₦airaland Forum

ALTERNATEID:
I agree fully with the position of the Appeal Court since the main evidence relied on to convict the man was provided by his estranged wife. A former and bitter wife will go to any extent to ruin her former husband. No court should rely on the evidence of such a lady in a very serious criminal case like rape.

Whose evidence should they rely on?

Zico5:
I said it earlier on one thread here but one guy was defending Dangote that I should ask my father to build refinery. If anyone tell u that Tinubu doesn't have larger share and interest in Dangote refinery then you are living in delusion. Dangote is just a front on this refinery and if care is not taken these people will ruin this country and there will be nothing left. How can a president be looking on for one man to monopolise petroleum industry. NNPC and other stakeholders know the truth of what's happening and that's why they created petrol scarcity so that Dangote can have his way there by putting more misery on the masses. Tinubu should know that his children will suffer for all these hardship on the masses. It's just a matter of time

Are you asserting a fact you can prove or you are speculating? There is a big difference between those two.

SilasGreenback:
But surely you see the point that you immediately defeat the purpose of removing the subsidies, dont you? Its easy, think carefully:

1. You remove the subsidies to save cost
2. You float the naira and the USD jumps from 700 to 1600 (at a point almost 2000)
3. Since you are paying USD for PMS, then the cost to you has immediately doubled.

So what was the point?
Does this conundrm miss you?

The point of removing subsidies was not to create cheap petrol. It was to save the government from sinking further into a situation where it would only be able to afford the military in order to stave off a collapse. Sadly, people should buy petrol at the same price everyone else in the world is paying for it.

Unsurprisingly, these subsidies are forever subsidies. There is no time they were intended to be removed without this public upheaval.

SilasGreenback:
There is much to say on this, but before I go anywhere further, let me just ask - do you think it was a good idea to float the naira after removing the subsidy?

If I was to make that decision, it will rely entirely on my fiscal position and I would reason as an economic agent. If I cannot afford I would remove it.

There is an opportunity cost for every economic decision. It is a question of what you can live with. If you prefer short term over long term then using deficits, printing naira or borrowing dollars, to prop your fiscal position in order to afford all subsidies will make sense. If you prefer long term, then it would be idiotic.

SilasGreenback:
The key thing to understand is that the cost of those subsidies has been driven by corruption. If you look at the way the subsidy budget ballooned, you will see that it was nothing but black magic at its most diabolical and intense. That corruption is what drove everything to the level that it became such an issue.

There needs to be a weighing and balancing. If you want to shed that cost, you cannot do it in one day the way it was done last year or even in one year, with the addittional increases that have come this year. Unless you are looking for a way to decimate your population you cannot impose that level of shock on it, while removing subsidies for electricity, education etc at the same time.

Floating the naira was a bad decision - especially coming on the heels of subsidy removal. The fact is we were paying dollars for imported PMS so once you devalue your currency you will pay more for it, simple - and in this case, doubly more! Whats the sense in that? So you try to save by removing subsidies then immediately lose by devaluing the naira?

The combined effect of these decisions has been a disaster.

Yes, the question as to where the funds should come from is legitimate - and the truth is that they should come from our very resources, the same resources which fund our budget - it is a question of prioritization in the first place - because there are a great many things which we do with the same funds which are unproductive and which do not support the economy in the same way. In teh second place, we have huge unexplored potentials in many other areas such as solid minerals and natural gas, just to mention a couple of things. These are areas in which you can grant licenses for the next fifty, hundred years for hundreds of millions of dollars. Beyond that there is a huge sphere of creativity which a government can indulge in, which we simply dont seem to.

Fixing your currency does not necessarily mean you are defending it with dollars. The military governments didnt do so. Many governments around the world simply peg their currency and thats that. Not defending it - the rate is govt fixed and thats that. The only thing to do will be to to ensure that the pegged rate is not absurd otherwise the whole system will crash. If it is even remotely reasonable it will hold.

Ultimately, SilasGreenBack, this is the ground we cannot agree on. Fixing, pegging or valuing your currency are euphemisms for defending the naira with dollars. As long as you see it as a matter of fiat and I see it as a matter of spending scarce dollars to fund a consumption attitude you cannot, as a country, afford, we will be at crossroads. CBN spends over 100 million dollars a week or so, to defend this our precious naira (let me know if I am wrong). I think this is too atrocious a policy.

