"In the 2015 presidential election, the APC was more prepared for defeat than for victory. The party did not expect to win and clearly had no agenda for victory".

In a 1972 Hollywood film entitled The Candidate, Robert Redford acts as Bill Mckay, a political neophyte who is drafted out of the blue into a race for the U.S. Senate. With no chance whatsoever of winning, Mckay is given a free hand to say whatever he likes on the stump. Therefore, he tweaks the political establishment at every turn.

However, as a result of a series of unexpected developments, he keeps rising in the polls. By Election Day, he is neck and neck with his more seasoned opponent and the race goes to the wire. To everyone’s surprise, he pulls off an incredible victory and is elected senator of the United States.

The last reel of the film is on the night of his election. On hearing he has won, Mckay becomes flustered and confused. Victory was certainly not part of the plan. As media men gather, eager to get his reaction to his famous victory, he pulls his campaign manager into a room and asks him in consternation: “Marvin, what do we do now?” Before he can answer, the media close in on them, drag them out of the room and the film ends.

The satire of the film, which received an Oscar for Best Screenplay of 1972, is that while Mckay might have succeeded in fooling the electorate to vote for him, he did not have a clue what to do as a United States senator. It was all a bit of a joke for him, but then the joke backfired. He never expected to win and had no contingency plan for victory.

Groping in the dark

The Candidate could easily have been a made-in-Nigeria movie in 2015. To all intents and purposes, the opposition APC won an implausible victory against all odds. But in the presidential election, APC was more prepared for defeat than for victory. The party did not expect to win and clearly had no agenda for victory. This is what accounts for the cul-de-sac we now find ourselves in Nigeria. If anything defines our current predicament, it is that we have a government that, in the middle of an economic crisis, does not have a clue what to do.

The APC did not plan to govern. The party-members told Nigerians what mayhem they planned to unleash should they lose and what parallel government they would establish. But concerning government, they proffered no solution on how they would address Nigeria’s urgent economic problems. On the contrary, they made wild unrealistic promises that were totally out of kilter with the situation on the ground; promising to do extravagant things that could not even be entertained by previous governments in more buoyant climes.

How else can one explain the fact that, in the context of a drastic economic downturn, the APC came out with a “Father Christmas” manifesto, loaded with such pies in the sky as paying unemployed graduates, or giving cash handouts to the poorest 25 million Nigerians? Foolishly, Nigerian voters failed to determine where APC hoped to get the money for such largesse.

Because the APC was not prepared to govern, no agreement was reached beforehand by the legacy parties of the coalition about how to distribute the spoils of office. This provided the basis for the free-for-all fights that ensued once the election was over.

Because the APC did not expect to govern and was not prepared to govern, it took President Buhari five months to choose his cabinet. Five months of squabbling and in-fighting, while pretending to Nigerians that the delay was needed to find technocratic saints and angels. But the saints and angels turned out to be the same old “devil you know.” While the president dawdled, the economy went from bad to worse and investors voted with their feet; leaving Nigeria in droves.

Nigeria in sick-bay

We are now confronted with the fact that there is definitely a technocratic deficit in the president’s new crew. Needing to make up for the time we lost while the president kept everyone waiting, we have now discovered that the people he laboured to choose bring little or nothing to the table in terms of their capacity to address expeditiously the grave issues currently confronting the country.

So what do we have now? Nigeria is a sick patient currently lying comatose in a hospital emergency ward. Her condition is critical. A surgical operation is urgently required. However, there is no doctor on duty. The night-nurse only works at the hospital in her spare time. In the daytime, she is the proprietress of a “mama put.” The other nurses are also part-time workers. They are a collection of cooks, tailors and groundnut sellers.

This raises grave concerns about the fate of the patient. What is going to happen to Nigeria? If we are not careful, this patient might not make it.

When President Buhari finally chose his ministers, he chose by his own account “noise-makers.” These turned out to be economic illiterates. Instead of putting together a coherent economic policy that will stop the free-fall of the naira and encourage monetary inflows to supplement the drastic cuts in our foreign exchange income, the government’s answer has been to do nothing but blame the past administration for everything. Its blueprint, if it has any at all, has been to ignore the economy and concentrate instead on anti-corruption propaganda while the president junkets around the world.

No economic blueprint

Before Lai Mohammed was appointed, Adams Oshiomhole was the self-appointed minister of Information. His job, was to attack Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the former minister of Finance, at every turn. This assignment involved re-writing the history of the Jonathan years.

