the External Reserves was made a core policy. Within 4 years,selling oil @ avereged price below $50 per barrel and less than 2 million barrels per day,that govt grew the Reserve to over $65 Billion. We paid Paris Club debt from it and it carried us through the short period of global financial crisis of 2008-2009.
Then came Jonathan He met $45 billion in this Reserve and $20 billion in Excess Crude Account. Under him oil prices averaged about $100 per barrel and 2.2 million per day. If he continued with the policy to prepare Nigeria for the rainy day, NIGERIA'S FOREIGN RESERVE WOULD HAVE BEEN BETWEEN $112 - 118 BILLION AS AT DECEMBER 2014 ACCORDING TO PROF CHARLES SOLUDO's ARTICLE ON THIS SUBJECT IN JANUARY 2015.

But instead of increasing the amount to $112 - $118 Billion, we had only $28 Billion in the Reserve and Excess Crude Account had disappeared. No other President is responsible for the economic hardship in Nigeria now than GOODLUCK EBELE JONATHAN!

Mr Paid Poster, walk me through your argument. Let's ignore the non-factual assertions (excess crude account was circa $7bn in December 2009 for instance) and critically examine the soundness of this oft-repeated argument.

So GEJ spent/looted all the money which could have accrued as forex reserve? By your calculation of $118bn as at December 2014, the looted amount is circa $80bn (difference between $118bn and circa $38bn forex reserves at the time). Had this not happened, Nigeria would have avoided the current economic situation. But such argument/assertion raises more questions than answers and I thought I draw your attention to a few of them as follows:

1) Why hasn't there been a commission of inquiry to investigate what amounts to the theft of the equivalent of 3 years of the FG's yearly budget?

2) Where was the CBN governor, Sanusi, when $80bn disappeared as management of the forex reserves is the remit of the CBN and not the president? If the answer is that Sanusi did try to raise alarm such as the $20bn claim, what investigation has been conducted since May 2015 concerning the $20bn claim?

3) Re 2) above, if the problem was non-remittance of oil proceeds to Nigeria, why would the drop of oil price from $100 p/b to $50 p/b today cause such an adverse shock today when we have a new anti-corruption government in place? If oil proceeds were not being remitted to Nigeria ab initio, a drop in oil price today won't make much of a difference (assuming this present govt isn't stealing as much as the past govt) as the Nigerian economy was not affected to any significant degree by the high oil price. The looting would have had a "sterilising effect" on the positive impact of high oil prices.

4) Supposing Nigeria had forex reserves of $100bn in 2015, what do you think the impact on the currency market would be? If a speculator wants to hedge their Naira exposure, what constraints would effectively stop him/her from purchasing as much dollars as possible? The point of this question is that no matter how sizeable your forex reserves are, all currencies are subject to the potential of depreciation driven by speculative activity. In 2008/09, Nigeria spent $30bn defending the Naira - which fell from N90 to N150 within a year: what then is the additional $80bn going to achieve in a slump which is now almost 3 years old with no end in sight?

5) Sanusi was reported to have spent $100bn over 4 years in keeping the Naira at <N160 to the $1. Do you think that was a wise move and how do you reconcile this with your suggestion that GEJ spent/stole $80bn which would have rescued us from today's economic malaise?

The more you think through this argument that today's problems are largely as a result of GEJ chopping all the money, the less convincing it sounds. Here is my own take on what happened.

Nigeria squandered its oil bonanza on consumption goods which the FG facilitated via public sector wage increases and fuel subsidy. These increased domestic consumption unsustainably and because most of our goods are imported, meant that money fled the country via the import channel. The CBN - Sanusi and Emefiele later - worsened matters by insisting on accommodating this import binge with its policy of keeping the Naira at a stable rate instead of allowing it to depreciate at the time. Depreciation would have let some air out by reducing the import bill and preserving forex reserves.

Had my suggestion been followed, going into the 2014/15 oil price collapse, Nigeria would have had a lower import bill, higher forex reserves and the Naira would have started its fall at circa N200-250 to $1. This would have smoothed the impact and curtailed speculative activity.

