sangresan:



A complete dunce on Nairaland. Mention those free trade zones licensed by Obj and show us links to verify your stupid remarks.

A simple Google search will educate your ignorance instead of exhibiting how daft you are on Nairaland. That asides, state governments cannot by law establish free trade zones without it being licensed by the federal government.

naptu2:
The origin of the Lekki refinery

I have heard talk that the government wanted to build a seaport in the Lekki area since the 1980s. I also heard talk that the government wanted to build an airport in the Lekki area since the early 1990s (at that time some people were debating about whether the noise from planes would disturb people that lived in Lekki Phase 1. They didn't realise how big Lekki was).

However, all this talk was just that, talk. Nothing concrete was done about these ideas, in fact, the government did not even make public announcements about them, they were more like rumours among people that were close to government.

Nothing concrete was done until Bola Tinubu became governor of Lagos in 1999.

The Tinubu Administration proposed a free trade zone in the Lekki area. It would have a deep sea port, an airport, a refinery, a metro rail line, new residential estates, its own power plant, etc. Governor Tinubu travelled to China to attract investors to the project and most of the companies that were involved in building and running most of the industries and facilities at the free trade zone were from China.




https://allafrica.com/stories/200605120070.html

Arrant nonsense, the idea of Free trade zone was a policy of the Obasanjo administration and the Lagos state government merely tapped into it being the commercial nerve center of the country and also being a port city. Any other governor in Lagos state would have done the same so stop trying to give a charlatan like Bulaba credit for the initiative of others just because he tapped into an obviously good policy. The Obasanjo administration licensed a total of 22 free trade zones including the lekki free trade zone and it wasn't even the first choice for the Dangote refinery which was originally meant to be sited in Olokonla free trade zone before governor Amosun frustrated Dangote in siting the refinery there.

masterfactor:
Atiku should go and rest, he should stop seeking political relevance, when he and obasanjo were in power what efforts did they do to solve the problem in the oil sector.

They privatized the refineries for greater efficiency, sadly Yar'adua was deceived into reversing the sale and those refineries have remained moribund since then and being used to siphon billions of dollars of public funds under the guise of maintaining them.

That said, it was because they sold the refineries to Dangote before the sale was reversed that got Dangote interested in building his refinery so in reality, Dangote's refinery was a seed sown by the Obasanjo/Atiku administration which is now blossoming today.

Instead of the lunatics in government to address the issues that made people to protest bad leadership in the country, the idiiots are looking for people to victimize while ignoring the real issues at stake. They should continue with their stoopidity because a bigger protest is coming that will bring the government down to its knees.

Since when did police start handling issues relating to coups? This is obviously another daft propaganda by this clueless government.

Omonigeriarere:


Reference was actually made to it by Jesus Himself but with no emphasis. He didn't condem it but emphasize was put on righteousness which means that one can still be a good tither without witnessing the kingdom of God.

Jesus was addressing pharisees who were under the law in the passage you are referring to so it was still binding on them to tithe at the time. However, the law was brought to an end with the death and resurrection of Christ and the bible makes it clear that Christians are not meant to observe the mosaic laws.

ItuExchange:
Speaking on the issue of pastors owing private jets; Olu Johnson said that it was of necessity for some pastors to own such, as it was not to showoff but rather to propagate the gospel of the kingdom.

“Sincerely, I do not blame pastors that have private jet in our time and season. Pastor Adeboye is busier than the president of Nigeria – the president of Nigeria oversees only this nation, I don’t know if we can know how many nations Pastor Adeboye is overseeing from Redemption Camp.

“The man is overseeing 197 nations: I have missed some of our very important meetings where I am the host for flight schedules; if I had the means, maybe I would have hired a flight and wouldn’t have missed those programmes. Some institutions and individuals in this nation have their private jets; if the work of a pastor has become enormous like the work of Pastor Adeboye or Oyedepo, I sincerely subscribe that if they can afford it or the church can afford it; it is necessary.” – Rev. Olu Johnson

Arrant nonsense, is any of their churches bigger than the catholic church globally? They don't even have 1% of the wealth of the catholic church yet the Pope doesn't use a private jet. The so called G.Os don't have to be every where to run their church empires, there is something called delegation amongst other administrative practices for running large organizations.

nikky5:
Recently, I have heard a few of our fathers of faith in Nigeria preach that tithe defaulters will not make it to heaven when they die.

I will need further clarification on this because I have stopped paying my tithes for about three years now. I also believe in tithing as an old testament law. Well, I may be wrong in some ways. Can anyone throw more light on this please. I am a born again Christian.

Thanks.

Absolutely nothing in the bible suggests that Christians are required to practice tithing which was part of the now obsolete mosaic laws. Jesus did not tithe nor receive tithes neither did any of the apostles or the early church.

Modern church tithing has no sound scriptural basis but is derived from fraudulently twisting scriptures to manipulate believers into parting with at least 10% of their income.

The idiiot sacked the DSS and NIA director generals because their incompetence affected him personally but he is yet to sack the other service chiefs whose incompetence is allowing bandits, terrorists and kidnappers to wreck havoc all over the country.

Afonjatijati:
Tinubu

Definitely the jagabandit, he is by far the worst president in the history of Nigerian politics.

Philipponzaghi:
David Hundeyin has truly outdone himself this time. It’s quite ironic that he claims to be defending Africa while simultaneously playing into the hands of foreign interests. The hypocrisy is staggering! We can see right through this charade; it’s all about his personal agenda, not the welfare of Nigerians.

Are you sure that you read the article before rushing to comment? He actually exposed foreign interests in the article, he didn't fall for their bait or play into their hands.

David Hundeyin writes:

I debated long and hard whether to do this publicly, but I think a message needs to be sent to a group of external interests working in tandem with the internal interests described in the quoted tweet to counteract the interests of half a billion West Africans. A message that at whatever level we exist, we take our destiny seriously and we are not to be trifled with.

