₦airaland Forum

Topeakintola:
The fact is that Nigeria has never has never had a well educated leader

And a Harvard/Cambridge qualification does not automatically mean they will be good leaders or administrators

Doesn't automatically mean, but the odds are skewed in their favour. Think probability, and the chances are higher for a harvard graduate to succeed in administration than the man who forges and brandishes an unverified certificate. (No offence to our present administrator)

sarutobie:
He he he he he he he he don't make me laugh bro! I told you that Nigeria is a country birthed in anomalies and you want a Harvard degree holder to do what? Isn't it the same Nigeria were the said educated and professors trouped behind one with a "NEPA certificate"(whatever that means)..

Lol thing is we all know the right things to move our nation forward, but sadly mediocrity always fears a fair competition, watch how if an idea such as this ever comes up, those lazy secondary school "classless elites" will vehemently kick against it.

sarutobie:
The word "ANOMALY" is elevated to a different level of meaning in Nigeria. In Nigeria black is white and white is blaxk. Up is down and front is back.lies are taken for truth and the truth is a punishable offence..

If private institutions would want the best of the best to run their systems, why can't a country like ours go for the very best of them all.

Its almost time a first rate degree in law or economics from Harvard/Oxford becomes a criteria for aspiring into the top administrative offices in our country.

lookandlaff:
Bottom line

We will be back here in 20 years with the same issues, we will talk about diversification like we did under SAP, we will talk of buy Nigeria and earning forex like we did under sap, but these are structural changes that take decades to materialise, before that happens Oil prices will recover, we will forget about diversification, we will have another boom, and we will squander it again because we are Nigerians.

Sadly true. It can not be better put.

TechWalker007:
At the bolded, Buhari did not withdraw the fraudulent budget, he did not apologize to Nigerians but he sacked a DG

How can one sack the DG and leave the same fraudulent budget in NASS for it to be passed? Same budget for which he blamed Budget Mafia and sacked some people. If it's fraudulent enough to sack people, why has it not been withdrawn and every fraudulent line item removed.

Its just the age old trick of using a fall guy when things go awry. Until those items are removed and the effect seen on the final figures, everything else is a farce.

Happy birthday to lalasticlala, please give this thread a wider readership.

Many thanks and Godbless your new age.

LordAdam:
Fortunately, you are getting the point NavierStokes is making (Big Shoutout to NavierStokes).

Nigeria does not have one problem. It is impossible to pinpoint the root cause of our problem.

If you say the size of government is the problem, then you should know two things:
1. Reducing the size of the government will drive up the unemployment rate
2. There will be reduced government spending which should stimulate the economy. Recurrent expenditure stimulates Nigeria's economy even better than capital expenditure (because capital expenditure are bloated [OBJ paid $14m per km for a project that actually costs $4m per km], the bulk of the expenditure goes out of the country [Julius Berger, Chinese construction agencies], and some part of it is looted outside by those in charge [civil servants and politicians])

Nigeria has many problems and it is actually up to intellectuals to have a debate on which is the original problem.

To give you an idea, let's do a concise roundup of our current situation:

1. There is strong ethnic, religious, and regional divide in the country.
2. We have a culture that does not promote accountability (if you can do some projects in your tenure, no one cares about the amount spent, the loans taken, the repayment process of the loan, who performed the project [local versus international companies], if due process was followed...)
3. We have a short-sighted polity that are not willing to make the hard choice, they all want easy money in the short-term
4. The Nigerian people have chronic amnesia and do have heavily flawed conception of how a country is supposed to operate (for example, people just look at no savings under GEJ and assume only wastefulness caused it, even after protesting against subsidy removal that had us spending up to N1t annually, and even forgetting that college students stayed at home for several months because lecturers were demanding increase in pay of over 30%, or that consultants in our hospitals now earn about 50% of what the Inspector General of Police earns)

For me, the first step to resolving our problem is to change our style of governance. It has not worked in 16 years, it is not working in the 9 months since a change in government and from current outlook, it will never change. Adopt true federalism. It will greatly eliminate the huge religious, ethnic, and regional divide (people will be less concerned about the ethnicity of a federal appointee and more on the qualifications of the appointee aka death of federal charter). It will also make people hold the state and local governments more accountable and shift most of the work out of the federal government. The FG utilizes 55%, the state government get 45%. Even if the FG performs averagely, if the states perform well, the average Nigerian will have a relatively better standard of living. This will also take off more power from the center and ultimately lead to increased and sustainable diversification of the economy.