It must be borne in mind that no matter the size of the forex reserves stockpile, speculative activity can drain it with devastating speed if conditions permit (Think of the $30bn that evaporated under Soludo within a year). Permissible conditions would be a high exchange rate (N155 to $1 was too high in the first place) and a loss of business confidence which Buhari's statist policies facilitate.

I will repeat this as it is a lesson Nigerians have failed to imbibe: Nigeria's key errors are policy errors and the corruption story pales in significance. Yes, the GEJ government was extremely corrupt but the corruption aspect is exaggerated for effect. The real failing was the decision to triple public sector wages, to cave in to the pro-fuel subsidy protest and the CBN's insistence on maintaining a stable exchange rate. The real tragedy here is that these policy missteps were popular at the time.

What the government ought to concentrate on is improving investor confidence and attracting forex inflows into the country. This is why Buhari's statist policies have made matters worse as they have the opposite effect. Attributing our difficulties almost entirely to GEJ's failure to save sufficient forex reserves for the Buhari government is an exercise in delusion.

If you want to understand what is wrong with Nigerians, just read the comments on the first page of this thread. As we have another recovery in the Naira's value, we need to realise that without removing the fixed exchange rate regime, all recovery in the Naira's value will prove temporary.

This is scraping the bottom of the barrel stuff. A petrol station and restaurant cited as if it's a major infrastructural/investment achievement.

It's unlikely recession - consecutive contraction of GDP - will last long. The economy's "natural" state is growth so even with bad management, a developing country's economy is more likely to grow than contract.

The growth of the economy under GEJ was not simply because of good management but because of benign conditions. Where Buhari erred is that his interference with the exchange rate regime made an inadequate policy regime even worse. But despite that, growth will eventually pick up. Growth picked up in Buhari's first tenure BTW.

deomelo:
You are lying, no such thing transpired and I'm 100% sure you can not produce any facts to back up that lie.

Nearly all the states in Nigeria collected bailout and yours probably collected to so what's your point?

All you people do is lie lie lie..

Which one of the assertions I made do you dispute: that Adeosun spent her 4 year tenure adding to Ogun state's debt (based on revenue projections that didn't materialise) and at the end of her tenure, Ogun state applied for a bailout?

No, my state of Anambra despite being run by nincompoops did not apply for a bailout. To the contrary, it even managed to have a relatively considerable foreign-currency denominated rainy day fund as backstop against an oil price collapse. My key issue with Adeosun is that for a state that borders the economic capital of Nigeria, she somehow managed to fail to accomplish something her not highly capable counterparts in Anambra achieved: take prudent measures to keep your state's finances sustainable.

How is it a defence of Adeosun that almost all states in Nigeria collected bailouts? State governments are run by oafs - that Adeosun displays the sort of incompetence your typical state finance commissioner displays is hardly in her favour.

I will also refer you to the following link - see page 45:

Ogun’s Domestic Debt profile is up from 2011 levels of N30.14bn to N58.4bn in 2013. to N70.19bn in 2014, while is Foreign Debts totalled $109mn. So far, the State has availed itself of the Federal government bailout programme, with approximately N75.84bn of Ogun’s outstanding liabilities now consolidated into long-term instruments, with below market interest rates.

Also, Total government Revenue is growing steadily, at N60.75bn, N66.22bn, N70.9bn and N67.12bn in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 respectively.

http://yourbudgit.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/State-of-States-Policy-Document.pdf

Note the increase in the debt burden at a rate that outstrips revenue used in servicing debt. Also such an increase can only be justified if one assumes that there will be no oil price crash.

The tragedy of Buhari is not simply his ignorance but his obliviousness of his ignorance: he not only doesn't know much about economics, but he doesn't know he doesn't know about economics. His unawareness of his naivete reminds me of the Dunning-Kruger effect:

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive incapacity, on the part of those with low ability, to recognize their ineptitude and evaluate their competence accurately.

Source: [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect[/url]

For his supporters, there are those who support him merely out of ethnic/religious fealty which also operates in reverse (many critics of Buhari detest his Muslim/Fulani background).

But there is a sadder demographic of supporters: those who genuinely believe or believed he will make a capable leader. Most now avoid political discussions (often to be found on tech/sports/romance threads) but a few - in a desperate bid not to lose face - still engage in remarkable contortions to defend Buhari.