Last week, I received an N800,000 offer from an international NGO called Dialogue Earth (formerly known as China Dialogue Trust) to write an article essentially saying that Dangote Refinery is terrible for the environment because something something "Environmental Concerns," something something "Climate Change," something something "Energy Transition Policy," something something "COP 28."

The (unstated but clearly implied) thrust of the brief was for a prominent local voice to put their name on an article that is an argument or a premise for the the Nigerian government to kill the refinery based on its "energy transition commitments" and "environmental policy." This conclusion wasn't immediately apparent when they reached out to me, but I suspected where it was heading, and I quickly accepted the offer so that I could see the brief and obtain hard evidence. I've attached screenshots from the brief below.

Basically, this London-based NGO is headed by Sam Geall, an Oxford professor and is funded by several American intelligence fronts such as Ford Foundation and ClimateWorks (which is blacklisted in India for funding organisations working against India's national interest). For whatever reason, it is now quietly mobilising a resistance campaign against what it describes as "Nigeria's first refinery." Apparently, the status quo of Africa's largest oil producer having no functioning oil refinery to beneficiate its own oil was not a problem for Dialogue Earth and the American CIA fronts who fund it.

The human poverty caused by exporting this raw material and importing refined fuel was not bad for the environment. Also, the fact of European refiners regularly blending West African fuel cargoes with toxic waste and sulphur content 200 times the European legal limit (leading to asthma, bronchitis and eye infections in West Africa) was also not bad for the environment. But Nigeria having a refinery that will wean West Africa off import dependency on those European refiners (and allow West Africa control the sulphur content of its own fuels) is where Dialogue Earth and its funders draw the line. That one is bad for the environment, and David Hundeyin should write an article calling for the refinery to be shut down or limited.

I'm putting this out there publicly so that nobody will henceforth use the term "conspiracy theory" when it is pointed out for the umpteenth time, that there are American and European state and private interests that are heavily invested in keeping Africa exactly as poor as it is, and that they regularly push levers most of us do not even know exist, to make sure that this status quo is protected. These people believe that Africans should not exist or have nice things in this world. Apparently, the sole purpose of our existence is to enhance their experience of the planet and all that it has to offer.

It is because of them that I have to make a public spectacle out of this, even though I know that doing this is probably going to cost someone their job. The message needs to be passed that as poor as we are, you cannot convince us to campaign for the elongation of our own poverty by commissioning $500 hack jobs in the hope that we will be greedy enough to only see the money and ignore the bigger picture of what we can clearly see you trying to do.

I will reiterate something I have said multiple times - I am not a believer in the religious faith called Climate Change/Saving The Environment. I care exactly as much about the environment as do the rich white men who destroyed it to begin with. I firmly believe that if what it takes for Africa to industrialise is for it to burn so much fossil fuel that snow stops falling in Wisconsin and it starts raining concentrated sulphuric acid in Doncaster, it is not too big a price for Europe and North America to pay - it is certainly not bigger than the price Africa had to pay for Europe and North America to develop.

It is and will continue to be 100% OUR prerogative to determine what to do with our hydrocarbons. It is not the rich white men hiding behind these "Climate Advocacy NGOs" who will tell us what to do with our energy reserves, and by what means we are allowed to escape the poverty that they engineered for us.

I might not be a fan of Aliko Dangote or his monopolistic business practices - as is well known - but I'm also smart enough to know when rich white men in DC, Houston, Rotterdam and London and trying to use me as a marionette in their 400 year-old coloniser games. If you are reading this and you are one of the rich white men whose economic interests are threatened by Nigeria refining its own oil, you should come out and fight Aliko Dangote by yourself.

Or at least go find a much stupider African to do your dirty job - there's plenty of those.

It will never be me.

Cc: Seun Mynd44

BREAKING NEWS:-
NAMES OF SPONSORS OF THE PROTEST HAVE BEEN RELEASED AS FOLLOWS .

1. Hunger
2. Inflation
3. Fuel pump price
4. Minimum wage
5. Power or no light
6. Bad roads
7. Budget padding
8. INEC rigging of election with impunity
9. Highest cost of governance
10. Highest bidder appointments
11. Excessive borrowings for looting
12. Crude oil theft
13. Dysfuntional functional refineries
14. Excess electricity & erretic tariffs
15. Excessive bank charges
16. Resource control
17. 1999 constitution
18. Need for restructuring restructuring
19. Consumption instead of production
20. Arable farmland without subsidized mechanized farming equipment
21. Breakdown of law and order
22. Injustices at the courts
23. Failed civil service system
24. Non functional educational system
25. Japa syndrome
26. Corruption
27. Unaccountability of public office holders
28. Poor road networks
29. Worst housing program
30. Non real estate funding
31. Interest rates for entrepreneurs
32. Devastating economic policies
33. Looting and lootocracy
34. Growing division amongst ethnic groups
35. Naira devaluation
36. Poverty
37. Non support for local manufacturers and local contents
38. Highest import duties ever
39. Underfunded army and police
40. Salaries and pension delays.
We're not begging for power because power belongs to the people, and we, the people, are here to say enough is enough.

Tackle these things and see if anyone will think of protesting. Enough of unnecessary chasing of irrelevant shadows and imaginary enemies. You are your own enemies

#Copied

Ebigwei007:
Its high time we compare obj and tinubu ? They are way different from each other, tinubu is nt surrounded by people who wants to make things work at all, he has to change so many people like the CBN governor, the finance minister, etc

Comparing Obasanjo with Tinubu is like comparing light with darkness. While Obasanjo made Nigeria the fastest growing economy in Africa, Tinubu has completely destroyed what is left of the economy after eight years of retrogression under buharig

https://www.thecable.ng/tinubus-n2trn-economic-stimulus-intervention-too-little-too-late/

Tinubu’s two trillion Naira economic stimulus intervention: Too little, too late.