If we choose to continue in this our failed system of governance, we would not make any major headway. The infrastructural deficit in this country is more what the government can solve. Under PDP we invested around $20b in electricity to produce 4000 MW. Under the military, virtually same amount was invested for 1000 MW. Nigeria needs around 100,000 MW. Even with the privatization, it will take us over a decade to get uninterrupted power supply around the country if things go well. Anyone telling you otherwise is playing politics with your future and that of your children. We all know how critical electricity is to the economy of the country.

I've gone long enough. The fact is that it is futile to discuss how to make this country better, because the people who know how to make the country better and have the will to are not in positions of authority and will never be supported by the simpletons in the Nigerian populace.

-Lord

A perfect expose Lord, Nigeria's problem as you rightly put is hydra-headed and only the herculean idea of federalism can put it it death. Your last sentence is one that calls for concern, everybody wants true change but most would not recognise it if it stares them in the face.

Even the holy book says its an anomaly when princes walk on foot and servants ride on horses.
Imagine a kachikwu from harvard sucking up to a Buhari from Daura.

Topeakintola:
God bless you too

I agree that the over bloated nature of the civil service in Africa is a key problem , however I think the key word you used in"inefficient".

The majority of the civil service workforce in Nigeria lack the capacity to create any meaningful output. The causes range from lack of qualifications, experience and most especially, the systemic corruption embedded in the civil service.

Btw, The US, UK and France have very large civil service structures too but what they have been able to achieve is to reduce inefficiencies and improve their processes. The patronage you mentioned in your post is also very prevalent in the West- it is known as the "jobs for the boys". Where they have an advantage is that they have a culture based on continuos improvement.

For Nigeria, I think we have far too many MDAs. A lot of them duplicating responsibilities. A lot of those paratatals have to go and the government should restructure the entire civil service.

The problem we will have is the consequences from Labour Unions and even the general public. There will be public outcry and I dont think most governments will not want to risk it

Rightly put, especially your last statement.

babafirst:
[]

First Oil prices started dropping in june 2014 and couldnt have been up to $157. In fact never gotten to that amount (peaked $145.85). Secondly we shouldn't be talking about oil prices and GEJ's tenure. Google "global gdp and oil price", and you will realize that both graphs have exactly the same trend from point to point. This arbitrarily put means a babangida selling oil prices for $15/bbl would have purchased Mercedes benz cars at 100000naira compared to a GEJ selling oil at $100/bbl and buying same mercedes benz cars at 15million naira.

Obj started of on a budget of about billion and based on his benchmark price of crude which fottunately witnessed a price increase, could afford to save in the eca or increase reserves. GEJ had budgets of ober 4 trillion plus leakages that hadn't been plugged by successive administrations this oul was not even enough to fund his budget. Take a lool at minimum wages he paid, or corpers allowances plus crude theft then consider the budget of 2016 predicated on 38$/bbl.


If we do a rough maths, $38/bbl makes a contribution of 860billion to the 2016 budget. Scale up both figures by 3 and what do you have, a $114/bbl benchmark (unrealistic) would have contributed a value of 2.58trillion on a budget of over 4 trillion. So do you see that even using all the oil sales proceeds to fund his budget would have still left him with a huge deficit.
Ps: (this Illustration is just an overtly simplistic calculation).Relating your Mercedes Benz logic to the present day it means PMB is disadvantaged because the price of Mercedes has not reduced and oil price has fallen.So IBB could have had an advantage but PMB unfortunately can't enjoy that.

Yeah if you noticed I had said "arbitrarily put".

woodcook:
If only you could save this for people that really deserved reading it. Wait until the vultures land on this thread and turn your logic upside down. They are really good at it, that I can attest to.

