₦airaland Forum

“The ship of the APC is fast sinking and is obviously beyond redemption. Nigerians are daily convinced that that the APC was a mistake made in 2015 and are also resolved that they are a mistake to be corrected in 2019.”
https://www.thecable.ng/cupp-theres-plot-change-leadership-nassembly-violently

jpphilips:

IS BUHARI TRULY RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR ECONOMIC WOES?

A lot have been said about Buhari, how he brought hardship on Nigerians, how he is responsible for all the suffering in Nigeria, is that theory backed with facts and global economic realities or the shenanigans of few individuals basking in the Euphoria of ignorance?
Since I must make a choice between our present loud political gladiators, I armed myself with Economics textbooks and news archive, here is what i discovered.

Nigeria an oil producing and oil dependent economy suffered a global economic hit called crude oil price shock
it is the sudden drop in price of crude oil in the commodity trading market, it has occurred at different times in History nearly every decade. Countries that are hardest hit by crude shock are basically countries that not only produce crude oil in significant amount but solely depend on it as their foreign exchange earner. While oil shocks have asymmetric effects in oil-exporting developing countries; lower oil prices lead to major revenue cuts and ensuing stagnation in the economy, but higher oil prices and accompanying higher revenues do not translate into sustained economic growth.

What are the effects of crude shock in oil producing developing economies?

Forex scarcity: Most developing economies whether oil producing or not, depend on importation to survive, where foreign currency becomes scarce, industries, individuals that have significant need for forex will likely close shops giving birth to the second problem unemployment then finally the master Recession.

Unemployment: When industries no longer have forex to buy spare parts, can no longer afford raw materials, production slows, sales slows, profit eroded, workers sacked, since the volume of activities in the economy is directly proportional to the GDP, the GDP contracts and birth another economic monster Recession.

Recession is a chain reaction of unpalatable economic events that shows the economy is not experiencing growth but contracting, lets look at the effects of recession, high energy cost (energy in most developing economies are subsidized one way or another) crude shock and eventually recession erodes government revenues till a point where it could no longer afford subsidies and other things it used to afford.
In Nigeria where our Electricity Generation companies are subsidized, petroleum products are subsidized,you will understand that such partial or complete subsidy removal will quickly skyrocket the cost of living generally, transportation, cost of food etc are equally affected that leads to another monster called Inflation.

Inflation: is defined as a phenomenon where huge bills are in search of few goods, how is that possible? when the industries that produce goods closed down, imports could not be sustained due to Forex shortages where will the goods come from? the absence of those goods while the bills remain triggers inflation, causes hunger and eventually poverty and devaluation of local currency.

Devaluation is when global reserve currencies trade higher than your currency, of course you recall that an economy in crude shock first suffers Forex shortages, that robs the central bank (in the case of Nigeria) the ability to fix the currency at a reasonable exchange rate.
The local currency is allowed to float along a band the cbn thinks may not be too hurtful on the economy.
Forex ban is placed on certain commodities, debit cards like Visa, Mastercard et al are all placed on monthly transaction limits as a reflection of the reality of forex shortages.

Okonjo iweala then finance minister and coordinator of the economy actually warned Nigerians in 2014 long before buhari came that the level of mismanagement will bring hunger to us, read here: https://www.premiumtimesng.com/business/171145-brace-tougher-times-ahead-okonjo-iweala-tells-nigerians.html
If okonjo iweala saw this hunger in 2014, warned us about it, how can a sane person accuse buhari of bringing hardship?

Between 2015-2017, all these happened in the Nigerian economy, then I asked "are we the only oil dependent economies in the world? why us alone?
The answer took me to several countries in the world and I realized that other oil producing countries dont depend on oil alone, countries like Russia though the largest producer of crude oil in the world, has a robust defense industry that contribute significantly to its GDP, Russia equally enjoys large market shares in Gas distribution in Eurasia, by the time crude oil shock hit, Russia had over $400b in reserves,
It became clear that the only economic move that could hold off crude oil shock and other global economic shocks is a robust foreign exchange reserves (Savings).

Permit me to take you down our economic history, in 2008 during the global melt down, the then CBN governor prof. Chukwuma Charles soludo bragged that the Nigerian economy is immune to global shocks? That would have sounded ridiculous but it is true, what did he do? they launched an economic strategy called National Economic Empowerment And Development Strategy NEEDS.
This strategy recommended that once crude oil is sold, the balance above the budget benchmark is kept in an account called the ECA, by the time that government left and another took over in 2007, both the ECA & Foreign reserve account held over $68b in reserves, in a $200b economy at the time, that reserve was significant enough to whither any storm that came the way of our economy, Much later into the crisis, Nigeria later relaxed its exchange rate to 155 to a dollar. now we know that Nigeria had in the past stood resilience in the face of global shocks with a culture of Savings.

