IbeOkehie:


Sorry I disagree. I'm intimately familiar with the corruption of Commodity Boards when they existed. Let me give you an example based on the QUALITY argument you've put up here.

When Nigeria had commodity boards, they were the SOLE legal buyers of all their specified commodities and did enforce quality standards for say, cocoa. Cocoa beans would be ranked as A, B, or D grade or whatever the nomenclature was at the time, with highest price for A and lowest price for D.

What happened what the Commodity Board inspectors would take BRIBES from the farmers who presented "Grade D" beans, and record it as Grade B, thus giving the farmer a higher price than deserved. I'm sure you can follow all the trail of CORRUPTION & CONSEQUENCES that flowed from this. For whatever it's worth, the REAL REASON that Brazil, EU and others claim Nigerian products are below standard is to protect their domestic producers from competition. That's all, the EU in particular is a protectionist project and that is why it's economy is doesn't grown much and is not as innovative as the USA. The solution for Nigeria is to grow it's own consumer market using free market principles. There's no reason Nigerians can't prosper by selling to themselves and as they get better, the world will have to come begging to buy.

Another aspect of the Commodity Boards was their role as SOLE BUYER, no farmer could sell their produce to ANY OTHER PERSON or ENTITY except the Board, which also set the price. So the government would make money by setting a price of $100 per bag of cocoa and then export it to Europe at the world price of $300, earning the government a profit of $200. This was basic ROBBERY of the farmers by government. And of course many farmers reacted by SMUGGLING their cocoa to Benin or Ivory Coast to sell at world prices.

When Muhammadu Buhari was military President in 1984, he fought smuggling very tenaciously and many cocoa farmers went to prison for the crime of trying to sell their own produce to whomsoever they wished! That's ECONOMIC TYRANNY defined.

In case you didn't know, even though Bola Tinubu has been campaigning for Commodity Boards for at least 7 years now that I can recall, President Buhari started the process very recently, I think he couldn't go for the full thing because the National Assembly didn't pass a law -

https://punchng.com/fg-bans-foreign-firms-direct-dealing-with-farmers/

Read the article and weep. It's very, very bad. At the very least, these policies will create huge avenues for corruption, same as with all the other subsidized and government controlled sectors like university education, fuel, forex and whatever else. Another thing that ALWAYS comes from government control is SCARCITY. This won't be scarcity of FUEL or University education, this is gonna be scarcity of FOOD, as in this might result in FAMINE.

I only argue about what I know. I've been nervous that this policy will come and now it's here. This is going to be bad....very bad.

Good Luck to Nigerians!

fuuuuuuuuucck
We ducked if this congress to fruition.