Ha ha ha we see them everyday bro. One only needs to do his bit on making everyone know that the challenge is the system's foundations rather than an individual (GEJ). At the end of the day its still a case of "to each his own".

Topeakintola:
Good analysis, however, after you have identified the trend/problem, it will be nice for you to proffer solutions as well.

I think Nigeria's problem is based on the size of government which leads to high recurrent expenditure. (im not sure, I think it forms over half of total expenditure)= unsustainable

If these successive administrations streamlined size of the government, then maybe it would have freed more funds for capital projects . This would have been more beneficial in the long run

Godbless you brother, now we are in sync. I had spent the past few weeks reading the book by Martin Meredith: The state of Africa: a history of the continent since independence. There you will find out why virtually ever african country failed, the root cause i did identify was the overbloated and inefficient civil service. These were overbloated because the governments or ruling parties saw it as a means of patronage, where they compensate their followers and subjects with apoointments to score political points. Imagine cases of offices with several employed typists but only one functional typewriter etc.

Lets be honest If the government is a privately owned organization, will we have the type and quality of workforce we see today, or will service delivery and output be as seen today? Hell no.

Reduce the size of the recurrent expenditure, create an enabling environment so the bulk of those people can be on the private sector, focus on building infrastructure and watch the entrepreneurial spirit spring up among the citizens.

This also translates into increased output and ultimately a stronger value of the currency.

Happy bday to you lalasticlala. Many blessings as you keep growing into a decent man of integrity.

Topeakintola:
Agreed

However, after the return to democratic governance in 1999, there was hope that things will change

And remember that under GEJ, oil prices rose to +$100 bp. It was as high as $157 in November 2014

All squandered

First Oil prices started dropping in june 2014 and couldnt have been up to $157. In fact never gotten to that amount (peaked $145.85). Secondly we shouldn't be talking about oil prices and GEJ's tenure. Google "global gdp and oil price", and you will realize that both graphs have exactly the same trend from point to point. This arbitrarily put means a babangida selling oil prices for $15/bbl would have purchased Mercedes benz cars at 100000naira compared to a GEJ selling oil at $100/bbl and buying same mercedes benz cars at 15million naira.

Obj started of on a budget of about billion and based on his benchmark price of crude which fottunately witnessed a price increase, could afford to save in the eca or increase reserves. GEJ had budgets of ober 4 trillion plus leakages that hadn't been plugged by successive administrations this oul was not even enough to fund his budget. Take a lool at minimum wages he paid, or corpers allowances plus crude theft then consider the budget of 2016 predicated on 38$/bbl.


If we do a rough maths, $38/bbl makes a contribution of 860billion to the 2016 budget. Scale up both figures by 3 and what do you have, a $114/bbl benchmark (unrealistic) would have contributed a value of 2.58trillion on a budget of over 4 trillion. So do you see that even using all the oil sales proceeds to fund his budget would have still left him with a huge deficit.
Ps: (this Illustration is just an overtly simplistic calculation).

bluaero:
You missed out "snake"

Lols you are right.

Topeakintola:
Larger population than Russia?

Nigeria is only reaping the consequences of lavish and irresponsible public spending under successive PDP administrations.

The bulk of the blame lays at the feet of Don Fortunato who mismanaged the country's finances to fund a phantom second term ambition

Yes we have a larger population than Russia and also You miss the point brother, successive administrations from independence till date must share the blame.

Heaven knows that if all the fraudulent cost items are removed from this budget it can not be more than 4 and a 1/2 trillion. But these people decided to hardwire all sorts of yams into the budget for the saintly goats to devour while proposing to incur huge debts for us and our children.

President Buhari should return to the drawing board and comeup with a new budget of realistic expense items because this particular one (in the words of my friend and ardent Buharist) "does not reflect his character".

Great observation OP, the quoted was from my post on a thread yesterday. Thing is, this government just chose a huge figure, 6 trillion and desperately worked towards achieving that figure rather than focusing on expense items that will directly benefit the populace.