By Kunle Oshobi

In fairness to President Bola Tinubu, he did inherit a very poorly managed economy having taken over from a predecessor who lacked interest in developing the economy, yet who resorted to excessive borrowings and ways and means advances to fund huge budget deficits which in turn put pressure on the value of the Naira and spiked the inflation rate in the country.

Given that the current administration knew that they were going to inherit an economy that was in a huge mess going by all economic indicators, one would have expected them to have had a robust economic plan in place at the inception of the administration to tackle the several economic challenges the country is currently still facing today.

Instead what we’ve had are poorly conceived and haphazardly implemented economic policies that have compounded the economic woes that Nigerians have been grappling with over the last decade. From the hastily announced policy of ending fuel subsidy which failed despite the hike in the price of petrol to the poorly implemented floating of the Naira which crashed the value of the local currency and fuelled hyper-inflation, the government went on to hike the power tariff by over 200% at a time Nigerians were still in anguish as a fallout of the previous economic policies introduced by the administration.

In response to the backlash that occurred as a result of the harsh economic policies of the government, the Tinubu administration hurriedly put together a package of palliatives that was targeted at providing temporary succor for a limited number of Nigerians while the majority of people had to bear the full brunt of the harsh policies.

After one year of fumbling and wobbling with no clear economic direction for the country, the administration inaugurated a Presidential Economic Coordination Council (PECC) to help articulate the economic policy direction of the administration while announcing a two trillion Naira economic stimulus plan to fund critical sectors of the economy.

While it’s glaring that the economy is desperately in need of a stimulus, one is at a loss how the government arrived at the figure of two trillion Naira which is just equivalent to $1.3 billion to be adequate to stimulate the economy. While announcing the intention of the CBN to increase the capital base of banks in the country, the CBN governor revealed to us that the president intended to grow Nigeria into a one trillion dollar economy and the capital base of banks was being raised in line to meet this objective.

Going by the above, we can safely assume that growing the economy into a one trillion dollar economy is a major policy objective of this administration and we can use it as a basis to evaluate their economic policies. When the CBN eventually announced the new capital base for tier one banks in the country which was pegged at N500 billion which was equivalent to about $350 million, it was difficult to reconcile it to the 1 trillion dollar economy ambition of this administration as banks in contemporary African countries had banks with capital bases running into several billions of dollars and no Nigerian bank was amongst the top ten most capitalized banks in Africa.

Effectively speaking, the new capital base that the CBN announced did not match its dream of wanting our banking industry to have enough capital to be able to support a $1 trillion economy. It is in this same vein that I am questioning the parameters used in arriving at the N2 trillion economic stimulus plan because it doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what is required to grow the economy into a $1 trillion economy.

I will admit that apart from the rhetorics of this administration there is nothing on ground to suggest that they are serious about growing the economy, talk less of achieving the $1 trillion economy target but the least they owe Nigerians is to return the country to the $500 billion economy that it was before the downward trend started in 2015 which has resulted in the Nigerian economy shrinking to a GDP of just $258 billion as of 2024.

The question arises, can a N2 trillion ($1.3 billion) stimulus plan return the country from a GDP of $258 to a GDP of $540 billion that it was nine years ago? Or is this another one of the haphazard economic policies that this administration has become synonymous with? By comparison, even before the further crash in the economy which resulted in a 200% decline in the value of the Naira as a result of the policies of the current administration, the leading opposition presidential candidate Alhaji Atiku Abubakar had proposed a $10 billion economic stimulus plan to help fund the growth of the economy.
Even though some observers argued that even the $10 billion is not enough to achieve the lofty goals of achieving a $1 trillion economy, one is at a loss how the government arrived at its N2 trillion figure which doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of addressing the problem at hand.

Even before the issue of injecting fresh funds to stimulate the economy arises, the question begs if the president is ready to address the big elephant in the room. This big elephant which is the government’s huge deficit spending is the number one reason why the economy is in a mess today and if we are to make any meaningful headway with the economy, the issue must be addressed.

Elementary economics tells us that inflation occurs when there is too much money chasing too few goods. Effectively speaking, increased spending not backed by an increase in goods and services being produced in an economy will lead to inflation. While nothing has been done to grow the productive sector within the last ten years, the government’s appetite for spending has continued to increase, and to fund this spending they have resorted to creating more money through ways and means advances and borrowing more from the financial system.

This huge deficit spending funded by continuous irresponsible borrowing by the government resulted in Nigeria having an unprecedented debt service ratio of 134% for the year 2023. This means that the government used 134% of its revenues to service debts last year revealing that after using all revenues to service existing debt, the government still had to borrow an equivalent of 34% of its revenue to meet its debt service obligations and borrow 100% of the money needed to fund the budget. This means that the country is now technically insolvent.

As a result of the fact that government has been spending a lot more money that is not backed by increased productivity, we now have too much Naira in the system chasing too few goods and this automatically leads to inflation but it doesn’t stop there. We have to consider the fact that the dollar is also a “commodity” that is available to be bought and it’s the preferred means of storing the proceeds of corruption.

So what happens is that due to the increased spending of government which in turn accommodates more corrupt enrichment, a lot more Naira is available to those who would rather keep their illicit funds in dollars, and as a result of this more pressure is put on the Naira in their bid to source dollars to launder their illicit funds.

The increase in demand for the dollar results in a fall in the value of the Naira and as we all know, the falling value of the Naira is the number one cause of inflation in the country today.

Going by the narrative above, we can conclude that the leading cause of instability in the economy today which resulted in the crash in the value of the Naira and the high inflation rate is the government’s huge deficit spending and that is what first needs to be addressed before we even start talking about any economic stimulus plan.

While the idea of setting up a Presidential Economic Coordination Council is welcome albeit long overdue, the issue of the big elephant in the room must be squarely addressed and drastic cuts in the cost of governance must be made before anything meaningful can be done with the economy.

Oshobi, a development economist, management consultant, and author writes from Lagos.

