The party is over, better pay your bills {Re: STATE OF THE NATION

[Mobolaji Aluko]

Superb essay below.....to be heeded....

DAILY TRUST

The party is over, better pay your bills

For those who have been sending sarcastic video clip and lifted negative write-ups on Buhari’s Government in the last three or so month, I wish them, along with the more discerning others, a Very Happy Sallah. Especially to the recently embolden PDP orphans who have gotten some voice back, even though they are yet to find their souls and their senses. Life is now much tougher for the average Nigerians. 

We have been predicting this for years, and we were shouted down by those milking the commonwealth assisted by their hired propagandists. We were following an economic  dead-end but because most were benefiting from the looting and the lies, we deliberately ignored all the warning signs.

Let me refer the doomsday prophets to some piece I wrote on this page just some 8 month ago, as my way of answering the “Bring Back GoodLuck Group”. It was a reaction to Charles Soludo’s attempt to extricate himself from the mess, and paint himsef as a Messiah. (Abridged for space.)

The Professor met a model, a game really, and he did not change it. The CBN was swapping our dollars, from the sales of oil and gas, and giving us Naira to spend. It was selling the dollars to everyone who can afford it to purchase whatever they damn wished. We wasted the foreign exchange importing even things we could have produced at home: sugar, rice, wheat, fish, cooking oil, turkey wings and even industrial inputs and chemicals we were quite capable of sourcing locally. It did not require a rocket-scientist to understand that this was a non-sustainable model, which could only last with high oil and gas prices, or volumes. Once sales decline or prices collapse the CBN would find itself unable to meet our voracious appetite for imports, and the dollars to finance this. 

Which is the reality we are now faced with.

Over and above its shameful legacy of 16 years of corruption, criminal disregard for crumbling power and other infrastructure, and playing politics with Boko Haram insurgency, this single ineptitude of not preparing ourselves for the inevitable, ranks way up in PDP’s terrible record. Soludo, and Okonjo-Iweala (busy gallivanting all over the world patting herself on the back), should have advised Obasanjo and Jonathan to do thing differently so as to prepare the nation for the inevitable, since we all know the volatility of crude oil prices. There was a huge reserve of foreign currency and ample time to start reducing our imports of food, raw materials, machinery and spare-parts.

Our universities and hospitals could have been developed to reduce the vast amount of dollars we were wasting to go abroad for education or medical attention. On top of everything, without an iota of shame or respect for energy security and survival, we even started importing refined petroleum products. No, we had no wish to plan, and even opted to cripple the National Planning Commission. We were selling forex to every one Tom, Dick and Harry to import anything they wished, totally oblivious of our industrial, food and even social security, or the need to provide employment for our citizens.

Now that oil prices have collapsed, and forex supply is dwindling, we expect quick miracles from President Muhammadu Buhari. The unsavoury truth is simple; the party is over. The model was not sustainable. And the hangover will take time to clear.  

Evidence shows that between April and June 2015 we imported over N140 billion Motor Spirit (petrol), N61 billion worth of wheat, spent N25.4 billion importing rice, N25.1 billion on raw sugar, N24 billion on frozen fish (cod and mackerel), N26.4 billion on motorcycles (including CKDs), N11.2 billion on crude palm oil, N11 billion importing powdered milk, all of which we could have produced or sourced locally. These are quite apart from the industrial chemicals, simple machines, implements and parts that we should have been producing locally to save foreign exchange and even export.More scandalous was our neglect of health and education. As a direct consequence we are now spending trillions abroad, creating jobs for others. Worse still, what we budget for our on public universities is much less than what the National Assembly spends on its members’ creature comfort.

While still on the service sector, it is worth noting that our commercial airlines, charter operators and the owners of the hundreds of privately owned jets around spend about N250 billion abroad annually on aircraft maintenance and simulator training of pilots. Many of them are government owned and yet we have given up on our own national venture, smugly stating that Nigerians cannot be trusted to run public enterprises while the private sector has been unable to seize the open opportunities. The maritime industry is even worse.