If all the bogus figures are removed the budget can not be more than 4.5 trillion.

Lalasticlala, an article like this should be on the frontpage above those threads about bare breasted females, olajumoke and tonto dike

Nichobabe:
Nice write up and true

Nigeria needs to be prepared always for the raining days

Yea we need to be prepared, but then the situation imo is very dicey for Nigeria, compared to countries like Russia, Quatar, UAE, Algeria, Norway who have been been able to shore up some good savings, we have a much larger population. In the area of infrastructure we are lacking. The opportunity cost of holding reserves or savings will be a reduced rate of infrastructure buildup. Its almost like the case of say 2 individuals, one from a rich home and the other from a poor home, both getting a job in the same company and maybe the same pay grade. The rich kid may be able to afford to save cos his family already has given him an house, car etc but the poor kid on the same salary will struggle to obtain all these things or risk saving and doing nothing to meet his needs.
That's where i think the past administration found themselves, and they did spend, from increased minimum wages, public spending, increased corpers allowance, plus leakages in the system.

I really do hope we learn and come out of this stronger and wiser, rather than go back to fold out arms when the oil prices rise.

ishiamu:
2 earl for this from this administration

Lets hope this fuel issue is an exception rather than the norm.

ishiamu:
Happening in Aba since Friday said fuel tanker drivers are on strike.

Ah okay, because i noticed the ongoing panic buying around town.

baralatie:
Enriching but not the full story!
Gr8,Gr8 piece!

Yeah i noticed that, those who have the more details are welcome to contribute so the rest of us can become better enlightened.

Mods this is an enlightening piece, detailing the state of the naira from the far past, recent past, to the present.
Please do the needful as always
Kindest Regards,
NavierStokes

Cc: mynd44, OAM4J, lalasticlala, seun

Following a discussion from last night, I had planned doing a research today on the subject and coming up with an article, then I came across this beautiful piece, may still put up a chart later revealing the nexus between global oil prices and the value of the naira.

A (not so) brief history of the fall and fall of the Nigerian naira - Feyi Fawenhimi December 06, 2015

Nigeria's Naira has struggled against the dollar since the 80s. (Reuters/Joe Penney)
Since 1986, the Nigerian naira’s relationship with the US dollar (and other foreign currencies) has been erratic, (un)predictable, violent and full of heartbreak and tears. The built-in dysfunction has also made a lot of people very rich.
This piece seeks to trace the history of how Nigeria’s foreign exchange management became what it is to the point where the exchange rate of the naira has become a deeply political matter.
The current debate continues to be around whether or not Nigeria should devalue the naira. But what if devaluation is the answer to a non-existent question?

President Ibrahim Babaginda’s Second-Tier Foreign Exchange Market (SFEM)

In September 1986, the SFEM was introduced as part of a package of IMF reforms that general Ibrahim Babangida (IBB) was forced to accept given the mess that Nigeria had managed to find itself. Before this, in the 70s to early 80s, the naira exchanged for something like 90 kobo to $1. By the time IBB left office in 1993, the naira was exchanging for 17 naira to $1. It was during this time that bureaux de change were introduced into the economy.
The rate at which the naira depreciated in those few years probably explains why Nigerians have never gotten over the idea of a strong currency as the mark of a ‘strong’ economy. People only remember that things got worse as the naira lost ground to the dollar. To make matters worse, the industrialisation that a weaker exchange was supposed to bring about never materialised.

President Sani Abacha (1993-1998)