I will be the first to admit that the PDP is not perfect and it did in fact have a number of shortcomings when they held sway at the helm of affairs of the country but the truth is that the few negatives were projected to limelight by the vicious lies and propaganda machinery of opposition miscreants who were desperate to seize power from them while the numerous achievements were underplayed.

Contrary to the lies and propaganda of those desperate charlatans who have now confirmed themselves to be chronic failures, Nigeria enjoyed the highest economic growth rate in her history during the PDP years, had the longest span of uninterrupted economic growth and became the biggest economy in Africa with a corresponding impact on the quality of life of Nigerians.

Today APC is the common enemy of all Nigerians and only PDP has the capacity to defeat them and a proven track record to return Nigeria to the path of rapid growth. Leaving sentiments aside, it is in our collective best interest to join forces to support the PDP to rescue Nigeria from the satanic agents that are holding the country down so that we can all have a better quality of life.

DevilsEqual:
Its easy to spew shit from the byline as no one would hold you accountable for anything if things go sour

Agree with it or not, those reforms were neccessary and are not entirely bad

We know what hes objectives are and they are all practical

We are almost there.... He will replicate Lagos excellence across all states

Only a delusional dunce will give the old crook credit for the development of Lagos. Lagos was already the most developed state in the country before he migrated from iragbiji.

https://www.thecable.ng/tinubunomics-how-not-to-grow-an-economy/

Tinubunomics: How not to grow an economy.

By Kunle Oshobi

After eight years of lacklustre performance with the economy during the Buhari administration in which the economy virtually stagnated and even experienced two unprecedented bouts of recession, Nigerians were looking forward to a much more economically buoyant Nigeria irrespective of whoever took over the reins of power when the Buhari Administration ended in 2023.

However, expectations were dashed as soon as the Tinubu administration began and a concoction of economic policies was implemented which sent the economy into a tailspin in a downward spiral trajectory. I call it a “concoction of economic policies” because there is no evidence that these economic policies were carefully thought out before implementation. Rather they seem impulsive and without any plans for addressing the shocks that may occur as an aftermath of the implementation of the policies.

Starting on May 29th, 2023 while basking in the euphoria of being sworn in as president, without any consultations, cabinet, or even economic team in place, President Tinubu announced that “fuel subsidy is gone” and with that singular statement he made oblivious of the power a statement that the Nigerian president makes connotes, he sent the Nigerian economy nose-diving and a year later, the economy is still in turmoil.

Many would argue that all the leading candidates in the 2023 presidential elections agreed on the need to stop the payment of subsidies on petroleum products which this writer also subscribes to, but what they fail to realize is that careful considerations need to be taken before the implementation of any economic policy to ensure that whatever backlash it may cause would be mitigated against.

For instance, when the Jonathan administration decided to stop the payment of subsidies on petroleum products in 2012, they came up with a policy denoted as the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Program (SURE-P) to manage the funds saved from the removal of subsidies and use it to help reduce unemployment, improve infrastructure and provide other essential services to help reduce the negative impact of removing the fuel subsidy on Nigerians.

Ironically, Tinubu then an opposition leader was one of those who led Nigerians in protest against the removal of the subsidy only for him to make the removal of the same subsidy the most urgent policy of his newly sworn-in administration without having any proper implementation plan for removing it as was done during the Jonathan administration.

In the case of Atiku, going by what was documented in his manifesto and other campaign promises that he made, he planned to use the savings made from the payment to fuel subsidy to partly fund a $10 billion economic stimulus plan targeted at funding Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) to help boost productivity in the country, create millions of jobs and raise the average household income to help mitigate against whatever negative consequence the removal of fuel subsidy might have caused.

While Nigerians were still agonizing as a result of the pains caused by the poor implementation of the fuel subsidy removal, the Tinubu administration without any sustainable policy to strengthen the Naira decided to float the local currency which led to an unprecedented crash in the value of the Naira. This along with the hike in the price of petroleum products led to the price of goods and services increasing by as much as 300% while the income levels of most Nigerians remain stagnant.

In a claimed bid to curtail inflation (which was actually caused by the government’s fiscal irresponsibility), the CBN governor on three separate occasions increased the Minimum Rediscount Rate (MRR) which is the base rate that determines the interest rate in the country while at the same time increasing the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) of banks in a bid to reduce the money available to lend to the public under the guise of fighting inflation.

However, the logic of increasing interest rates to reduce consumer spending in an economy where consumer credit is almost nonexistent is confounding most economists even as it is obvious that the inflation we have in Nigeria today is a cost-push inflation rather than a demand-pull inflation that hikes in interest rates are normally used to curtail in countries that have consumer credit generally available to the public.

The real reason the CBN has been increasing interest appears to be to make it more attractive for investors to invest in government securities and as a result of this, the government can borrow more money from the public to fund its huge deficits. The downside of this however is that the government is muscling the productive sector of the economy out of the money market in their insatiable greed to raise money to fund their excesses thereby compounding the economic woes of the country instead of resolving them and at the same time denying the productivity sector of the funds needed to grow the economy

The fourth major economic policy of the Tinubu administration was the 200% hike in the electricity tariff of Band A customers which has further compounded the economic woes which Nigerians have been facing as a result of the economic policies of this administration and led to the shutting down of some manufacturing companies.

While the government claims that these pains are temporary and are a necessary measure to fix the economy as they ask Nigerians to persevere, the government itself has been indulging in excessive luxuries that border on the obscene even when there is no clear path to economic growth based on their policies and the current trajectory of the economy.

After one year of running the economy, we can now begin to understand the orientation of this administration's economic policies, which we can aptly christen as Tinubunomics. Rather than implementing policies that will grow the economy and create wealth for Nigerians, Tinubunomics is more focused on making more revenue available to the government to spend and this was done primarily by stopping the payment of subsidies without reinvesting it in people-oriented programs, widening the tax net, devaluing the Naira to get more naira for their dollar revenue, seeking more foreign loans and increasing interest rates to sell more government debt instruments.