My response to your position on "unexplored potentials" is that I strongly if this government can maintain a 7 trillion naira petrol subsidy with a 4 trillion naira electricity subsidy, saddled with an enormous public service (with a recently revised wage bill), defend the naira with 100 million dollars per week, and then invest the cash to exploit gas and natural resources reserves without mortgaging the future, I strongly doubt it.

SilasGreenback:
In a developing economy with the highest number of poor people in the world, how do you effect an increase in the price of PMS of over 400 per cent in one year, thereby triggering astronomical inflation and expect to see growth?

- When you have done this, you also massively devalue your currency by "floating" it - mind you, no import dependent economy can afford to devalue its currency - that is economic suicide.

- With these moves, you have pauperized the population and deflated their purchasing power. Where then do you expect growth to come from - who will buy the products of industries? Very few - because you have killed the purchasing power - and so industries will begin to shut down - which is what we are seeing. How then will you see growth?

- After pauperizing the population you then start increasing taxes everywhere - how do they pay them?

- Let me tell you, consumption subsidies are a reality in many places. And if they must be removed, it should be a delicate and phased process which should put certain things in place first.

- These set of policies are Bretton Woods polices and they are old. No be today, They have been tried many times and they have always failed. They have always delieverd nothing but economic destruction. Pls point me to one country where they have succeeded.

SilasGreenBack, we have more common ground on this issue. More people have dropped below the poverty line and the effect of the present policies are indeed impoverishing. However, the nuance of my position lies on the fiscal capabilities of the federal government. The capability to spend dollars to defend the naira and spend trillions to maintain the petrol price is not present anymore without severe consequences such as borrowing loans or printing naira to maintain status quo.

What the government did was transfer its fiscal burden from itself to the people. At the end of the day, the paramount economic question stands, "how do you allocate your scarce resources to your unlimited wants"?

Kobojunkie:
Why is the government spending so much on projects it led the Nigerian public to believe it had removed?

Cash-strapped to help its people? The same government that purchased two Air crafts, spent billions to refurb existing facilities that needed no refurbing, purchased a yacht, etc., while it pretends to send ghost rice to the people whenever they cry out?

You know how foolish your government can be.

okoroemeka:
it will be Interesting to see the areas of the economy such funds will be spent,it is already proving to be a bad idea when the federal government is busy busy building palaces,buying yatchs,jets, Cadillacs and most state governments now receive 100% more allocation but cannot still pay minimum wages,pensioners and gratuity,the ordinary Nigerian is now paying a heavy price for the corruption and Ineptitude of the federal government

I agree.

SilasGreenback:
Kay17, keep talking "short-termists" - as though you think that you are making sense. Keep on. You should know better. The elephant in the room in Nigeria is corruption and mass theft, not the inflated subsidies. If you like, make petrol 10k per litre, and implement every word IMF tells you for the next 50 years, this country will not move an inch - and the same ol corruption will sammer everything.

If you dont know that, keep speaking English.
I am very dissapointed in you.

Corruption arises largely due to brittle institutions. The National Assembly is a mess.. the courts are nothing to write home about.. the press is incompetent and bribed shut... the civil service is outdated and over-bloated... the executive is left unchecked.

To ask any government to purge corruption is like belling a cat. Easier said than done. It can be argued that the consumption subsidies is a symptom of corruption. No economy worth its onions will allow its government to spend on consumption subsidies instead of investing in healthcare, education and infrastructure. If all that wasted money was spent on better alternatives such as a proper metro system and interregional railways, nobody will complain.

grandstar:
The petrol subsidy cost 10 trillion

Excess spending and corruption 1.5tr tops. You can only steal from what exist and what does not.

In addition, petrol subsidies drive away investment in refineries. Dangote has only just recently started to produce petrol because it isn't possible to refine it and make a profit. He did not waste time producing diesel and kerosene because their prices are deregulated.