Emboldened by the N3trn stashed away in the TSA purse, the government has already announced it will immediately reflate the economy with about N350bn in payment to contractors and many say while this will be helpful in oiling the economy, concerns will still continue about how to expand productivity in the economy, so as not to push up inflation.

What happened to the N3trn war chest?

It's shocking how propaganda stories are released without follow up questions being asked by the people who bought the story initially. If the government had this N3trn stashed away - add it to the money generated through out 2016 - what happened to it?

OLADD:
If this tweet is from Reno Omokri, I think he's ridiculously stupiid. The other day it was Adeyanju making mess of himself with the Trump's inauguration issue, and now Reno is displaying how kindergarten and naïve he is. The institution attended does not really matter but one's depth of intellectual capability and cognitive experience. Adeosun is not underperforming because of her polytechnic background but dearth of experience required at presidency level coupled with entanglement with a vision-less leader. These are the guys that killed PDP indirectly with thoughtless talks.

The problem is that while I agree with you that the President bears primary responsibility for the economic malaise, people like Adeosun and Udoma compound the problem as in the little area they have policy leeway - the size of government spending - they champion the idea that Nigeria needs fiscal stimulus and monetary easing.

Look at that tweet Adeosun released - see post just before yours - about releasing N350bn every quarter as if it's a panacea to stagflation. It needs to be noted that the 2016 recession deepened when the 2016 budget was passed (remember when the likes of passingshot were screaming that things will get better once the budget is passed?). The economy has shrunk now in February 2017 relative to February 2016 when oil prices and production were lower. The Naira was between N360 to N390 to $1 in February 2016 and N510 to $1 in February 2017. This should tell the likes of Adeosun that an increase in money supply worsens currency depreciation but she doesn't get it.

Again, as with her 4 year tenure as Ogun state commissioner for finance (something I keep harping on), a reckless proclivity for borrowing and spending which left her state requesting a bailout has been carried over to the federal level. There is a real intellectual failing here traceable to her ilk which goes beyond Buhari's famed obstinacy.

If the government was actually successful, you need not hold a seminar to identify achievements.

There is also the illusion that if you can cite some successes, that is dispositive on whether a government is a success. But no matter how bad a government is, there will be some successes. No government is a 100% failure: even Hitler delivered achievements in terms of infrastructure (think of the auto bahns) and near full employment.

But whether a government is a success can largely be answered by the simple question: are people better off now than they were before the government came into power?

The true figures are more likely to be N12 trillion to N17trillion. Debt was not N2trillion in 2015 as we had $60bn in debt in 2015.

cstr100:
[b]Some people would come and tell you how the northerners are very straight forward and honest and how the igbo cannot be trusted with power.
The same igbo that have not held power since the 60s and can be said to of all the major ethnics share the least responsibility for Nigeria's current doldrums.
Just tell me which igbo politician will have the heart to do this to his own people. No matter how greedy.
You have the likes of Ojukwu- governor of the oil rich eastern region and military president of defunct biafra, Nnamdi Azikiwe- Nigeria's first president. None of them have been found guilty of corrupt practices or embellzement by anybody. And that is besides the fact they were obviously operating at a higher intellectual level than the rest of their peers.
And then you have the shagari, IBB, Abacha,-northerners who looted Nigeria to third worldism and penury. And then some people who claim to be sophisticated(which remains to be seen anyway) will still come and out and tell us all how northerners are supposedly more honest than every Nigerian and should be trusted with power.
It would have been a very funny irony if it wasn't so sad.
[/b]

Zik was implicated in corruption and Ojukwu was involved somewhat in the Abacha for president charade. But I take your point that Igbos, of the major ethnic groups, have the least culpability for the state of Nigeria over a 57-year timescale in so far as having the least influence on governance.

The key problem with the North though is not greed, Southerners are arguably greedier, but incompetence. This is a theme I keep hammering on. The North has a narrower pool of capable policy makers/administrators-a byproduct of lower educational attainment. A corrupt but competent public official is far better than a less corrupt but inept official.

We can live in denial all we want but Zik and Awolowo were corrupt as the Foster-Sutton tribunal and the Coker commision respectively highlighted, but they were relatively competent.