In all these policies, not a single thought has been given to implementing policies that will grow the economy while the government is just focused on generating more revenue for themselves at the detriment of the economy and the private sector. They are too in a hurry to generate money to fund their excesses and would rather not go through the route of supporting the private sector to grow and create more jobs to make the economy more buoyant and ultimately make more tax revenues through increased economic activities.

The level of activities in the productive sector of an economy is always a good gauge of the health of the economy and it is the government’s responsibility to support this critical sector of the economy to ensure their growth. Sadly in the last one year, over 722 manufacturing companies along with some multinationals have closed shop as a result of the harsh economic climate resulting from the policies of the current administration

Suppose there is to be any hope of growing the Nigerian economy or salvaging what is left of it. In that case, the current administration must change its focus from generating revenues at all costs and at the detriment of the Nigerian economy to focusing on supporting the productive sector of the economy to thrive while also making drastic cuts in the cost of governance to help reduce the deficit and cut down on inflation. The current trajectory of Tinubunomics can only lead us to Venezuela, something urgent needs to be done to halt the slide NOW!!!

Oshobi, a development economist, management consultant, and author writes from Lagos.

Jagabandit's first year scorecard

1. Nearly Brought Emirates back to Nigeria 3 times
2. Nearly attracted Affrexim bank loan
3. Nearly sealed Dutch million dollar investment
4. Appointed his ministers
5. Discussed with some white men
6. Moved FAAN to Lagos
7. Didn't meddle in Wike-Fubara battle
8. Almost allocated N5 billions for students loan
9. Allocated N90billion for 2024 Haji.
10. Nearly started a war with Niger
11. Moved CBN to Lagos
12 Took 1410 people to UAE for summit
13. Approved road from VI to EPE for 1 trillion
14. Almost started the PH refinery
15. Almost won AFCON
16. Removed subsidy and used usual subsidy allocation for something.
17. Padded budget by €3 billion
18. Did appointments every week
19. Went on vacation 2 times after working so hard.
20. Almost invited Qatar investment
21. Increased taxes
22. Achieved highest inflation rate in Nigeria's history.
23. Destroyed the value of the Naira.
24. Reduced Nigeria to fourth biggest economy in Africa

SoNature:
Alex Otti should name a big project after Professor Barth Nnaji! That has to be the most patriotic Igbo man in this generation!

The likes of Prof Barth Nnaji should be celebrated nationally and given national honors. Not just at their state level.

Donald Duke sitted with Mr. Peter Obi and Prof Barth Nnaji at the inaugural Dele Momodu leadership lecture at the Nigerian Institute for International Affairs, Victoria Island yesterday where "The politics of energy and the way forward" was discussed.

Prof Barth Nnaji as the guest speaker shared his wealth of knowledge of the politics of the energy sector both at the local and international level and also proffered solutions to solving our energy problems in Nigeria. It was indeed a very elucidating event.

In 2023, N600 trillion worth of electronic payment transactions was done in Nigeria which was 55% up from the N387 trillion worth of transactions carried out in 2022 according to the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS).

Going by the trend we know that it is going to be significantly higher this year but if we are to use last year's figure, it means that the government stands to make at least N3 trillion with the new 0.5% levy.

The question arises what is the volume of cyber crime in Nigeria that they need as much as N3 trillion to fight it. Will the money be accounted for since it's going to be office of the National Security Adviser where it will be classified as security vote and not even subject to appropriation.

Or could it just be another grand design to fleece Nigerians under the guise of enhancing cybersecurity because it just doesn't add up. It is the duty of our financial institutions to enhance their cybersecurity capabilities and the CBN to ensure compliance. The office of the NSA has no role to play in this except to give a cover for not giving account of the money collected.

codwyha:
Those candidates already shared their vision what they would do at last election campaign but you're still here asking them what they will do again.

Why not just manage your president till Nigerian prrofessors start selling ice cream due to hardship you never see anything!

You obviously didn't read the article before rushing to comment because the article actually suggests that the opposition candidates would have done much better.

https://www.thecable.ng/nigerian-economic-crisis-what-the-opposition-candidates-would-have-done-differently/

Nigerian economic crisis: What the opposition candidates would have done differently.

By Kunle Oshobi

At an event hosted by 21st Century Media Services, publishers of 21st CENTURY CHRONICLE at the Abuja Continental Hotel last week, Vice President Kashim Shettima implored Nigerians to be patient with the Bola Tinubu administration as they steer the country through the economic turbulence that they met on ground on assumption of office.

He also stated that the year before they resumed office, Nigeria’s debt service ratio had grown to 111.8% which effectively means that Nigeria was spending more money to service her debts than the revenue accruing to the country. In other words, Nigeria had reached a stage where we were borrowing more money to service existing debt obligations which meant that we were technically insolvent.

That the current administration inherited an economic mess was not news to the majority of Nigerians, rather what most people found amusing is that the current administration found it convenient to blame the previous administration for the economic mess the country is currently in while playing down the fact that they were active enablers and supporters of the Buhari administration that they are now blaming.

Not only did they enable the Buhari administration, but the current president was stated to have played a very active role in the formulation of the economic policies of the Buhari administration as admitted by Mrs Kemi Adeosun the erstwhile finance minister in the Guardian newspaper report of the 29th of March 2017. Effectively speaking, the current president should also share part of the blame for the failure of the economic policies of the Buhari administration instead of parading himself as someone who has a solution to a problem he played a key role in causing or dissociating himself from the cause of the problem.

The Vice President also appealed to rhetoric in trying to convince Nigerians that they were doing something to improve the economy by making claims about activities in certain sectors of the economy while omitting to address the real issues that are crippling the economy and thus exposing his lack of grasp of the economic challenges that the country is currently facing. This is very worrisome because he is constitutionally supposed to be in charge of the economy.