Until the price of petrol is fully liberalized, the country will remain at a fiscal and investment loss. The country by now would be refining at least 3m bpd, but the subsidy discouraged investors.

I was laughing when people were saying once they start refining petrol locally, the price will be so cheap, there won't be need for a subsidy. A litre of crude oil cost at least N750/litre, how will he make a profit selling the end product at N600. i haven't included refining the cost.

You are wasting your time employing economic language and theories to the Nigerian short termists. It is clear to the blind that the Nigerian government can only afford the FX, electricity and petrol subsidies by printing more naira. If more naira is printed, the more worthless it becomes and the more the inflation.

I don’t understand how people don’t understand the basic economics.

Maybe Nigeria should print more and more naira and distribute it to the masses.

okoroemeka:
do that is the law of economics,the problem was caused by whomever pushed the dollar from #400 to #1600 naira

I hope you understand that CBN spends hundreds of millions of dollars to maintain a particular exchange rate. The CBN does not set exchange rate by mere fiat.

The dollars to be spent in doing better things like investing in your economy is used to prop up the naira.

onuman:
Bad policy. No president in the world ever took the economic policies taken by President Tinubu on the first day of office - without ministers and advisers.. If Tinubu had advisers and ministers the time he he declared those economic policies, the advisers and ministers would have objected to the policies.
Mass death to black Africans beginning with Nigeria, that is the pivot of Tinubu administration's economic policies.

Everything is tied to how much the government committed to FX and petrol subsidies. You cannot spend so much on those items without severe consequences. It was mega financial mismanagement to have done so.

Nigeria suffers from a systemic problem where the government is cash strapped to help its people without a disaster ahead when the treasury is empty.

MadPolitician:
Tinubu does not understand that no matter how important his so called economic policies/changes/reforms are, making sure that the people don't go to bed hungry, should be even far more important. Economic reforms are intended to better the lives of the people and not to kill them. Bulaba does not grasp this, and no one around him seem to have the boldness to tell him the uncomfortable truth.

As for local rice farmers, breeze don blow and we don see fowl nyansh. No one is as greedy as rice farmers and Dangote in this country. This astronomical increases in the prices of rice, started during the time of buhari, when borders were closed to help them. Instrad of maintaining a reasonable price regime, what they did was to start hiking prices arbitrarily. I mean local rice farmers. They now want to sell at a costlier price than the imported brands and Tinubu is still daft enough not to drastically reduce tariffs on rice imports.

The government can set up a price fixing agency. It should fix the price of every commodity in the country.

It will be interesting to know how much the local farmers spend on farm equipment and fertilizers. If they have access to cheap forex and spend less than everyone else to import what they need to produce rice then we can blame them for the hike in price as well as remove tariffs and permit foreign rice to crush our local options.

Namaster:
It's nice to finally put a face to the SCOURGE of Nigerians.

And it's DANGOTE and his GREEDY partners.

A NEWLY operational refinery has taken over the supply of 1 MILLION of the 1.3 Million barrels that Nigeria needs.

That's MORE than 75% of the Nigerian Petroleum supply being handled by Dangote.

That's a MONOPOLY!

Or near enough rhat it makes no difference.

Every problem the refinery is supposed to SOLVE has been EXACERBATED.

Dangote pays Naira for crude oil YET the Naira continues to PLUMMET.

He cut out the MIDDLEMAN (NNPCL) and instead of price reduction, he JERKED UP the price.

The transportation savings from NOT having to pay the shipping fees of importing refined petroleum products is NOT passed to customers.

Dangote and his ELITE backers are taking advantage of Tinubu's shitty policies to DESTROY Nigeria.

We can expropriate the refinery and make petrol cheap to all Nigerians.

Treadway:
Ara adugbo oya coman read this one o. Una wey dey insist say this person get sense, dey brilliant kini kan. Obasanjo wey no make noise wey we no hype sef, na prof compared to this dumb wicked man. 🤷

Reno Omokirikiri the madman, and the other legion of APC zombies say that light is at the end of the tunnel.

Awon ashiere!