The demand for the US Dollar, the Euro, Pound Sterling and other hard currencies would keep increasing as long as we fail to take measures to restructure and diversify our economy. We must produce what we need locally whenever possible, and export more to the rest of the world to earn hard currencies. We need to develop our agriculture, solid minerals, machines and parts to feed our own industries and reduce import dependence. There seems no other way. Old economics, they say. But wait a second; who has ever done it differently?

The issues go beyond CBN fiddling with the exchange rate or allocating forex differently. Agriculture, Trade and Investment, Iron and Steel, Solid Minerals, Ministry of Finance all must put head together and work out an active, appropriate and workable industrial policy for us to increase forex earning, reduce excessive demand for imported goods and services, and move forward. Buhari did not create the problem, and real solutions will take time. The only requirement is that we move in the right direction.

Hopefully oil will remain cheap for the foreseeable future as more of Iran’s production get to the market. We would then realise that depending on government to provide forex is a joke that has gone too far. We may then begin to see the hides and skins, ginger, sesame seed, cotton, cocoa, rubber, gum Arabic, solid minerals, as well as other cash-crops and exportable products and services all around us. We may also begin to appreciate the need to build better schools and hospitals, as well as airlines and shipping lines. Education, training and research will hold the key while electricity, transport and ICT will provide the backbone. We squandered the reserves we should have used to restructure our economy, and missed a chance to be different. To get a strong currency we have to work harder, import less, produce locally and export more. By all means let them offer concrete solutions. But blaming PMB is just cheap shot. Nor can we go back to the bad ways of the last couple of decades.

In economics, very little happens by accident. Nothing is static and no policy succeeds “with immediate effect”. There are always time lags. We shall come back to these next week, God willing. But now, we must thank, and wish Happy Sallah to those who have contributed to making this Sallah peaceful, especially Buhari, Osinbajo, Tinubu, Buratai, Sadiq, Monguno, Magu, Shettima, and our two umpires - Jega and Mahmoud, and all those keeping hopes and faith alive. 

And to my friends always complaining I have been out of touch this year. 

Kuyi Hakuri.

The party is over, better pay your bills

http://www.dailytrust.com.ng/news/columns/the-party-is-over-better-pay-your-bills/162252.html‎

_____________________________________________________________

On Mon, Sep 5, 2016 at 9:30 AM, Mobolaji Aluko <alu...@gmail.com> wrote:

Imperial:

May your tribe increase for what you wrote below!  

Corruption has EATEN SO DEEP into the Nigerian economic system that the 2-5% who have taken - both legally and illegally - the 95% of the Nation's commonwealth have devised a way of SPREADING  that INEQUITY among the raped in Nigeria, so much so the cry of "Bring Back Corruption" is like the cry of the Jews to "Return us to Egypt o, Moses....if it is only manna your God will be supplying us in the desert!"

They never did return to Egypt - and may Nigeria NEVER return to Egypt. (Amen).

I feel the pain myself, when, upon my arrival in Nigeria in 2011, the Naira exchanged for N155-165 to $1, only for it now in 2016 to be hovering in the N350-400 axis, with possibility of it going higher. With many personal responsibilities still in dollars, I feel the pain.  I feel the pain when during that period, people were always begging for money or for employment - ceaselessly.   

But my personal forex issue is an elite concern - because most Nigerians don't even see NAIRA for eye not to talk of DOLLARS.  It is NOT an elite concern for industries that depend on raw materials and/or equipment from abroad, or for investors who earn money in Naifra and want to repatriate it in dollars/ However the new situation calls for a new paradigm shift in our Nation's economy, and there is no better time than now.

Do I blame Buhari for all of these happenings?  Absolutely not, because it is an ACCUMULATION of past national leadership unwillingness, inability or incapability to face the fact that as a nation, we could not FOR EVER be a monocultural oil-and-gas economy, and at the same time have a mono-energy-oil-and-gas-source technology dependence, and not have strategic disaster in our hands sooner or later.   How can we all of these years have oil and gas contributing 90% of foreign earnings, 80% of total national earnings, 83% of electricity production source - and yet have only 4000 MW of public electricity production kwashiokor all of these years, despite years of pouring in money to increase electricity production, which is the sine-qua-non of technological productivity.  

That "sooner or later" is NOW - and we must face up to it once and for all - and fortunately or unfortunately, it falls on Buhari and his government's laps.  Whether it will succeed, the jury is out.