The biggest cause of the current economic challenges facing the country was the fiscal indiscipline of the Buhari administration which led to the government borrowing excessively from every available source and even getting the CBN to make over 23 trillion Naira in Ways and Means advances to the federal government contrary to the CBN Act and our Fiscal Responsibility laws just to fund the excesses of a corrupt bureaucracy. This is what caused the excess liquidity in the system that led to the crash in the value of the Naira and the steep inflation that accompanied it.

Rather than for the current administration to address this issue of fiscal indiscipline and cut down on government excesses and excessive borrowing, they have continued in the footsteps of the Buhari administration and doing the same things done then to plunge the country into the current economic mess that we are in.

In fairness to the current administration, they did attempt to stop the payment of petroleum subsidies which was perhaps the biggest drainpipe on the revenue of the federal government but they made a mess of it with their haphazard implementation of the policy which betrayed the fact that it was not well thought out before implementation. The subsequent floating of the Naira was also very poorly implemented. This resulted in the crash in the value of the Naira and a chain of events that saw the federal government resume the subsidy payment through the back door. Effectively speaking they took the economy on a rollercoaster ride only to end up paying more subsidy than they were paying before their misadventure.

Rather than admit that their economic policies had failed due to poor implementation and not addressing other critical fiscal discipline issues, the Vice President decided to exonerate their administration by claiming that the other leading presidential candidates also planned to remove the subsidy if elected.

While this is true, it is doubtful that they would have done it in a haphazard way as was done by the current administration. Unlike the current president who avoided explaining to Nigerians how he planned to fix the economy, the two other leading opposition candidates took their time to explain in detail how they intended to address these problems and they both demonstrated a good grasp of the issues involved.

In the case of the former vice president who as chairman of the National Economic Council was in charge of the economy between the years of 1999 and 2007 when Nigeria experienced the most rapid economic growth in its history, we know that he has a firm grip on economic issues. Being an astute and very organized administrator, in the run-up to the election he presented his manifesto in which he explained in very detailed terms how he intended to address the economic challenges bedeviling the country.

Prominent in his manifesto was his $10 billion economic stimulus plan which would have been funded mostly from the money saved from stopping the payment of fuel subsidy. The stimulus plan was targeted at funding Small and Medium Scale Enterprises with a special focus on the productive sector of the economy. As a result of this, the money being spent on subsidizing the consumption of fuel would have been channeled to fund more productive activities in the country which will not only create millions of jobs across the country but also increase the average income of Nigerians and thus compensate them on a sustainable basis for the removal of the fuel subsidy.

The candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi also demonstrated that he would do things differently, especially with his “consumption to production mantra”. He displayed a very good understanding of the cause of our economic challenges by identifying the profligate consumption pattern of the Buhari administration as one of the biggest problems bedeviling our economy and his resolve to put an end to the reckless spending and channel the money to more productive sectors of the economy was unquestionable given his antecedents of being a very prudent manager of resources as governor of Anambra state.

In contrast, going by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s antecedent as governor and leading political figure in the country, he practiced a system of political patronage that demanded that he always oil his political machinery, and as a result of this rather than being prudent with resources, he is quite liberal as he wants to keep those around him happy and this is what resulted in supplementary budgets for the judiciary and the National assembly as soon as he was sworn into office.

This is the reason why he also made funds available for members of the National Assembly to buy exotic SUVs for themselves while the rest of the country was groaning due to economic hardship. It was this reason as well that the president chose to look the other way when the National Assembly padded the budget with over three trillion Naira worth of fictitious projects to the detriment of the country.

For Nigeria to start experiencing real economic growth, the government needs to drastically reduce the cost of non-productive government expenditures and allow these resources to be channeled to more productive sectors of the economy to stimulate growth. This is what Atiku and Obi both being seasoned private sector players would have done differently going by their antecedents.

Oshobi, a development economist, management consultant, and author writes from Lagos.

https://www.thecable.ng/how-corrupt-politicians-contribute-to-the-declining-value-of-the-naira/

How corrupt politicians contribute to the declining value of the Naira

By Kunle Oshobi

Over the past year as a result of the CBN’s decision to float the Naira, our local currency has been on a roller coaster ride with the Naira losing significant value in the process along with its consequent negative effect on the economy. Even though the value of the Naira was expected to fall as a result of the floating, not even our most pessimistic analysts expected it to fall as low as it did before the CBN intervened to defend the Naira.

Even though the floating of the Naira was a step in the right direction, the implementation was abysmal as the CBN failed to put policies in place to stimulate increased foreign exchange inflows while nothing was done to curb the high and unnecessary demand for foreign exchange in the country. Also in a move that left all observers dumbfounded, they lifted the ban placed on accessing forex from the CBN for 40 items that had been previously banned by the CBN and thus increased the demand for foreign exchange when they should have been working to reduce it.

Due to their poor planning and execution, the CBN had bungled the floating of the Naira policy and instead of addressing the root causes of the high devaluation of the Naira, they decided to look for a scapegoat to blame the same way they did under the leadership of Emefiele and blamed Aboki Fx for the fall of the Naira when our local currency was losing value during the Buhari administration.

This time around they decided to make a popular cryptocurrency trading platform, Binance their scapegoat and even went ahead to arrest two of their executives who came to the country to honor the EFCC’s invitation to their organization and shed more light on Binance’s operations in Nigeria.

While it may be argued that the cryptocurrency trading platform was used to circumvent our foreign exchange trading regulations, one is at a loss why the company’s executives who came to the country voluntarily at the invitation of the EFCC should be arrested and detained without any charges against them while turning a blind eye to the real users of the platform who are the ones breaching our forex regulations.

The uncomfortable truth is that most of the people behind the huge demand for the dollar which makes the Naira keep tumbling are powerful politicians and civil servants who find it more convenient to keep their looted funds outside the country. Knowing that if they kept their proceeds of corruption in local banks the money could be easily traced and reclaimed, these powerful politicians prefer to use the proceeds to buy real estate both within the country and outside of it and what they choose to keep in cash is converted to foreign currency and kept in safe havens overseas.

