₦airaland Forum

aminu150: I pity your sense of reasoning. Who are you to interprete the Quran?. All those verses are referring to organised battles(jihad) not killing of innocent christians and muslims. Any1 who kills a fellow human in our situation now will surely go to hell. Please stop this your propaganda. We all know boko haram are not killing for the sake of Allah.
By the way. Another bomb was just detonated in Tal'udu. Kano. I am beginning to think all this bombs found and detonated by security agencies have something in common i.e the security agencies know something about it. This is because even in Abuja, security agents were not able to detect the bombs prior to its going off.
In short all this bombs detected by security agencies differ from Boko bombs.
Just my thoughts though no disrespect to our humble security agencies.

lordnoah: What do u stand to gain wt all these lies? So in ur foolish mind now, u r blackmailing islam, so that pple ll become xtains abi?. You can't deceive an avg Muslim dat know his or her religion well, n wats in der holy book. You can only deceive gullible fools like ursef.
If d god u bliv in is so powerful, y can't he save his pple or convert every1 to b d way u want. Pls wisely change ur name frm fatdon to fatfoo.l

johnshagb: Lol.... Wickid

InvertedHammer: Excuse me OP..I just had to format the article to make it easy to read.

Rajan04: tooorrrh! fatdon u c nawww?? u c wetin ur write up don cause?? dem don quote something ontop ur head oh!

GenBuhari: [size=18pt]Buharinomics - General Buhari’s economic program marshaled out to salvage the nation in 1984 [/size]

http://www.elombah.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5720:is-general-buhari-the-problem-with-nigeria&catid=36:pointblank&Itemid=83

Buharinomics was General Buhari’s economic program marshaled out to salvage the nation in 1984. He summarized the objective of his economic policy (as articulated in the 1984 budget) as follows: "To arrest the decline in the economy, to put the economy on a proper course of recovery and solvency, and to chart a future course for economic stability and prosperity" (West Africa, May 14, 1984). He had previously done similarly, in March while receiving the visiting Sudanese President, Gaafar Nimeiri. Upon his inquiring of what the new military government had in mind for the nation it then ruled, Buhari said to him: "The priority [of his administration] is for economic recovery, providing employment opportunities, improving people's living conditions, consolidating internal security and ensuring foreign respect" (Africa Now, March 1984). In a nutshell, Buharinomics set out to arrest the decline in the economy and refocus it towards recovery. Buharinomics was to wean the nation off consumerism and profligacy, while channeling it towards frugality and productivity. To accomplish this, the government was to cut down on its expenditure, engage in more efficient restricting and controlling of foreign exchange outflow, undertake the revival of the country's productive capacity (concentration was on agriculture), and broaden government's revenue base.
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The first test of Buharinomics was implemented to revive the comatose banking industry and arrest local currency hoarding. In April 1984, the government ordered a change in the color of the Naira. This action was dubbed the “real coup” by unscrupulous business men and politicians who had almost eliminated the need for commercial banking in Nigeria by keeping their moneys under their mattresses or by trafficking them into neighboring West African countries. This currency change, which forced all holders of the naira notes into exchanging them for the new naira notes at commercial banks, infused billions that had remained unaccounted for into the banking industry and eliminated counterfeited currencies, which had inflicted inflationary and other nefarious effects on the economy. This measure had an immediate revitalizing effect in the banking industry and was an unqualified success. Banks that were close to collapsing became vibrant again, to the extent that some of them began to hire hitherto unemployed Nigerians.
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To cut down on government expenses, the federal work force was cut by 30% and imports for 1984 pegged at 4 billion pounds (mostly on basic foodstuffs, spare parts, and raw materials for local industries), against 14 billion pounds spent in 1983. To ensure that Nigeria remained respectable on the international business world, Buhari committed to honoring Nigeria’s debt payment schedule irrespective of the limited earning potential of Nigeria. In August 1984, Buhari was on one of his meet-the-people nationwide tours, which he began as soon as the administration got on its feet. Everywhere he went, the people embraced him, coming out en mass and ushering him tumultuous cheers and unreserved applause. In one of his speeches to the people (this one in Owerri), he reiterated Nigeria’s commitment to honoring its debts, the dire economic situation notwithstanding. "The task of this administration is how to persuade Nigerians to understand that for a number of years to come, we would be paying debts, the roads may be long and thorny but we believe that on our shoulders lies the responsibility to save our fatherland from devastation that has resulted from mismanagement" (Newswatch, February 18, 1985).
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Buhari could not have been any more correct in his statement above. Assuming Nigeria took no further loans, its breakdown of loan repayments was as follows: 3.9 billion naira ($4.4 billion) in 1985, 3.7 billion naira ($4.19 billion) in 1986, 2.8 billion naira ($3.2 billion) in 1987, until a decrease to 703 million in 1991 (Concord Weekly, May 6, 1985). Nigeria’s precarious financial situation made it impossible for it to finance capital projects and meet up its balance of payment obligations. With oil export pegged at 1.3 million barrels per day by OPEC, borrowing from external sources became necessary. To this effect, Nigeria proposed borrowing 1.795m naira to finance its capital project from the IMF. The patriotism with which General Buhari handled Nigeria’s dealings with the IMF was the highlight and beauty of Buharinomics.