Global economic meltdown is worse than crude shock because in a meltdown, major economies are affected, capital flight becomes common in developing economies, crude oil customers reduce demand thereby pushing prices lower, the saddest part is that no country has money to borrow anyone during global meltdown, yet Nigeria Survived it with Soludo's brilliant strategy. A strategy that was blatantly refused by the previous administration when suggested by Iweala, recall that Iweala worked with Soludo in that NEEDS team.


Fast forward to 2015, Three out of the top four producers of crude oil in Africa by their production, Nigeria, Angola, Algeria and Egypt were all in recession even though Egypt does not significantly depend on oil but her economy was shattered. Algeria escaped recession because by 2014, just like Nigeria in 2008, Algeria had a foreign reserve balance of $194b in a $156.1b economy (122% of GDP in savings).You can see that the Robust reserve of Algeria was their savior in this modern crude oil shock era. The previous administration in Nigeria boasted of leaving behind a paltry $19b for a $500b economy at the time (3.8% of GDP), that amount is not even enough to pay for imports let alone absorb global shocks, so Nigeria can be rightly described in late 2014 as an oil dependent economy with no savings. How important is this savings?

Lets take our research to the Second largest producer of crude oil Angola, just like Nigeria with no significant savings, Angola's challenges needs no introduction, let facts speak for itself

Angola suffered severe Forex & currency challenges just like Nigeria. According to Bloomberg
They not only devalued their currency, they equally allowed it to float like Nigeria's
Angola devalued its currency as the OPEC member sought to revive an economy still reeling from the oil-price crash four years ago.



Borrowing to fund Budget deficits, just like Nigeria, Angola has borrowed to the point of requesting a bail out from the IMF
https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/08/angola-says-to-request-4-5-bn-imf-loan-as-crisis-lingers/

Unemployment Rate in Angola increased to 20 percent in 2017 from 19.90 percent in 2016.
https://tradingeconomics.com/angola/unemployment-rate


Inflation in Angola was a whooping 23.67 percent in December 2017, data on the national statistics agency's website showed on Wednesday.
Price growth on a month-on-month basis rose to 1.47 percent in January from 1.2 percent previously.

Poverty in Angola
According to Angola's 2001 MPI, more than 77% of the population was multidimensionally poor. ... The latest available World Bank figure for income poverty in Angola, from 2008, shows that 36.6% of the population is income poor. Angola's population is currently estimated at 29.7 million.

I can go on and on the list is endless, as a matter of undeniable fact, Angola just like Nigeria are the largest producers in Africa, they practically did not save enough and they were hit hard by crude price shock. to balance the analysis, it will be unfair to discuss those that didn't save without giving kudos to those that saved, like i said previously, Algeria saved a whooping $194b when the going was good, as such its economy was immune to crude shock.

Russia like we said though had currency challenges during the period under review ostensibly because of western sanctions, Russia had over $400b in reserves by ending of 2014.

Saudi Arabia was immune to crude shock not without little currency & subsidy issues ostensibly because of its huge financing of the war in Yemen, they were sitting on a comfortable $732b by the end of 2014.

My country men, you can see that this suffering was brought upon us by mismanagement by the same people that are warming up to continue from where fate has left us, if buhari had $100b in our foreign reserve in 2015, we wont be hungry today, we wont lose our jobs, we wont lose our manufacturing industries, this is the truth that shall set us free!

Some even blamed it on Avengers attack of 2016

Niger delta avengers was a non issue, if you noticed, I expunged them from my initial analysis, here is why;
We were in crude shock from late 2014, Avengers struck in 2016, since 2014, your GDP wasn't showing any growth but retrogression or doldrums meaning you were heading towards recession anyways as a result of crude shock.

If Avengers did not strike, OPEC would have asked us to cut production to boost prices,
read:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-28/opec-said-to-agree-on-first-oil-output-cut-in-eight-years

So Avengers or any form of production cut at the time was a non issue. OPEC gave us production cut waiver because Nigeria has already declared force-majore in most of its crude oil export channels.

Nigerian people, what is your present government doing to stem this tide that has shocked the fabrics of our nation to the Marrow?