Okonjo-Iweala is a seasoned economist with vast technocratic experience. At one time, she was in the running for President of the World Bank. As minister of Finance, she had an economic blueprint for addressing Nigeria’s economic morass; something sorely lacking in Oshiomhole and his colleagues today. Since leaving office, she has been snatched up as Senior Advisor at Lazard.

Okonjo-Iweala stressed the need to reduce Nigeria’s recurrent expenditure. She insisted Nigeria could not afford the petroleum subsidy. She wanted its trillion naira leakages plugged. But Oshiomhole and his former labour union colleagues would have none of that. They mobilised Nigerians against her; so the hemorrhage continued. Okonjo-Iweala wanted Nigeria to save for the rainy day by establishing an excess crude account and a sovereign wealth fund where incomes above budget estimates could be saved.

However, Oshiomhole and his governor colleagues would also have none of that. They insisted all extra money earned must be shared and spent and not saved. They even went to court to force the minister’s hand. Now that the national oil cookie has crumbled, the same Oshiomhole and his misguided colleagues are holding Okonjo-Iweala responsible for not building sizeable foreign reserves in times of plenty.

However, nothing justifies Okonjo-Iweala’s earlier postures more than Nigeria’s present predicament. Indeed, what Nigeria desperately needs today is Okonjo-Iweala or an Okonjo-Iweala. We need a seasoned and experienced economist to head a team of hard-nosed economists to work out an economic policy to get Nigeria out of the woods. No such team exists today in the Buhari government. Instead of constituting an economic team, the president is appointing social media aides to help launder his image.

As a result, the naira is in free-fall and nobody in government seems to know what to do. It is now 400 to the dollar and the president keeps saying he is against devaluation because it will affect the masses. Somebody needs to tell Mr. President that the masses are already adversely affected. Everybody is raising prices, using the free-falling naira as excuse. It is not inconceivable that by this week-end, the naira might be trading on the parallel market at 500 to the dollar.

Big government

In many respects, Nigeria’s economic situation today is god sent. It enables us to do what we failed to do when the oil market was booming – downsize the government and transform the economy away from oil dependency. However, the tragedy of today is that we are saddled with a government that refuses to face reality. It refuses to entertain the harsh adjustments that need to be made.

The first economic blunder of this government was to bailout the states with salary arrears. The bailout did not address the fundamental issue of the insolvency of those states. It just postponed dealing with them. Since the bailouts are not grants but loans, with repayments to be deducted from the monthly allocations of the states, it means even less money will be coming to them now that there is far less money to share.

The truth is that most of Nigeria’s states cannot survive without government handouts. Better now than later, we need to re-visit the issue of Nigeria’s unrealistic states structure and face up to the fact that we cannot afford 36 states. Neither can we afford a federal legislature that gobbles up over N100 billion per annum. In addition, we can no longer afford a situation where billions of naira is spent every year just catering to the president.

Padded budget

One of the strange things about this government is that it refuses to entertain the need for austerity in the context of our drastically reduced income. Instead, it comes up with a bigger budget than when our economy was far more buoyant. Nigerians refuse to see the 419 in this. If you were earning six naira and your income drops to four naira, you don’t then decide to spend eight naira. This is what the economic illiterates currently running our economy are proposing to do in 2016.

The APC refuses to accept that after 16 years in the political wilderness, it has to make do with lean resources now that it is its turn to be at the helm of affairs. Therefore, it decided to pad the 2016 budget by basing it on oil selling at $38 dollars per barrel; when the commodity has already dropped far below $30. It has also decided to pad Nigeria’s reduced income with borrowed money.

Sums are allocated for fake items, others are inflated beyond measure. Although civil servants have been made the sacrificial lambs for the budget mess, one wonders if a number of the inflated items were not camouflaged backdoor paybacks for APC’s dubious election campaign expenditures.

The hard choices we continue to refuse to make today will still come back to haunt us tomorrow.

Nijagobeta:
Beg her for what exactly? To continue her paper improvements? And keep lying to us so she can get more foreign post.


Rubbish upon rubbish

viceldo:
GOD Greater Plans For That's Y She Left...When You Guys Have Already Missed Up The Economy Now You Need Her To Do What? So That You Guys Would Put The Blame On Her.. She Was Here Before U Nah Won Spoil Her Reputation

afroniger:


Haba. Let us not only beg her but also beg PDP to come back and borrow over a billion dollars to pay salaries like Iweala did last year before she handed over, deplete the foreign reserves, lie about economic statistics, and diversify the economy they failed to diversify fir 16-years o. What PDP failed to do in 16-years, i am sure they will perform magic after we beg them back this time around. I can't shout oooooo.