Nigerian President Sani Abacha rule mainstreamed the forex black market(Reuters)
From the day that Abacha took power to the day he died on June 8 1998, a period of some five years, the ‘official’ exchange rate of the naira to the dollar never changed from 22 naira to $1. The Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (AFEM) was introduced in 1995 as a way for the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to sell forex to end users at ‘market’ rates.
But it is one thing to declare that the naira is worth 22 naira to $1. It is quite another thing to be able to satisfy all the people who will demand to buy dollars at that price. Given that oil prices were below $20 a barrel in this period, there was a very limited amount of dollars available (whatever was left after those in charge had helped themselves).
This rigid exchange rate gave birth to a phenomenon that is now a permanent fixture today — the mainstreaming of the forex black market. At one point, the naira was trading as high as 88 naira to $1 while the official rate remained at 22 naira. Bankers came up with they used to call the ‘blended’ rate. Say a client requested $1 million from their bank, the bank would inflate it to say $10 million and then take the request to AFEM knowing that CBN would never approve the full request anyway. Whatever was obtained from CBN was then ‘blended’ with the rest obtained from the black market.
It does not take a genius to know that if the black market rate was four times the official rate, people made an absolute fortune from the arbitrage. A lot of banking fortunes that remain to this day in Nigeria were made in this period. It was sweet business.

Joseph Sanusi (CBN governor 1999 to 2004)

The Interbank Foreign Exchange Market (IFEM) was introduced under Joseph Sanusi. Given how Nigeria’s reserves had been depleted severely in the two years before he took over, the naira was never going to survive the ‘military fiction’ rate of 22 naira for very long. Within a year, the naira was trading at 85 naira but this time, the gap with the black market had closed considerably at 105 naira to the $1—particularly if compared to what happened under president Abacha.
In addition to low oil prices, Nigeria was also struggling to service its $33 billion foreign debt which was eating up valuable foreign exchange.
All the things we see today were also experimented with under Sanusi. He suspended the IFEM for six months when the naira came under pressure and also introduced a limit to the margin (above CBN’s rate) that banks could sell their own forex for. Current governor Godwin Emefiele is doing the same thing today.
Again, the attempt to ‘control’ the exchange rate gave rise to all sorts of funny games. Since the rate at which banks could sell their forex was fixed, they simply complied with this rate at the IFEM but then collected an extra payment outside the system to make up the difference with the ‘real rate’ at which they were actually selling. Some bankers called this game ‘NIBSS and Drafts’ i.e. you pay the official rate via NIBSS (Nigeria Inter-bank Settlement System) but settle the difference with a bank draft.
Forex round tripping games flourished. Nigeria had all sorts of banks which totalled around 90 at one point. The licences were cheap and you could make the cost of the licence back in one year from round tripping. It was a win-win business. Banks also set up foreign entities which they used to help their clients move money abroad. One bank, now defunct, used to regularly reward employees with a Volkswagen Jetta for outstanding performance. In banking circles, the joke then was that the Jetta was always won by the bankers in the treasury department i.e. the best round trippers in the bank.

Chukwuma Soludo (2004-2009) and The Oil Boom

Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria Charles Soludo(Reuters/Mike Hutchings)
Starting in late 2003, oil prices began to rise steadily from around $30 per barrel till they peaked at $140 per barrel in the middle of 2008. It was also during this period of rising oil prices that Nigeria obtained its $18 billion debt relief from the Paris Club. It was like being in heaven.
First of all, rising oil prices allowed Nigeria’s foreign reserves to increase substantially. There were reserves and there was also the Excess Crude Account (ECA) which had more than $20 billion at one point in 2008.
What these happy events allowed governor Soludo do was to harmonise the four different exchange rates at the time — CBN, Interbank, Bureau de Change and wire rates. He did this by liberalising the foreign exchange manual and including all sorts of things that were previously not accepted as valid for foreign exchange requests. For example, previously you could only obtain foreign exchange to bring in ‘raw materials’. But in the world we now live in, manufacturing has changed to the point where you might need to import some finished products to add to your own process. His liberalisation recognised this.
He also made things like medical bills and even credit card bills allowable. And he achieved his aim. In a short while, the different rates converged to within one naira of each other given that there was no need to go to the black market or bureaux de change to get forex when you could get it officially from your bank.[b] Nigeria was awash with dollars and bankers at the time spoke of not even needing to go to CBN for dollars for weeks. [/b]Indeed, they say CBN staff used to harass them as to why they had not come to buy dollars. This was the period when the naira gained about 20% against the dollar without anyone explicitly trying to ‘strengthen’ it.
And then the inevitable happened — oil prices started to fall from late 2008 to less than $50 by the end of the year. But this time around, Nigeria was in a pretty good position to weather the storm with reserves totalling around $62 billion. Nevertheless, Soludo engineered some kind of artificial scarcity of forex to allow a devaluation of the naira. He also banned the Interbank market for six months.
All told, when Soludo took office, the naira was trading at 127 naira to $1 and by the time he left in 2009, it was around the 147 naira mark. But this masks the fact that in 2008, it actually went as low as 115 naira to $1 at one point. Oil prices started to recover pretty quickly and so if Soludo had done nothing, it would have just cost Nigeria some of its reserves and normal service would have resumed after about eight months. But the temptation to ‘do something’ is always strong.
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi (June 2009-Feb 2014)