PassingShot:
I've said it that the premium is high.

The question is, what options do we have?

What happened to the $49bn the previous administration looted, the $10bn announced to have been recovered last year, the N3.6trillion recovered from looters you said merely needed appropriation to be available for the government to use? See your comments here:https://www.nairaland.com/3147610/masterpiece86s-nigeria-recovers-n3.6tr-vs#46292435

Truth234:
This what I was trying to tell you, PassingShot, the premium offered is way too high and we will be serving the debt with more money than we got.

It simple, we are offering more than they can ignore.

Do you think PassingShot is genuinely interested in serious debate?

Ibime:
Regards your last paragraph, FG has always been the last bastion of relative sanity regardless of states and LGs fical indiscipline until Jonathan. We were here at midnight on New Years day 2010 when Jonathan opened the ECA account to the State Governors to chop in order to secure their support for his Presidency bid. That was the opening of the pandoras box. We cannot hold FG to the same standard as the States and LGs who are basket cases in terms of fiscal management.

I will not hold brief for Buharis disastrous forex policy but as regards FDI inflows, however the whole of Africa and all emerging markets contracted severely in 2015. Partly emerging market contagion, partly Buharis forex policy.

Finally estimates have it that the ECA should have accrued circa $84bln above the budgeted oil price benchmark. In pure numerics, GDP effect of Govt spending of $84bln trumps the $15bln you raised from FDIs & non-oil exports of which we can't even quantify how much of that figure depends on oil income/assets and how much is related to the global pullback on emerging markets.

Sorry, who made the estimates of a potential $84bn in accumulated ECA - if there are such estimates, you must be able to cite a reference so that we can understand/view the workings behind such estimates.

You cannot absolve state governments from their culpability simply because they have always been less restrained than the FG. You are trying to craft a convenient narrative that is belied by reality. Many of today's policy makers, including the present finance minister, were responsible for their states' finances during the oil bonanza.

There are assertions of fact you have got wrong: Africa did not contract in 2015 (unless you are talking of deceleration of GDP growth). Nigeria contracted in 2016, Africa did not*. Nigeria's currency continued to fall dramatically in 2016 at a time emerging market (EM) currencies were rising. Here is an FT article in August 2016 - the equivalent of Q3 2016 FY for Nigeria:

Emerging market currencies are benefiting from a “Goldilocks” global economy to rebound to their highest levels against the US dollar in a year....

https://www.ft.com/content/b30843ce-6099-11e6-b38c-7b39cbb1138a

Until Trump's election, EM markets did very well in 2016 so simply attributing the dramatic collapse in investment inflows to Nigeria as down to confounding effects of EM contagion is wrong in fact.

Nevertheless, it's funny how you conjure up a cumulative figure of $84bn whilst dismissive of the actual loss of inflows to the tune of $20bn per year. These debates also illustrate a basic lack of understanding of what has gone wrong with Nigeria. Take for instance the government's data showing that GDP contracted 2.2% in Q3 2016 by comparison to Q3 2015 (July/August/September 2015). How would an explanation for this contraction be made on the basis of what happened prior to May 29, 2015?

*First estimates of Africa's GDP growth in 2016 is 1.7% - Source:http://www.ictsd.org/bridges-news/bridges-africa/news/un-report-projects-modest-growth-pickup-in-africa

mayoor15:
And was it buhari that made the policies alone, tell me how competent the CBN governor is? Who made the inept policies, guy forget your hatred for buhari and stop displaying your hypocritical analysis online, you blame the President while leaving the incompetent CBN governor, if he is removed now, people like you will shout tribalism, religion oppression etc. With all the policies your hero enacted, what sort of economy did he leave behind? And you say $50bn nonoil export forex inflows, can't laugh, how much was Nigeria total dollar reserve then self, bringing up incoherent fact and analysis just to cover for some people excesses, if that was true, Nigeria should have not entered recession in 2014. BTW, list the goods that earned us those nonoil export forex and let see...

You are a mo-ron. I condemned the appointment of Emefiele when it was first announced and have always called for us his sacking (you only have to go through my posts on Nairaland). That notwithstanding, the insistence on a fixed exchange rate is Buhari's explicitly stated position.