In a few back-and-forth SMS with a friend just yesterday, I wrote that hateful cynicism has never built a nation.  Those who want corruption to return because the rapacious ancien regime  lost out will continue to wail, even mock and sabotage every opportunity to make corrections.  Things would have been "worser" if that ancien regime had returned to power at the center, because the rape of the nation would have continued, and it would have been hiding the true situation while continuing the "direct stealing" - and then spreading the gravy around.  Yes, maybe the Avengers would not have been avenging - there would have been no political incentive - and so our drop in oil production would not have compounded our current financial situation - but no nation worth its salt should give in to politics-induced militant criminality. 

It is clear that in many previous administrations - not just the last one -  Nigerian governance was essentially a pyramidal criminal enterprise comprising legislators, bankers, judges, lawyers, government bureaucrats and many Executive administrators (at the federal, state and local government levels) - and even some in the Press  - with crumbs being given to "grateful" family members, political associates, business acolytes and other hangers-on.  Those people did not just go away on May 29, 2015.  Being unable to eat at the trough in a brazen a manner as before, many of them and their acolytes are using the present hard conditions to hit at those trying to make fundamental corrections to those mistakes - like TSA, BVN, ZBB,  a re-balanced budget (old habits reared its ugly head with "padding" disclosures), a functional and well-funded security apparatus. economy diversification (which does not happen overnight), etc. etc.

Even the corrections are not deep enough, essentially because with the little money being earned from our monoculture of oil - low production, low purchase,  low price -  even LEGAL official expenditures are difficult to carry out by government.

What one simply hopes and prays for is that the Buhari administration will not be panicked by all the loud noises of distress and cacophony of advice around it.  It should sift the wheat of good advice from the chaff of sullen disappointments.   It must do NOTHING to indicate to the people that the Administration is continuing the criminal enterprise that they have come to correct - like re-looting loot. The Administration also needs young, steady, suave and regular spokespersons communicating government policies, not sound-biters and political propagandists that may have been more appropriate for election purposes.  At 73, the civilian Buhari (transformed from the military dictator Buhari) has indeed lost a step or two - and hates to be typecast as a "dictator" of any hue - but Nigeria needs some firmness of leadership, particular as leader of a political party, and head of a government. Aloofness is NOT an option.  Finally, a number of his top officials and ministers are misfits, and are not serving him well, in my opinion; after one year plus,  he should look to re-shuffle his cabinet.

And there you have it.

Bolaji Aluko

On Mon, Sep 5, 2016 at 7:45 AM, Maigoro A Jos <maigo...@gmail.com> wrote:

Obviously, this is the real picture of our state of the nation but
mind you, only those with moral thought can acquaintance with you.

The beneficiaries of corruption and unapologetic PDP crooks are making
the atmosphere so noisy that PMB's policies not friendly.



Maigoro

On 04/09/2016, Imperial imperi...@yahoo.com [YanArewa]
<YanA...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>
> I have been following closely the activities of this government and whenever
> I have the opportunity, I try to find out the opinions of people as regards
> the performance of this government. I just realized that the hardship faced
> by many Nigerians is simply as a result of the fact that almost everyone of
> us benefited from the cycle of corruption.
> The bricklayer, plumber, laborers, tiler are all complaining because
> building construction has slowed down massively cause the thieves no longer
> have money to spend on real estate.
> The car dealers are grumbling because their cars are begging for buyers.
> Thieves can no longer spend wastefully.
> The private school owners are shouting because parents can no longer pay
> outrageous sums and are withdrawing their wards. I was shocked when I learn
> that in a popular private University in Abuja, parents are writing
> undertaking at the account section for their children to be allowed to write
> exams... and it goes on and on.
> The fact is, a lot of people are returning to what someone referred to as
> ''default mode''.We mostly have been living above our REAL MEANS. We have
> been staying in houses that ordinarily our incomes can't afford. Our
> children going to schools we can't afford. Driving cars we ordinarily can't
> maintain.
> We have been living a FAKE LIFE all along. Now the reality is before us and
> we don't want to accept it. This shows how morally bankrupt we are.
>
> You can't eat your Cake and have it. TAKE NOTE........"GOD HELP AND BLESS
> NIGERIA"
>
> You got billions from bank without collateral using your political
> influence. You put half into your business and spent the other half on
> exotic cars, jewelries' etc. Your business employs 100 people normally. You
> get illegal waivers and concessions to import raw materials at rock bottom
> prices, you get over-inflated contract to supply government some goods your
> company produce....in short your company is kept afloat by corruption.
> Now the new Sherriff in town say no more ridiculous waivers, no more
> inflated contracts, no more bank loans without collateral, in fact its time
> you or your company pay off the billions of debt owed.....AMCON takes over
> your company, staff are laid off......And you go on air and say the new
> sheriff is killing business and causing unemployment..
> The truth is....you and your company were never in business, you were only
> feeding off the system. Too many companies and banks are funded by
> corruption. Remove corruption from the system and they collapse.......and we
> end up blaming the person that removes corruption for the collapse of the
> corruptly run fake company.
> Its like our system and corruption are so interwoven and inseparable that
> removing one will kill the other. Maybe we should tolerate and learn to live
> with corruption so that Nigeria can survive?
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>

