FIVE THINGS PRESIDENT TINUBU MUST DO IF NIGERIA’S ECONOMY MUST IMPACT THE LIVES OF SUFFERING NIGERIANS SOON
*By*
*Prof. Femi Olufunmilade*
(femiology@gmail.com)
1. Find a way to halt further rise in the price of petrol and not tell us it is market-determined. No government in the world leaves energy security of its citizens to the vagaries of market forces.
It only takes a Google to see that oil is subsidised in the US and electricity too in Germany. There are countless other subsidies in vogue across the Western World, Asia etc. But we aren’t even asking for subsidy. We are begging for price stability now for us and businesses to be able to plan and manage the resources at our disposal.🙏🏿
2. Establish a benchmark below which the Naira will not be allowed to fall, even if it’s as high as N1,500. It’s currently over N1,700 to a dollar in the black market. This has affected everything in terms of inflation. The means of exchange cannot be allowed to fall so freely. It’s making the entire economy unstable and life increasingly unbearable.
This is because we are too import-dependent. We still import fishmeal and corn to produce poultry feeds. A bag of poultry feed in the market now sells for as high as N25,000. That’s why, right now, a three-month old broiler goes for N25,000.
By Christmas, some will sell for as high as N40,000. A crate of eggs is now about N7,000. A loaf of bread N2,000. How can we allow this trend to continue in the name of deregulation of the economy? If government can’t regulate the market, then the market has become the government, meaning a government permitting such is useless!
Chapter Two of our Constitution puts the management of the economy in the hands of the government such that the welfare of every citizen will be protected. It’s a breach of the Constitution to abdicate responsibility to some hideous economic saboteurs in the name of deregulation. If you continue to deregulate, profiteers will regulate our lives badly!
3. Invest massively in local self-sufficiency in the production of goods we currently import such as fish, corn, and palm oil, among others. Our import dependency is killing the Naira. Let’s invest in import substitution, at least, in goods that we are capable of producing locally and within a short time.
We can also have those for medium and long terms. In a nutshell, we need a list of items for import- substitution with timelines and concrete measures by the government to meet the targets.
Otherwise, it will appear the government doesn’t know what it takes to develop and grow the Nigerian economy. A situation where importers of refined oil are still being issued licenses to import and drain our foreign exchange, while we are celebrating Dangote and Port Harcourt Refineries for refining oil locally, makes no sense at all to most Nigerians.
4. The Nigerian Export Promotion Council should be directed to produce an Action Plan for Non-Oil Exports within what’s left of the Tinubu Administration’s four-year tenure. In this regard, the Council should be tasked to identify low-hanging fruits for exports to the tune of $100 billion per annum.
Poor Bangladesh rakes in an average of $35 billion from the export of textiles alone! That country was nowhere in the era when Nigeria was exporting textiles manufactured in Kano, Kaduna, Lagos, Ogun States and more across Africa and the world. How is that difficult to revive? Operators of the golden age of that sector are still alive and healthy to guide us. Comrade Adams Oshiomole is one of them. A simple guide for the Council can also include the AGOA Act of the United States. That is the Africa Growth and Opportunities Act that contains over 6,000 export items that don’t attract any import tariff in the US.
It’s a huge opportunity most African countries, especially Nigeria, hasn’t tapped into. President Tinubu should appoint a Specialist on AGOA to turn things around. His term is running out and a second term isn’t guaranteed as things stand with the intense hardship in the land.
5. Support the creation of Self-Defence Squads in communities most vulnerable to terrorism and banditry. Provide their volunteer youths with requisite training in defence and weaponry, and arm them under the oversight of the nearest military formation, so they can provide the first line of defence of their communities, before the security agencies are called in, when necessary.
This self-help approach to security isn’t new to our military. It’s in the mode of what the military created in Borno State some years ago and tagged Civilian JTF. We need its replication in vulnerable communities for our farming communities to resume peaceful living and give us food in abundance in the next planting season.
