By Ikenna Emewu
“This administration just spent less than 18 months, so, it is not the cause of the economic challenges on the ground.” — Remi Tinubu
The worst outlook of any economy is instability or negative volatility. That is what the government of Nigeria has subjected the nation’s economy to since May 2023.
This situation doesn’t show any dexterity in handling what should be done to improve the economy.
In the past 17 months President Bola Tinubu has been in power, he has demonstrated the highest ineptitude about the management of the economy by increasing the pump price of petrol four times in very quick succession. From the foregoing, Tinubu doesn’t seem to know anything to do to support the economy apart from taking more money from the common masses, which so far, we have not seen the justification.
It has been a one-way traffic of the masses bleeding in favour of the government without the government giving anything back to make life easier for the people.
While this goes on, the cost of services from the government to the people has increased – from road toll charges to driver’s licence, passport, vehicle documents renewal, etc.
Tinubu on Thursday increased the petrol price yet again, with the NNPC retail outlets, the government’s agency, adjusting their pumps to between N1,030 and N1,070 nationwide.
Since May 29 he came to power and hastily, without any policy plan announced an increase, NNPC has fixed the price four times from N578 to N617, N857, and latest at N1,050 average.
Such volatility like the changing face of the cloud doesn’t support economic planning or implementation.
How would the government implement a budget that is pegged on crude oil benchmark with this instability? How would government agencies cope with the steady adjustment of their current expenditures with this?
It becomes worrisome since the price of petroleum drives the cost of all goods and services in Nigeria since they all depend on transportation.
These moves worsen the hardship Nigerian citizens go through every day where the basic needs for their everyday living keep skyrocketing and moving away from their reach.
Before Tinubu, Muhammadu Buhari, his compatriot in shabby economic management increased the price of petroleum seven times in his eight cancerous years. However, while Buhari’s increase in the times amounted to an N50 difference, Tinubu’s four times adjustment has created a difference of N855 from N195 which he met it on May 29, 2023. This is an unhealthy average of N213.75 per increase whereas Buhari inched up at an average of N7.142 per time.
If the rate and average increase in fuel price is the yardstick to assess leadership, the facts are clear Tinubu has become Nigeria’s worst economic nightmare.
Unfortunately, the government does not balk at the pains of the hardship it imposes on Nigerians and carries on like all is well.
During the campaign, a video of Tinubu promising to shrink the purchasing power of the citizens, strangulate the economic window and tax them most were taken like jokes. But these policies seem to validate that talk we thought was a mere joke.
As the masses face these instabilities, that is how the banking system serves them heartache where depositors can’t have access to their money, but rather get them from roadside POS operators where they pay for them, a situation that makes people to question where the roadside gets the money from.
A stranglehold on the masses through this volatility may work the contrary outcome. Since all these seem like the weaponization of poverty as a political tool, it may possibly work out a possibility where the patience of the hungry masses may snap and turn to what was least expected.
In the same vein, the US dollar, Nigeria’s major international trading medium keeps flexing muscles against another volatility on the value of Nigeria’s naira. As a country that literally manufactures nothing, and even the little it does depends solely on imports, it hasn’t been funny watching the naira tumble by almost N1,000 from where inept Buhari left it at N750 to now N1,700 to the US dollar.
It is senseless to boast that you allow the naira to float endlessly at the vagaries of market forces. That is delusional because no reasonable economy in the world leaves its currency and essential policies purely at the mercy of market forces.
Having run this odd system for 17 months, the federal government should take stock of how it has favoured the general economic outlook. We need to know how it increased job creation, volume of local production, import of capital goods, generation of internal revenue and reasonable and productive taxes, or the micro-economic indicators at the individual citizen’s level. None of these indicators has turned green.
This is a time for a rethink because Tinubu and his team seem marooned with the retreating hope of local refining of the public refinery in Port Harcourt or Kaduna, a promise that has not materialized since last December the deadline for commencement of operations has been bandied endlessly.
These increases are really wearing down the hope of the economy towards recovery.