____________________________________________________________________ 

[Nkolika Ebele]

Cannot be better written. I agree with the analysis made by the author of this beautiful write up. Indeed the party is over. Time to look inwards.

Nkolika

---

From: Mobolaji Aluko <alu...@gmail.com>
To: USAAfrica Dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: "africanw...@googlegroups.com" <africanw...@googlegroups.com>; Yan Arewa <YanA...@yahoogroups.com>; OmoOdua <omo...@yahoogroups.com>; NigerianWorldForum <NIgerianW...@yahoogroups.com>; NaijaPolitics e-Group <NaijaP...@yahoogroups.com>; "niger...@yahoogroups.com" <niger...@yahoogroups.com>; ekiti ekitigroups <ekiti...@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2016 12:37 PM
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The party is over, better pay your bills {Re: STATE OF THE NATION

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Given : Taxation's fine. Monitoring the possibilities of treasonable bribes to avoid paying official taxes. Should also be fine. ( stop the leakages and channel them back into their rightful place : into the national coffers.

What's being responded has probably not been fully digested and that why Simple Simon is asking in naked wonder and bewilderment :The great question

To whom then does the actual oil money

the great hunk and hub

linchpin and lifeblood

of the nation's economy

the national cake

apart for some special - and equitable - revenue concessions such as derivation allocations

to whom does Nigerian oil belong, who owns it?

[Okechukwu Ukaga]

Before taxing the general public, the government should first collect as much of the stolen funds as possible and plug the ongoing leakages. For instance, the $9 billion in the hands of just 50 crooks (according to John Kerry) will go a long way if recovered by the Nigerian government. And there are a lot more out there.

OU

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Okechukwu Ukaga, MBA, PhD
Executive Director, Northeast Minnesota Sustainable Development Partnership

Extension Professor, University of Minnesota Extension 

Adjunct Professor, Geography Department, University of Minnesota - Duluth

114 Chester Park, 31 W. College Street, Duluth, MN 55812

Website: www.rsdp.umn.edu  Phone: 218-341-6029  

Book Review Editor, Environment, Development and Sustainability (www.springer.com/10668),

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - Richard Buckminster Fuller

[John Mbaku]

OU:

I have received calls from many colleagues in Abuja and Lagos expressing the same sentiments--that the government should secure the stollen funds and then put into place mechanisms to make sure that this does not happen again. The problem is, how can one expect a dysfunctional system to voluntarily cure itself? Should we not be asking ourselves the question: Why was it possible for these people to siphon so much money from the public treasury? In other words, what determines the pervasiveness of venality in the country's public sector?

JOHN MUKUM MBAKU, ESQ.
J.D. (Law), Ph.D. (Economics)
Graduate Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law
Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Attorney & Counselor at Law (Licensed in Utah)
Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor of Economics &  John S. Hinckley Fellow
Department of Economics
Weber State University
1337 Edvalson Street, Dept. 3807
Ogden, UT 84408-3807, USA
(801) 626-7442 Phone
(801) 626-7423 Fax

Du 04 juillet 2016 au 27 août 2016

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