As for nonoil forex inflows, this is publicly available information provided by the current government which your benighted and poorly informed mind ought to acquaint itself with before opining on matters beyond your competence.

Ibime:
I was not referring to the recession but rather the effect of Jonathan's mismanagement of the ECA on Government budgets and their ability to provide stimulus with it.

That said, what percentage of GDP does the drop in FDI represent? I would like an answer to this.

I think you have this the wrong way round: can you name one country in history that dealt with a currency crisis by providing stimulus? In a currency crisis, a stimulus is counterproductive (this is partly why the passage of the 2016 budget, despite predictions to the contrary, preceded an acceleration of GDP contraction in Q3 FY2016).

Given 2014 GDP of $500bn, a loss of $15bn in foreign investment inflows + the $6bn contraction in nonoil exports equates to 4% of GDP (this ignores any multiplier effects). That is a big loss in output: GDP contracted -2% in 2016 (4% percentage points will swing us back into growth and an end of the recession).

Regarding the ECA, why was it up to GEJ to save but not state & local governments who take up 48% of the allocations? You may say this is not possible, but my state of Anambra (despite having corrupt & inept politicians in power) managed to have a rainy day fund.

mayoor15:
Exactly, am damn sure that is not the whole money, they man must have sold thousands of those dollars, and some fools will still blame buhari for dollar scarcity and recession.

Thousands of dollars you say! Do you know that in 2014 - Nigeria received $50bn nonoil export forex inflows? $21bn was foreign investment, $10bn nonoil exports and $20bn remittances. In 2015, foreign investment fell to $9bn and $5bn in 2016. Nonoil exports fell to $4bn in 2015.

You have dollar scarcity in 2017, not simply because of the actions of the likes of Yakubu prior to May 2015, but because in addition to lower oil prices, your president has enacted policies that have reduced the incentives for businesses/investors to bring in dollars into Nigeria. You have lost tens of billions of dollars due to poor policies. The Naira was N220 to the dollar in May 2015 and N500 to the dollar today as a result of inept policies.

seguno2:
Thanks.
The above is the reason that Jonathan was better than Buhari and his predecessors.
He understood the importance of economic management and listened to technocrats while SYSTEMATICALLY addressing corruption.
Buhari is clueless on the economy and WORSE on corruption despite making useless noise without any court process leading to convictions.
Only those easily excited and incapable of thinking deeply will say that Buhari is fighting corruption.
A man who budgeted more money for the Aso Rock clinic than all Teaching hospitals combined. A sick old man who heads to London for treatment after banning government officials from doing the same is corruption exemplified.
Corruption cannot fight itself.

I will disagree with you on the GEJ systematically addressing corruption part in so far as it implies he intended to reduce corruption. But I note your point that having wrong policies makes corruption more likely. The classic example os the multiple exchange rates arising from Buhari's insistence on a fixed rate. It has meant that the highly connected are able to buy dollars at N305 and sell it at N500.

Ibime:
Au contraire, they did run down the economy, Buharis statist policies notwithstanding.

Goodluck who was borrowing to pay salaries with oil at £80. What will he do with oil at £30-£50?

Nigeria's problem is that we want to forget the past too easily. This lack of accountancy incentivizes corruption and mismanagement.

Ibime you should know better. If an economy goes into recession in 2016, it is daft to say that the reason for the 2016 recession is theft that "stopped" in May 2015. Why didn't the end or reduction of corruption from May 2015 act as a stimulus to the economy post-May 2015?

You should be looking at the policy regime that has caused a 75% drop in foreign investment over 2 years for answers.

seunmsg:
Do you know how many billions of stolen dollars hidden in secret homes all over the country that are yet to be discovered? Why do you guys like deceiving people with fake statistics once a big fish is caught hands down? Evidence abounds everywhere that Jonathan looted the foreign reserve to fund his election and people like you will rather blame the consequences of his profligacy on Buhari.

Yes, the CBN's policies since 2015 has not really helped matters but the fact remains the current recession is a direct result of the massive corruption of past administrations and the inability of the Jonathan government to save adequately during the oil boom period.