The vice president being the economic manager of the country Launched the ERGP, with it Nigeria even in recession was able to save $47b in our foreign reserve, at this pace, I have no doubt that this money will hit $100b in the next 4yrs, that is a guarantee that our economy will become immune to global shocks once again, not just crude shocks alone. (Algerian model)

The moment that money crossed $40b mark, forex shortages disappeared, importers stopped complaining, manufacturers stopped complaining of dollar scarcity, debit cards relaxed their limits etc, that was a killer stroke in our economic recovery strategy, inflation immediately responded to the potency of the ERGP from 18.8% in 2017 to 11.23% in 2018.
This reserve will boost investors confidence that the economy is liquid enough for profit repatriation, that is how the jobs will return, job creation is private sector driven, not govt.

Among the three oil dependent economies in Africa that landed in recession within the same period, Nigeria was the first to exit recession, that was historical & mind blowing, despite fighting terrorism and with a massive population, we did it first before any other country.

By Blocking loopholes Our Federal allocation that used to be a misery 311b naira in june 2016 is between 600-700b naira in presently.
This volume if held steady will continue providing liquidity that will surely inflate the economy.

Nigeria is building a Gas liquefying plant called the NLNG train 7 project, that will in a way increase revenue from Gas against depending on oil alone, there are other ongoing Gas projects like the AKK projects and other Gas for power projects, rightly put, the economy is being diversified towards gas. (Russian model)
https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/07/nnpc-signs-agreement-for-seven-critical-gas-projects/

As you can see here, Manufacturing is gradually expanding, next will be jobs returning on its own


https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2018/07/08/cbn-at-57-0-pmi-manufacturing-sector-expanded-in-june/amp/


We don't need Atiku's stealing to truncate an economic process already in recovery.


In conclusion, I can state for a fact that the economic challenges of this country has nothing to do with Buhari under the circumstances he met on ground, we have a chance to fix culpability of blames where it rightly belongs on crude shock, or replace this government whose framework seems promising with another leadership of questionable integrity.

Buhari is like a mechanic that was given a car to fix, only for the car owner to accuse him of being the problem of the car when he is yet to fix anything.

We shall never go back to past governments whose inaction landed us in this mess in the first place.
leadership in the past that we tasked to privatize our establishments, all failed save for the one that ended up in his pocket, yet he claimed to create Jobs? How many jobs were lost in that privatization scam where 56 government entities perished?

Where is our NITEL, ALSCON, Nicon Insurance to mention a few? Leadership that claims to create jobs but his company PRODECO folded up? Leadership that claim to create jobs yet it was Buhari that sacked foreigners littered everywhere in his company, does an ordinary logistics company need that much foreigners?

Freeeanijor:
Mr. Man, would you rather prefer a NITEL regime where you and I would queue up to make calls or the present GSM system that even a primary school pupil could own a phone with a line? Look, you are doing Buhary a great disservice with this line of arguments. Nigeria's wanted to see how PMB intended to change the plight of this Nation and they overwhelmingly supported him and ousted GEJ from Aso Rock. What is paining us is that this same PMB is still using the same rhetoric of pro 2015 of corruption, integrity, bla bla bla bla forgetting that the best intentions and purest integrity means nothing when incompetence and cluelessness is extolled or exalted without measure.

trillville:
jpphilips
My guy, no informed person is saying Buhari caused this mess. Even if Jonathan had saved money, that money would have served as a shock absorber and not a cure to this economic crisis. Tough policy changes need to be made to improve this country and for 4 years Buhari has done nothing to move this nation forward.

From your write up, you seem to deceptively imply that this crisis is over when in reality, Nigeria is deeply indebted and may start selling national assets to stay afloat.

What exactly do you want? Progress for your country or APC winning this election?

The relaxed attitude Buhari has shown towards his re-election is the same relaxed attitude he has shown towards managing our economy.
(One week to elections and you start youtube ads. You clearly aren't serious about winning.)

You are an intelligent man. the only reason you should be doing this is if you personally benefit from Buhari and this is you being loyal, You should simply take a non-partisan stand in the election and let the chips fall wherever they may. Goodluck

SaiATKUOBI2019:
Most of buhari' supporters know he has nothing to offer again hence to defend him, they have to go forceful.
Pmb has failed.
As a military president, Nigeria experienced recession.
As a civilian president, Nigeria still experienced recession.
A man whose wife said, cabals are now in charge of the govt.
A man who claims to fight corruption yet dines with Akpabio, Ganduje, Obanikoro...n.b. these names have cases with efcc.the prayers of Nigerians against the evil broom holders are working