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In order to qualify for the loan, IMF gave Nigeria certain conditions which must be met. In 1984 when the naira exchanged for $1.34, the IMF demanded a minimum of 60% devaluation of it. Buhari refused, agreeing only to a "crawling peg"—a mechanism whereby government would realign the currency gradually, forestalling or minimizing economic and social dislocations because of such drastic devaluation of its currency. In addition to the devaluation of the naira, IMF demanded that government took other drastic actions: (a) The government must remove its subsidy on petroleum. (b) It must curtail its expenditure. (c) Government must rationalize its tariff structures. (d) It must put a freeze on its wages. (e) It must put a total end of non-statutory transfers to State governments, (f) Government must at least institute a 30% raise on interest rates—government resisted this because the decline in its revenue earnings and its debt obligations made it almost impossible to raise interest rates without triggering inflation (West Africa, May 14, 1984).
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The Nigerian government and veteran economists in Nigeria (like Aluko, Onosade, Okigbo, etc) could not make sense of being asked to devalue its currency when Nigeria’s imports were in dollar and its export (fixed quantity of oil) was also in dollar. The implication of devaluation was that Nigeria would pay more to import lesser quantity of goods than it did prior to any devaluation. It would also export the same amount of oil it exported before any devaluation and derive lesser revenue than it received before any devaluation The impacts of it debt payment would have harsher effect on the citizenry if the naira was devalued. This did not make any economic sense to Buhari; it struck him as an insult on the intelligence of the African. Finance Minister Onaolapo Soleye and Alhaji Abubakar Alhaji who led the Nigerian delegation to the last negotiation in Washington were chewed out by US Federal Reserve Chairman, Paul Volcker, for presenting the Nigerian governments rejection of most of these recommendations. For rejecting the IMF conditions and the loan, the Buhari administration got into the black book of Washington. Already, it had earned the dislike of 10 Downing Street for cutting down Nigeria’s imports from the UK by about 350%. In any case, without the IMF loan, government was still in a bind as to how to finance capital projects and pay for imports, especially spare parts for local industries, food items, etc. At this juncture, the genius and resourcefulness of Buharinomics illuminated to the delight of the African.
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First, the administration sent Oil Minister Tam David West to OPEC to seek a raise in the quantity of oil that Nigeria could export. If OPEC agreed, Nigeria would expect to generate extra revenue in the long run from any increase of its oil quota and this would assist tremendously in augmenting the shortfall in the nation’s purse. Professor West came back empty handed—the US and Britain had put pressure on their puppets in OPEC (like Saudi Arabia) to refuse Nigeria’s request.
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To counter OPEC’s bluff, the Buhari administration entered into a $2 billion barter trade agreement with four countries. Nigeria daily bartered 200,000 barrels of oil as follows: (a) completely knocked down parts for automobiles from Brazil. (b) Construction equipment from Italy (c) Engineering equipment from France, and (d) Capital goods from Austria. This barter trade took care of the administration’s need to have borrowed money but it intensified the ill will the US and Britain had for Nigeria. By bartering this oil, Nigeria was: (a) solving those needs which the proposed IMF loan was geared toward. Doing so without borrowing or feeling the pains of spending the meager amount generated from its OPEC approved 1.3 billion a day oil export is the stuff an economic wizard is made of. (b) Britain had been cut off as Nigeria’s major supplier of the goods which the countries in the barter agreement sent to Nigeria. (c) The US usurious money lenders were denied the chance to suck Nigeria dry through the IMF loan. (d) American and British oil companies were irate that the oil being bartered would flood the oil market, cutting in on their profits. (d) The oil being bartered was oil that used to be illegally bunkered before Buhari put illegal oil bunkering artist out of business. For once, an African country had put positive economic mechanism in place to salvage its ailing economy without swallowing IMF’s poison pills.
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As far as America and Britain were concerned, there was a price to be paid by this Buhari, who thought he was smart enough not to accept subservience to their authority. To begin with, a London newspaper (The Financial Times) published Nigeria’s barter trade agreement with Brazil (which, in truth, was done in secrecy because Buhari treated some aspects of his economic policy as State secret). The British thought it was going to incite OPEC against Nigeria since OPEC as a body did not support oil bartering. Oil Minister Tam David West, in a press conference, said, “If a nation believes it is part of its strategy for national survival to do this [barter trade], why not?” To assure OPEC that Nigeria was not indulging in barter trade in order to pull out of OPEC, he added ”Our strategy is to stay in OPEC and make its presence felt, and work together on programs that will be for the economic interest of all” (Concord Weekly, May 6, 1985). There is more to this barter trade than time will permit one to detail in this piece. For now, it is worth noting that it was the major reason for which Britain and America wanted the Buhari administration overthrown.
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The counter trade showcased Buhari as a visionary. He made America and Britain feel silly and they swore to get him out of office. When Babangida took over, on his maiden speech to the nation he promised to revisit the counter trade agreements. Within two weeks in office, September 17, 1985, he setup a panel to review it and recommend to his administration how to revive the economy without the use of counter trade. Babangida rolled back counter trade at the behest of his imperialist masters and at the detriment of the Nigerian nation and people.

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By the time the Buhari administration was overthrown in August of 1985, Buharinomics was beginning to yield dividends. For example, the inflationary rate had fallen from 23.2% in 1983 to 5.5% in 1985. Nigeria did not regret rejecting the IMF loan because it was meeting its obligation of prompt debt payment and the bartered goods were, to some extent, holding up within the austerity measure which had been in place since the Shagari days. Food was becoming reasonably available for two reasons: (a) The emphasis paid to agriculture had resulted in abundant food harvests, especially yam tubers. (b) The border closure made it impossible for unscrupulous business men to continue smuggling food items into neighboring countries where they sold for twice their value in Nigeria.

Had Buharinomics continued for at least five years, Nigeria would have joined the Asian tigers in economic growth and self reliance. We know that to be true because Babangida came into office and did everything the IMF asked and the Nigerian economy took a dive into the gutter and has not recovered yet.
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[size=18pt]for the corrupt, the fear of Buhari is the beginning of wisdom[/size]