Given the unprecedented level of corruption that the country has been subjected to over the past few years, our politicians and civil servants now have a lot more cash at their disposal to buy more dollars and put the Naira under increased pressure and as a result of this, the local currency has been on the receiving end.

The current case of Yahaya Bello, the immediate past governor of Kogi State being pursued by the EFCC sheds more light on how our politicians are putting excessive pressure on the Naira. According to the EFCC, $845,000 was paid upfront to American International School Abuja for his children’s school fees which was meant to cover his children’s school fees for ten years.

The EFCC further stated that the dollars were sourced from a local bureau de change with payment for it coming directly from the state government account. While this a flagrant case of stealing which the EFCC is currently addressing, it also exposes how our politicians put pressure on the Naira with their voracious appetite for foreign exchange funded by trillions of stolen Naira to the disadvantage of our local currency. While the case of Yahaya Bello is mind-boggling, we know that it is only the tip of the iceberg and there are far bigger heists being perpetuated by our politicians across the country daily.

It is also curious that despite our laws that prohibit the sale of goods and services in foreign currencies in Nigeria as it amounts to an abuse of the Naira, the EFCC failed to prosecute the American International School for breaching our laws while going after clowns like Bobrisky and Cubana chief priest for lesser abuse of the Naira offenses.

Could this be another case of selective justice as it’s clear that organizations in Nigeria that charge in foreign currencies for their goods and services are not only abusing the Naira, they are adding to the pressure on the Naira when they force their customers/clients to source for dollars to pay for their goods/services?

It is doubtful whether this administration is serious about fighting corruption but if they are really serious about stabilizing the exchange rate of the Naira, they not only need to put corruption in check, but they also need to make massive cuts in government expenditures and put an end to deficit financing while more funds are channeled to the productive sector of the economy to help increase local production and reduce our dependence on imported goods.

Oshobi, a development economist, management consultant, and author writes from Lagos.

It's been nine years of retrogression and destruction under APC and that iragbiji thief is definitely going to be worse than that Daura President.

https://www.thecable.ng/as-nigeria-drops-to-become-the-fourth-biggest-economy-in-africa/

As Nigeria drops to become the fourth biggest economy in Africa.

By Kunle Oshobi

In 1999 when the Obasanjo-led administration took over the reins of power, Nigeria was the fourth biggest economy in Africa with a paltry GDP of just $58 billion and a GDP growth rate of 0.6%. To make matters worse, Nigeria had a national debt of $35 billion which was choking the country financially, and foreign reserves were less than $3 billion.

Without blaming the previous administrations for the pathetic state of the economy that they inherited, the duo of Obasanjo and Atiku set to work and within three years were able to achieve an economic growth rate of 15.8% which made Nigeria the fastest-growing economy in Africa and the second fastest growing in the world at the time.

They introduced several economic policies such as the privatization exercise which saved the country billions of Naira being used to maintain moribund enterprises while generating revenue for the government in the process. The deregulation of the telecoms industry saw our telecoms industry grow from less than 400,000 active subscribers to well over 200 million active telephone subscribers while creating a new digital economy.

They also embarked on banking reforms which accelerated the growth of the banking industry and increased the collective capital in the industry by over 200% within two years. The pension reforms created the pension industry which has now accumulated funds of over N18 trillion which represents the largest pool of funds in the Nigerian financial services industry today.

The cement industry policy was also implemented which made Nigeria become a net exporter of cement from a position when we were spending 3 billion dollars annually to import cement before the policy was implemented. They introduced a system of competitive bidding for oil blocks and terminated the system of discretionary allocation of oil blocks that was practiced under the military and they generated billions of dollars for the country in the process.

The local content policy in the oil industry was also introduced which ensured that up to 8 billion dollars’ worth of oil service contracts in the upstream sector of the oil industry were given to local companies and in the process local capacity was enhanced while billions of dollars were retained in the country amongst many other policies that helped stimulated economic growth.

To reduce graft, they built institutions to fight corruption such as the EFCC and ICPC while policies such as Due Process and monetization policy were introduced to reduce the cost of governance. Parastatals such as NAFDAC were empowered to fight the menace of fake drugs in the country and as a result of all these, they were able to block many leakages in the system and improve service delivery to the people.

Despite the relatively low oil price at the time they were also able to build the country's foreign reserves to the highest level in our history and pay off most of our national debt while obtaining a huge discount on the debt for the country. As a result of this, the country’s credit ratings increased internationally and Nigerian banks were now able to access the international financial market for funds to boost their operations.


The Yar'adua/Jonathan administrations also built on this solid foundation and Jonathan introduced the Automotive Industry Policy which greatly boosted the automobile manufacturing sector in Nigeria while also introducing policies that brought an end to the dubious era of fertilizer subsidies while ensuring that farmers got fertilizers at lower prices and boosting agricultural production in the process.

As a result of these policies and growth-focused leadership, the Nigerian economy grew rapidly and by 2013 when the economy was rebased, it was confirmed that Nigeria had become the biggest economy in Africa by a very wide margin with our GDP reaching a peak of $568 billion by 2014. However, in 2014 as a result of falling oil prices and poor management of our reserves, the economic growth began to slow down.

In 2015, a new government came to power and one would have expected that given the economic challenges that the country was experiencing at the time, the president would have prioritized fixing the economy. Sadly the administration did not bother to appoint an economic adviser talkless of putting an economic team in place to tackle the challenges we were facing at the time. As a result of this, the economy plummeted into a recession by the third quarter of 2016.

During the second term of the Buhari administration, they finally decided to appoint an economic adviser to the president and put an economic team in place. However, the economic team was rendered redundant as the members of the team were not given cabinet positions where they could implement their policies and the president’s lack of interest in the economy did not help matters.