Look at the debt Buhari racked up in 8 years, and look at what the profligate nuisance in power has racked up in just one year. Now look at what Obasanjo did and left behind after 8 years. Obasanjo left a debt of $2b (foreign) and 2trn naira (domestic), yet the much touted brilliant accountant who in reality is just an evil corrupt being, inherited a domestic debt of N19.24 trillion and external debt of $33.62 billion from another useless incompetent maalu, and by the end of the first quarter of 2024, Nigeria has domestic debt of N65.65 trillion and external debt of $42.12 billion. 2b went to 42b, and 2trn went to 65trn! And we are still wondering who destroyed the country. Ani ko le rogbo fun gbogbo awon to'n defend and entrench this desolation of our land. It is one thing to be ignorant, it is another to be willfully evil. Misfortune will not depart from all willfully evil people, like the toads at dem manna croak, no be curse na fact!

May APC and all who support their destruction of this country not end well in life. Quote me if the shoe fits, and let your life be ruined irreparably from this second forthwith.

Look at the debt this profligate bitch has racked up in one year, despite supposedly saving money from not paying subsidies. One year!!!!

Cc diamond68

Fuel and electricity subsides are a large portion of this debt pie.

happney65:
Soludo is saying the truth. But because most of us do not know the true situation of things we can blarb.

The truth of the matter is that if you want local government autonomy of whatever you call it,you have to change the constitution completely. Even the constitution says the LG is under the control of the state government.

Worldwide there is nowhere there is 3 federating units. It is always two. The Federal and state.

In a true federalism like it's practised in the US. The LG is under the control of the states. The US has over 80,000LG and states create LG as they wish.

Here in Nigeria,coupled with the fact that the money being given to the LG are not even enough to pay salaries and that is why the states created joint LG accounts to offset the bills of LG since 1999.

All states have been offsetting the bills of LG because even the money they collect isn't up to anything

At the same time, you will admit that many states do undermine LG administration and deprive them of the funds they need to run.

I don’t buy the argument that LG being a third tier of government is not true federalism. In the example of US federalism, you stated, counties have a great deal of autonomy. In fact they maintain their police, courts, registries etc.

I think the true problem is that all tiers of government do not have that crucial element of accountability. The FG is hardly held accountable by the National Assembly. The governors are hardly held accountable by the State assemblies. Similarly for the LG chairmen.

Sheuns:
The problem is these guys don’t spend money on health, education etc as you mentioned. They still go ahead to loot whatever gains they made. So why punish the people on multiple fronts?

This is a whataboutism argument. The fact that corruption consumes a huge chunk of our resources is not a basis to misalign and misspend your budget. At the end of the day, our resources are scarce enough for a population of over 200m people.

Sheuns:
What you did was devalue the Naira. You didn’t float jack because our economy cannot support floating. World biggest economies control their forex, upcoming like us dey form lord to float.

I hope you understand that propping up your currency is a form of subsidy. You spend FX in sufficient mass to direct the price of FX towards the direction you wish. If you spend good money on that, it also means there is an opportunity cost in spending on power, education, health, digitization, etc.

MadPolitician:
What is their investment in education, vis a vis the amount paid from jamb to tuitions in the unis? Universities in Nigeria that look like pigsty? There are no concrete mega investments made in our university system recently.

In any event, my post was not against loans per se. I was ranting against stupid loans, that will end up not being used rightly. The loans are also becoming unbearable. Botomline is that the country is not going to loan her way to greatness.

I think we are in union at the conclusion. The loans will most likely not benefit us. It will rather be beneficial to the Bretton Wood institutions, since they watch out for their own self interest. How come we don't watch for our own self interest? We hardly hold our leaders to account.

MadPolitician:
Which subsidies? The ones you remove with every new administration?
Which interventions? "Stomach interventions"?

Do not be unrealistic. The Nigerian government subsidizes education [hence federal university school fees is under 100k], petrol, electricity, fertilizers, hajj, etc.

Please do not assume that the existence of these subsidies mean that they are effective. University education is an example of an ineffective subsidy.

LilMissFavvy:
Subsidy has been removed from petroleum products, then why do they keep collecting loans? The purpose of subsidy removal was to offset loans and improve the economy right? Then what's the essence of starting all over again to collect loans? Nigeria can never be *better....evil men have taken over

Fuel subsidy still persists. The international price of petrol proves that the Nigerian government continues to subsidize petrol.