Nigeria’s central bank governor Lamido Sanusi looks on during a 2012 interview in New York(Reuters/Eric Thayer)

As soon as oil prices recovered, Central Bank governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi (SLS) restored the Interbank and WDAS markets that Soludo had previously banned. But he then faced a somewhat strange problem later on. Oil prices were high but Nigeria was not building up its reserves for reasons that are perhaps now obvious. This meant that he did not have enough dollars to defend the naira and keep it stable as he wanted.
To solve this problem, [b]he removed the one-year restriction on foreign investors who wanted to buy government bonds. (Previously, any foreign investor who wanted to buy Nigerian government bonds needed to hold the bonds for one year). The dollars came pouring in. But then this was what is known as ‘hot money’ i.e since you did not need to hold the investment for one year, the money poured in and out rapidly.
JP Morgan’s requirement to include Nigeria in its index was always that the market was kept liquid. [/b]As soon as this was done with the removal of the restriction, there was not much else standing in the way of Nigeria being included in the index. Nigeria’s Debt Management Office even took a 2-page advert in the newspapers congratulating President Jonathan on Nigeria’s inclusion in the JP Morgan Index.
Given that oil prices remained high throughout SLS time in office, some measure of stability was achieved. The naira was trading at 148 naira to the dollar when he took office in 2009 and was 164 naira by the time he was suspended from office in February 2014.

The stability of the graveyard.
Godwin Emefiele and where we are today


Godwin Emefiele, Nigeria’s central bank governor,(Reuters)
It costs something like $30 to extract a barrel of crude oil in Nigeria. So when oil was trading at $110 Nigeria had a margin of around $80 to play with. But when oil drops to $45 as it has now, that $80 margin turns to $15 as the cost of getting the oil out of the ground still has to be incurred.
To put the above numbers another way — while oil prices have dropped by 60%, the revenues available to Nigeria have dropped by 81%. That is, revenues have dropped much more than oil prices have dropped. Nigeria is earning almost nothing these days and you can imagine how disastrous it will be if oil prices drop further to $40 or even less.
When things like these happen, one way to defend yourself is by unleashing your reserves. So for example, Algeria had something like $150 billion in reserves when the oil crisis hit. But as stated above, Nigeria did not save anything when the going was good so the country walked into this oil price crash practically naked. Reserves are allegedly $30 billion today but in reality they are much less (maybe around $20 billion when you account for all the money that is already ‘spoken for’)
Governor Emefiele has done the usual in response. He has banned the Interbank forex market and also banned 41 items from being eligible for forex, directly undoing what Soludo did. Forex is now essentially being rationed and the CBN is deciding who gets what and how much. Rumours of privileged people making a fortune from the confusion and arbitrage are circulating among bankers once again.
What can we learn from all this? The most obvious lesson here is that Nigeria has never quite figured out how to spend oil money. When prices are high, you save as much as you can. When prices fall, you open the tap and increase your spending. The point of this is to keep things going steady and avoid wild shocks in the economy.
What Nigeria instead does is to increase spending once oil prices go up with things like increased minimum wages, bloating the civil service or even outright theft. Politics always manages to bully economics. With the exception of the one time under Soludo, this is how things have always been — Nigeria is never ready for when oil prices drop. And yet, oil prices dropping is as sure to happen as night following day.
Another lesson is that the politicisation of the exchange rate of the naira is an unhealthy obsession in Nigeria. It gives politicians an incentive to wage war against reality by doing things that are economically harmful in the name of maintaining a ‘strong’ currency. Economic nationalism comes into fashion — why do we need to import rice when we can grow it here?!
Yet, the rhetoric only lasts till oil prices go back up and then politicians can return to their old ways.
The very act of trying to fiddle with the currency whenever we run into trouble is what really needs to be looked at. The moment oil prices crash, businesses and transactions that were perfectly legal suddenly become ‘unpatriotic’. And then a pointless argument about what should be imported and what should not predictably take up valuable media space.
Nigeria wants to have high oil prices and spend without saving. It then wants to keep its exchange rate ‘stable’ even when revenues have collapsed dramatically.
It is not possible to have all these things at the same time. It’s time to depoliticise the naira exchange rate by allowing the market to determine its fair value.