In 2023, the current president Bola Ahmed Tinubu resumed office after a very controversial electoral process. Unlike his predecessor who showed zero interest in issues about the economy, Tinubu took major decisions that were aimed at addressing certain economic problems within two months of being sworn in as president. The first was the announcement of the end of the oil subsidy regime on the day of his inauguration while a decision was taken to float the Naira a few weeks later.

While both policies are a step in the right direction, they were both hurriedly and poorly implemented without proper planning and as a result of this, the value of the Naira crashed while the inflation rate reached a record high thus pushing the economy into a tailspin.

As a result of the high inflation that occurred as a result of the government’s poor implementation of its economic policies, they have now resorted to a contractionary monetary policy to fight inflation at a time when they should be channeling more funds to the productive sector to grow the economy thus inhibiting the growth of the economy further. The truth is that if our economy is to grow, then the government must be very deliberate about it and take solid steps to grow the economy and implement policies that will support economic growth as was done during the Obasanjo administration when we experienced rapid economic growth.

It was thus as a result of the poor management of the economy by successive administrations in the past ten years that the size of our GDP plummeted from an all-time high of 568 billion dollars to the 252 billion dollars it is projected to be by the end of this year. The irony is that if the Nigerian economy had continued to grow at the average rate achieved between 1999 and 2014, Nigeria would have been a $1 trillion economy today and the average Nigerian would have been four times richer.

The current administration still has the time and the opportunity to reverse this downward trend and get things right but they have to get serious about fixing the fundamental issues inhibiting economic growth and not just applying cosmetic solutions to score political points.

Oshobi, a development economist, management consultant, and author writes from Lagos.

OfoIgbo:


According to the statistical graph from the OP, our GDP recorded its steepest growth during GEJ's government

Facts don't lie.

From 2015 till date, the Yorubas and Fulanis chose to chase out GEJ and brought in policies that have grounded Nigeria economically.

Statistics don't lie.

On the contrary, Jonathan's performance with the economy was below average even though he was far better than Buhari and Tinubu. The highest economic growth rate we enjoyed was during the Obasanjo administration and Jonathan merely rode on the crest of Obasanjo's performance. It was Obasanjo that laid the solid foundation for the economic prosperity during the Jonathan administration but sadly Jonathan didn't maintain the performance.

The data below shows the highest economic growth rate that has been achieved since 1999 and it was during the Obasanjo/Atiku administration in 2002 that we achieved the highest growth rate of 15.33%.

OfoIgbo:
I also decided to show the price of crude oil for the past 70 years, so no Agbado abuser will come on this thread and start claiming that the price of oil was much more than it is now. Also don't forget that this current government no longer pays fuel subsidy so they must have all the money they need to carry out developmental tasks for the nation.

The Fulanis and Yorubas have ruined this nation economically.

Please access the link below, as a supporting data to make better sense of how far the Nigerian GDP has fallen, under Fulani and Yoruba rule.

https://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart

You don't have to resort to tribalistic insults to pass your message. While buhari and Tinubu are catastrophic disasters, Nigeria enjoyed the highest economic growth rate in her history under the Yoruba/Fulani leadership of Obasanjo and Atiku. Performance or lack of it has absolutely nothing to do with tribe.

As Nigeria drops to fourth biggest economy in Africa.

In 1999 when the Obasanjo/Atiku led PDP administration took over the reigns of power, Nigeria was the fourth biggest economy in Africa with a paltry GDP of just $58 billion and a GDP growth rate of just 0.6%.

To make matters worse, Nigeria had a national debt of $35 billion which was choking the country financially and foreign reserves of less than $3 billion.

Without blaming the previous administrations for the pathetic economy that they inherited, the duo of Obasanjo and Atiku set to work and within three years were able to achieve an economic growth rate of 15.8% which made Nigeria the fastest growing economy in Africa and the second fastest growing in the world at the time.

They introduced several economic policies such as privatization, deregulation of the telecoms industry, bank consolidation, pension reforms, cement industry policy, competitive bidding for oil blocks, local content policy in the oil industry and many other policies that stimulated economic growth.

They also built institutions to fight corruption such as the EFCC, ICPC, Due Process, monetization policy, empowering of NAFDAC and as a result of this were able to block many leakages in the system and improve on service delivery to the people.

Despite the relatively low oil price at the time they were able to build the country's foreign reserves by the highest level in our history and in the process paid off most of our national debt while obtaining a huge discount on the debt for the country.

The Yar'adua/Jonathan administrations also built on this solid foundation and Jonathan introduced the Automotive Industry Policy which greatly boosted the automobile manufacturing sector in Nigeria.

As a result of these policies and dedicated leadership, the Nigerian economy grew rapidly and by 2013 when the economy was rebased, it was confirmed that Nigeria had become the biggest economy in Africa by a very wide margin with our GDP in the region of $568 billion.

Sadly in 2015, the leadership of the country was taken over by a character that was not only clueless about the economy, he also had no interest in fixing it and as a result of this the economy of the country plummeted for eight straight years under his rudderless leadership.

The country had another opportunity in 2023 when a new leader was elected. Sadly hopes were dashed when another questionable character was imposed on the country under very dubious circumstances as president.

The resultant effect is that the country's economy has continued to plummet as a result of the mismanagement of the country's resources and the rudderless economic policies of the administration.

If the Nigerian economy had continued to grow at the average rate that was achieved during the PDP years, Nigeria would have been a $1 trillion economy today. It is indeed an irony that the same charlatans that reversed the gains made in the PDP years and diminished our economy to $266 billion after nine years in power have the audacity to label the sixteen years in which Nigeria achieved the highest economic growth rate in her history as years of waste.

bennardshaw90:
How much to spray a 2001 Rx 300 complete spray

Thanks so much for the inquiry, it will cost 120k to get it done.

Buharig should go to hell, after destroying Nigeria and handing over to another charlatan who is a known notorious criminal, he is now asking us to support chronic failures. You cannot possibly love Nigeria and be supporting the kind useless leaders we currently have in the country.