By Abba Hamisu Sani
Africa-Press – Nigeria. Nigeria is an African Country with vast natural resources and considered as the most rich country in the continent but the majority of its citizens are poor to the extent that they can not afford daily feeding and other basic needs such as access to health care and quality education.
The recent economic policies introduced by the present administration under President Ahmed Bola Tinubu seems insensitive to the citizens’ plight as inflation becomes a daily affair in the country.
The Nigerian situation is a result of bad leadership as leaders always urged citizens to make sacrifices at different points while the leaders are living lives of luxury no matter the economic condition of the country.
Austerities that aggravated the hardship
As the government of Nigeria removes fuel subsidies and unify the foreign currencies exchange rate, the price of goods and services is skyrocketing on a daily basis with no palliative on the ground but flimsy promises from the government site.
Recently there is a report that some Nigerians have attacked stores where some government agencies keep food stuff in Adamawa state in North East part Nigeria, a situation to show that People are in critical need of food.
Even though the Federal government said it gives directives for the Central Bank of Nigeria and National Emergency management Agency to distribute food items to the states to sell at the subsidized prices, the directive is yet to take effect.
President Tinubu’s current broadcast to the Nation
From what seems to be trying to console Nigerians as they began to be fade off of his administration within two Month Tinubu resort to address Nigerians on Monday 31 of July ,Tinubu
Here is an excerpt from the speech;
“Current hardship necessary for building an inclusive economy . Kicks against an economy that rewards ‘tiny elite’, impoverishes the majority. New minimum wage is coming 75 enterprises to get N1 billion single digit loans 1,300 nano businesses to get N50,000 grant each 100,000 businesses, startups to benefit from N75b Micro Small and Medium Enterprises funds. The Federal Government will invest 100 billion Naira on 3000 gas power buses for mass transit” Tinubu says. President Bola Tinubu insisted that the current economic hardship is a necessary price Nigerians must pay to achieve a balanced and fair economy. He stated that he understood the hardship faced but wished there were other ways to achieve an inclusive economy.Our economy is going through a tough patch and you are being hurt by it. The cost of fuel has gone up. Food and other prices have followed it. Households and businesses struggle. Things seem anxious and uncertain. I understand the hardship you face. I wish there were other ways. But there is not. If there were, I would have taken that route as I came here to help not hurt the people and nation that I love,” Tinubu said.
“This group had amassed so much wealth and power that they became a serious threat to the fairness of our economy and the integrity of our democratic governance. To be blunt, Nigeria could never become the society it was intended to be as long as such small, powerful yet unelected groups hold enormous influence over our political economy and the institutions that govern it.
“The whims of the few should never hold dominant sway over the hopes and aspirations of the many. If we are to be a democracy, the people and not the power of money must be sovereign.
“The preceding administration saw this looming danger as well. Indeed, it made no provision in the 2023 Appropriations for subsidy after June this year.
Removal of this once helpful device that had transformed into a millstone around the country’s neck had become inevitable,” he noted.
Tinubu also pointed out the previous multiple exchange rate regime as one of the flawed systems that impoverished the country and handed the economy over to a selected few. The system, he said, doled out the resources that should have been used to create jobs to a tiny elite in the country on favorable terms.
PDP Swift reaction to the Broadcast described as deception
Reacting to President Tinubu’s address, Nigerian main opposition Party People’s Democratic Party described the speech as a composition of false promises aimed to deceive Nigerians that are in need of economic prosperity .
Addressing journalists at the party’s national secretariat, Abuja, the spokesman for the PDP, Debo Ologunagba, said Tinubu dashed the hope of Nigerians with his staged address in feeble defense of his badly planned and hurriedly executed policies that have worsened economic hardship and uncertainty across the country in the last two months.
According to him, the PDP is appalled that the address is another litany of false promises hurriedly put together by his handlers in the desperate bid to hoodwink and beguile Nigerians, blackmail labor fronts and divert public attention from the life discounting experiences imposed by the APC government.
Way Out from the hardship and the Economic challenges faced by Nigerians
Professor Kabiru Isa Dandago is a financial expert and analyst. He said Nigerian leaders are making wrong economic decisions by trying to emulate advanced countries where things are working well.
The financial expert stated that even in that country the government provides subsidies on different sectors despite the stability of their economy.
Dandago stated this in an Hausa interview with a local radio station “Guaranty radio”in Kano recently.
Professor Kabiru Isa says Nigerian situation requires strategic economic plans and implementation as he decried that Tinubu’s government failed to make a consultation before taking decisions of Fuel subsidy removal and Foreign Exchange unification policy which created more hardship for Nigerians.
” I remember when living in Malaysia the government provided subsidies for electricity and water and it also provided subsidies for automobile manufactures in order to retain their employers”. He said.
Professor Dandago says he wonders why this government’s main effort is to have more revenues without minding the wellbeing of its citizens.
He urged the government to give priority on Job creation, good policies that will promote Agriculture as he cited an example with a Central Bank of Nigeria’s policy of Anchor borrower which was a good initiative but executed poorly.
Incentives and subsidies should be revived to alleviate the sufferings which are artificial as the country has enough sources to Carter for its citizens.
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