Racoon:
This Brentwood institution is very wicked. They complained of how the humongous debt pillage by the corrupt African leaders are accumulating, they are still borrowing them monies with neck-constricting conditions attached to them.

If most African countries do not run their fiscal affairs into the ground, there wouldn't be the need to resort to Brentwood loans. Some criticisms lack the relevant context to address an issue. Nigeria has badly managed its resources and funds and refused to deal with the drain corruption has caused, and you are surprised that we have to resort to foreign loans.

Are there any productive subsidies or critical infrastructure that the government has invested in to create a competitive and productive economy?

overall90:
Incase you don't know, these loans are the genesis of most of our problems because this creditors give you stringent conditions and these conditions involve removing any form of subsidy to the masses so that money will be available for repayment.
And in the unfortunate case of Nigeria, these monies even get looted without achieving much of what the funds are meant for.

If you borrowed a billion dollars to anybody, wouldn't it be prudent for you, as a lender, to ensure the money is not squandered on unproductive expenses?

MadPolitician:
These loans are getting way out of hand. This is a DELIBERATE attempt to liquidate the country.
Western countries are sponsoring candidates with questionable characters as Nigerias presidents, in other to corner Nigerias oil receipts through DEBT FINANCING. These loans will undercut any attempt by Nigeria to grow out of poverty

One "I too know" will come on now and ask you, "is it not Nigerians that are going for the loan!? They maybe Nigerians, but their campaigns were funded by the Chagourys of this world, . Western agents living in France and London. They are answerable to foreign entities. Western puppets all of them.

Nigerians should rise up against these heinous loans, because its going to mortgage the lives of their children if left unchecked. They have removed the socalled fuel subsidy. They have added massively to import tariffs. Increased VAT and removed an unknown energy subsidy. They are earning more in trillions, yet they're still borrowing massively with nothing to show for it.

How do you wish to fund the government and fund all the numerous interventions everyone wants the government to provide? Where will the money for all the numerous subsidies to come from?

goslowgoslow:
Go and rest Mr man. We have a new CJN.. if you don't like her we don't care.

Hence the country is where it is. The absence of scrutiny by public institutions will inevitably breed mediocrity. Policies and laws are enacted without thought or consultation.

Sadly, people will blame the Constitution despite the fact that it created the Senate with a function to scrutinize the appointment of the CJN. At least ask about her policies and ideas. Will she digitize the judiciary, or expand the courts? Will she allocate more resources to the lower cadre judiciary such as magistrates and area court judges?

goslowgoslow:
This is the most lame and irrelevant question I have read this week.
So what is in the constitution should not be vetted by Senate to make sure it is properly applied? What sorts of childish question is this?
By the way what is your problem with the woman? Is she qualified yes or no?

You didn’t answer my question. And your response was too chaotic to understand.

goslowgoslow:
Because you are not educated enough to know that there are protocols in selecting a chief justice. To illiterates like you everything is tribalism.

If the so-called protocols and processes are not superior to the Constitution, then why the Constitution provide for the Senate as a check and filter/screening mechanism for the appointment of the CJN?

Zico5:
Is it everything that we will dispute in this country. The issue of chief judge is not about rubber stamp or nepotism. There is guidelines and protocols before the appointment of chief judge. It's purely about seniority and it has been like that for years. We may not be okay with the activities of these judges but we must follow due process in everything.

Wouldn’t the Senate be interested in what policies and reforms the CJN has in store for the judiciary?

MadPolitician:
Noted
The government always give us examples with America, Britain and Bhutan whenever they want to add to our burden through petrol pump price increases. Nobody bothers to tell us what they sell these same products in Kuwait Libya, Qatar or Brunei. These are some of our fellow OPEC countries.

The big question in this fuel subsidy issue is at what cost and opportunity cost should Nigeria continue to maintain the fuel subsidies.

gonkin:
It was actually 47, water is almost 3 times more expensive than fuel over there.

If Nigeria bought from there, i dont think it would be up to 960

Who told you that Libya sells petrol to the international market at a subsidized rate?