DropShot:
Femi Aribisala is an old foool.

Typing....

Nijagobeta:
Beg her for what exactly? To continue her paper improvements? And keep lying to us so she can get more foreign post.


Rubbish upon rubbish

Now just a short story of what happened when the oil prices began to crash, just between October 2014 and May 2015 (GEJ handover):

(1) The Naira fell from N166/167 to N220 to $1, meanwhile oil still sold at about $65/barrel as at May 2015.
http://abokifx.com/previous-rates-2/

(2) The nation's foreign reserves dropped from ~$38.5bn to $28.7billion, that's a drop of about $10billion in 7 months, with oil still selling at about $65/barrel as at May 2015.
http://www.cenbank.org/intops/Reserve.asp

(3) Nigeria's GDP growth rate which was hitherto maintained at an average of 6-7% suddenly dropped to its lowest since 1999 of 2.3%.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/nigeria/gdp-growth-annual

(4) Due to a severe cash crunch occasioned by fall in oil prices, the Nigerian government had to borrow about $2.4billion dollars early in 2015 to pay salaries. The FG could not also pay accumulated arrears of fuel subsidy since August 2014 to petroleum importers (this led to the fuel scarcity in May 2015 just before the handover and Lai Mohammed also blamed this owed fuel subsidy as the reason behind the fuel scarcity late last year)
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/05/nigeria-borrows-to-pay-salaries-with-cash-crunch-worsening/
http://www.channelstv.com/2015/12/21/lai-mohammed-blames-fuel-crisis-on-past-administration/

All of the above happened at a time when oil still sold above $65/barrel; today oil sells for about $30/barrel

OLADD:



I can bet it with you that Kemi Adeosun would rather pray and fast for that "paper improvement" than the Naira free falls happening under her nose. Take it or leave it, Okonjo Iweala was a better economic manager.

Elosky20:
so we should bring her back to come and finish our remaining foreign reserve. somebody that cannot manage the economy when oil was sold at $60 per barrel but rather decided to push us into debt by borrowing everywhere, to the extent that they cant pay workers, and she still removed $5 billion frm our foreign reserve.
nw you want her to manage naira when oil is sold at $30 per barrel, that means you want her to sell nigeria.

Aufbauh:
This man Femi Aribisala is a full blooded and self confessed wailer. If you've not seen or heard a wailer before please visit or listen to him.

His rambling has no bearing nor direction, he raged in anger with no substance. This is why he is ignored by all such that he lives in isolation hallucinating.

Moreso, he should have known that Okonjo-Iweala belong to the woeful past, and no one will want to remember a past that is shameful and pathetic.

Naija9090:


What you are not understanding is Okonjo Iweala and the economic team may not have been perfect but they were taking serious measures to prevent our economy from slipping into possible recession as we have now. Is it a coincidence that our economy has worsened under Buhari? Why wasn't the economy this bad under GEJ? THEY WERE TAKING MEASURES!THEY HAD STRONG ECONOMIC TEAM. TO THE CONTRARY, IT TOOK BUHARI 6 MONTHS TO ASSEMBLE A CABINET AND TO THIS DAY HAS NO ECONOMIC TEAM. SO STOP BLAMNG GEJ AND IWEALA.

Naija9090:


Exactly. I expected Emefiele to have resigned long ago. They approached Soludo to come and serve as adviser to the president on economic matters...he refused.

OLADD:
Okonjo Iweala would have failed under our new Commander-In- Chief who sees himself as an emperor, a president who doubles as Chief Economist, Attorney General, Auditor General, Chief Justice etc.A leader that claims to be Mr. Know-all.

DropShot:
Femi Aribisala is an old foool.

If not, how does a sane man canvass for the return of a finance minister who failed woefully in managing bounty harvest to come and mange austere period?

The overhyped economist who couldn't diversify the economy during surplus earnings is the person the lunatic Aribisala is asking us to bring back!

And talking about the revelations in the budget, it is actually a credit to Buhari that we're getting to know the existence of bloated figures contained therein. In the past, the presidency would have done a deal with the NASS such that the budget is not fully discussed to reveal those padding before it's passed. But because we have a president who will not do a deal to shortchange Nigeria, we're able to know how the budget cabals have been stealing us blind.

Yes, the presidency made some mistakes by not being very deligent with the budget, but the fact that heads have rolled and more will still roll for the budget padding is a testament to the president's readiness to take actions to correct mistakes.

To hell with Femi Aribisala and his unpatriotic cohorts.