There are no easy answers to this problem. Having an economy that is not tied to the price of one product that is bound to have wild price swings is an obvious solution. But wanting a diversified economy and actually having one are two completely different things. And if Nigeria is going to diversify its economy, it has not even started yet.
Over the last 20 years or so, Nigeria has slowly but steadily moved towards a market-determined foreign exchange system. This is the right thing to do as it takes the matter out of the hands of politicians. Given the severity of the current crisis, all those gains are now being undone with all kinds controls and erratic moves that slowly choke the life out of the economy.
If Nigeria won’t save when oil prices are high, then allowing the naira to float and be determined by the market is the only credible option left. Who knows, this might even teach some sense.

P.S I’m indebted to people who have a long memory of the Nigerian banking industry for this piece. Most of what I’ve shared here was from them. I thank them.

Source: http://qz.com/564513/a-not-so-brief-history-of-the-fall-and-fall-of-the-nigerian-naira/

The same situation in port harcourt

Remii:
that's how they used to pass it before with aim of Mr Fix it and Ghana must go. Go and check past budgets online

The reason why we must see a marked change as they did campaign on the mantra of "change".

1freshdude:
Nah fucking Italy you vist sef they form boss, rubbish!

Hahaha free your mind of all angst, bottling it up makes you a potential hazard to all those around you.
Ciao

1freshdude:
Oga go sit down, I don see your DP!

Aiit buona sera fratello. Arrivederci.

dragonking2:
But you are not ashamed of the current president who presented the most corrupt budget in history right?

Allow that guy to keep displaying his seeming "wits" on here. As if he knows what humiliation really is.

1freshdude:
Funny you, you probably think very highly of yourself on Nairaland because you have a picture of an ancient building depicting a person resident in europe as your DP...nah where one man resourse/achievement finish nah I'm another man own start, take note and gerra out of here!

Well first its not just any ancient building btw, and secondly you need to work on yourself. I believe you may have made some achievements in your lifetime, but please don't go running others down just because of that especially those you have never met in person such as GEJ the ex president. I believe a word is enough for the wise.

BushidoBlue:
Nigeria was in a recession during PDP were u aware? Did u feel it? Dont act like this hasn't happened before...

We came out if it whole other nations were crying....

Now oil prices are down our Naira is free falling and you are consoling your self with Jonathan's loss....

Chai.. see brainwshment

Please help me ask him if this Is the first time the oil prices have ever dropped and also the effect on our currency during such periods in the past.
The president started on a very bad and sluggish note telling us he didn't want to make mistakes, but sadly the mistakes have already been made amd now the foot soldiers are trying to shift the blame.

I wonder why this didnt get to frontpage, while the articles on peoples val pictures are there for all to see.

1freshdude:
Convince you? Who has the time to convince you?/just wait soon the matter go clear for unah eyes. We just keep praying that the oil price keeps falling so that people like you that need conviction to know that PDP and their goons in APC ruined Nigeria through their actions in the past 16years in power will get it.

I laugh at your braggadocio. Alright have a great evening then and please note your prayers can not and will not be answered. Been a long time i met a braggart and good enough its on a faceless forum.
Enjoy your evening brother.