Mr Buhari propagandist, reserve your deception and disingenuity for the gullible. You pose a question as if it is substantively true - how do I know if there are billions of dollars stashed away in secret homes? The answer is that we don't know that this is the case - if such money is stashed away in the country, it is criminal for the government to have failed to recover anything close to such sums in the last 2 years and to be seeking to borrow $30bn when billions of dollars are stashed away in the country.

You call my statistics fake, whilst making bogus claims about GEJ looting the foreign reserves. My statistics are the current government's statistics:

Represented by the Director, Development Finance of the CBN, Dr Mudashiru Olaitan, Emefiele blamed the decline of non oil revenue on the low level of loans to exporters which invariably contributed to the decline in non oil export revenue receipts from $10.53billion in 2014 to $4.39billion in 2015.

Source: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/01/cbn-blames-declining-non-oil-revenue-on-low-export-loans/

For instance, figures obtained by the National Bureau of Statistics stated that as of 2013, the country had a total investment inflow of $21.32bn (N4.2tn). This figure, according to an analysis of the report, declined to $20.72bn (N4.08tn) and $9.64bn (N1.89tn) in the 2014 and 2015 fiscal periods respectively.

Source: http://investadvocate.com.ng/2016/03/07/investment-inflow-nigeria-drops-n2-3tn/

The Nigerian economy recorded its worst investment inflow in 10 years with the country attracting a total investment of $5.12bn in the 2016 fiscal period.

Source: http://investorsking.com/investment-inflow-nigeria-drops-10-year-low/

You pseudo-patriots and paid posters applaud the recovery of $9m when billions of dollars is lost. It's like losing your Rolls Royce and applauding yourself for gaining a Fiat Punto. The reality is that with sound economic policies and a genuine anti-corruption battle, you can recover stolen money and even increase nonoil sources of forex as investors gain confidence in the government. What we are witnessing is a monumental and catastrophic waste of opportunity which propagandists like you are masking with bogus claims about billions of dollars in secret homes.

No. Poor economic policies cause far more damage to living standards than the actions of a thousand Yakubus.

From 2014 to 2015, nonoil export income fell from $10bn to $4bn. Foreign investment flows fell from $21bn in 2014 to $5bn in 2016, it was $9bn in 2015. All these happened because of inept policies designed to fix the exchange rate.

Pointing to allegations of recovered $9m pales in significance to the extent of damage caused by having the wrong policy framework. The corruption narrative has become a red herring, a distraction from the incompetence which has birthed multiple exchange rates. You do not justify the loss of tens of billions of dollars by pointing to stories about the theft of millions of dollars.

Anyone familiar with Nigerian political debates in the last couple of years would have heard this familiar argument: Nigeria is in trouble today because the previous Govt failed to save for a rainy day.

This argument, when put forward by APC propagandists, should be awarded a 5 star for the audacity of its hypocrisy. It presupposes that the responsibility to save for a rainy day is solely that of the FG. The various state governments of course had no responsibility to save for a rainy day - despite their finances being largely dependent on Abuja allocations derived from oil revenues. According to this stunning illogic: Only the FG's 52% share of the allocations ought to have been squirrelled away whilst state governments continued with their spending and borrowing binge.

The hypocrisy is even more blatant when one remembers the following September 2014 statement of APC's policy position during the oil bonanza:

Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Nigeria’s main opposition party said it will scrap the country’s sovereign wealth fund and a separate excess crude account if it wins elections in February.

“We’re going to put a stop to them,” Lai Mohammed, a spokesman for the All Progressives Congress, or APC, said in an interview in London yesterday. “The sovereign wealth fund and the excess crude account are illegal.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-30/nigeria-s-opposition-wants-to-scrap-sovereign-oil-funds

I stand to be corrected, but you will be hard pressed to find examples of APC supporters advocating for a rainy day fund - certainly not on Nairaland - prior to the oil price collapse. To the contrary, ridicule was levelled anytime NOI talked about a need for savings.

It reminds me of Trump's claim that, unlike his political rivals, he was against the invasion of Iraq despite being on record voicing his support for the war.

The purpose of this attempt at rewriting history is to distance the APC from their fellow incompetents in the PDP, hence the emphasis on FG lack of saving. The propagandists are engaged in a bold project of mendacity.