Tomorrow, May 29 will mark President Mohammadu Buhari’s seven years in office. Our erudite economist, Dr. Dele Sobowale assesses the administration’s performance and passes verdict in the piece below. Ebele reviews education sector and Sonny Daniel reports developments in the area of infrastructure. It’s a weekend delight.

Special Report

By Dr.DELE SHOBOWALE

“Better to tell it straight.”

That was the advice in 1969 given to me by my supervisor in an Advertising Agency situated off Madison Avenue, New York City, when I was on industrial attachment for my MBA programme majoring in Marketing. I was assigned the task of writing the body copy for a new brand of toothpaste about to be launched by a small company new in the sector.

Like all novices, I submitted an essay. The supervisor, accustomed to that sort of drivel, took out his red biro and marked a few words. Then he turned to me and said. “That is what you mean to say, isn’t it? Then better to tell it straight.” I told it straight all right. “Your mouth stinks like the toilet. Use this.”

The Nigerian economy, like a boxer who ran into a stiff uppercut, was hanging on the ropes when CHANGE took place on May 29, 2015. It is now flat on its back after seven years of President Buhari’s government. Everything that can possibly go wrong has done so. The only people who don’t seem to know it are the residents of Aso Rock and the presidential candidates of the All Progressives Congress, APC.

All the candidates are still promising to continue with Buhari’s policies. One can only hope they don’t mean what they say. They are only trying ego-massage on an old man who had done his best – even if the best has damaged the Nigerian economy almost beyond repairs.

If you think this is an exaggeration, then take a look at the table below. This is telling it as straight as can be.

WHERE WE WERE; WHERE WE ARE

A few economic and social indices – exchange rate, prices, employment, school enrollment, power supply, poverty level and homicides have been selected to serve as summary for the seven years which had gone by like a parade of mourners. As usual with us, we present the facts first; then the commentary follows. As much as possible, third party data will be used to avoid any accusation of bias by government spokesmen – whose mis-statement of facts are now legendary.

EXCHANGE RATE N199/$1 TO N422/$1.

“War is too important to be left to Generals.” Nigerians are slowly getting that into their heads. They have now understood that the same thing can be said about exchange rate; which hitherto had been left exclusively to the authorities.

Even the uneducated market traders of Nigeria have finally got wise to the fact that exchange rate management, which comes under monetary policy, and is the primary responsibility of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, is everybody’ s business. No country is safe any longer from the effects of exchange rate fluctuations.

People now have to hold their leaders to account honestly for the results – especially when they are as devastating as Nigeria’s had been in the last seven years. Below is the quick summary of our descent to where we are now and some of its consequences.

However, it is important to bear in mind that there are at least two or three exchange rates operating in the Nigerian economy. This long term policy of the CBN, long before 2015, has been partly responsible for all our economic predicaments at the present time.

For instance, the official exchange rate in 2015 was N199/US$1. But, the parallel market rate ranged from N250-80/US$1. Today, the official rate is N422/US$1, but right now, the street rate is at least N600/US$1. The prices of a few commodities will help to illustrate how the exchange rate movement has affected most Nigerians.

COMMODITY 2015 PRICE 2022 PRICE

Eggs (crate) N360 N2400

Pure water N5 N20

Titus sardine N180 N700

There is no need to list the prices of all food items for the reader to get the point. While prices in the aggregate have risen by 300 to 400 per cent since 2015, salaries and wages have remained almost static. That explains why Nigerians are now poorer in 2022 than in 2015. It is an economic fact which cannot be denied. And, as things stand right now, the situation can only get worse with a global recession about to set in on account of outbreak of war in Ukraine.

That is the first bomb ticking silently. There must be a limit to Naira devaluation without undesired consequences.

RISING UNEMPLOYMENT

“40% OF Nigerian youths are unemployed – Dr Adesina, President African Development Bank, March, 2022.

Time bomb has been used by many experts to describe high rate of youth unemployment anywhere. Nigerians have heard it many times before too. What few people realize is the fact that the bombs of joblessness among Nigerian youth have been exploding on many fronts nationwide. The cardinal reasons will soon be disclosed.

Dr Adesina is a pro-establishment person. He does not criticize the Federal Government of any African nation, particularly Nigeria, unnecessarily. Even the data supplied above was released within the context of advice to the Buhari administration. The AfDB is not political; neither is it in opposition to the ruling party. But, Adesina has shed light on where we stand in 2022.

The Federal Government has also admitted that the trend has been downhill since 2015 – despite promises made along the way. We will mention two such unfulfilled pledges to explain how we arrived where we are today.

According to a national paper, “the aggregate rate of unemployment in 2017 was 14.4 per cent; climbed to 23.1 per cent in 2018, 27.10 per cent in 2020, and is currently 33.3 per cent.” That is bad enough news. It was also revealed that , the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, admitted that “Due to COVID pandemic, 20 per cent of full-time workers lost their jobs in 2020…which accentuates youth joblessness estimated variously at between 42.5 per cent and 55 per cent.”

That is worse; but, it is not the end of the sad story. It is not just the percentages which are going up, the actual numbers paint the worse picture. The Nigerian population continues to grow at about 3 per cent per annum; and it has now reached an estimated 210 million. Young people under the age of 40 constitute over 70 per cent of the total. The percentage increases from 14.4 per cent in 2017 to 33.3 per cent now implies a higher actual number of unemployed youth than the percentages suggest.

Since the Devil will always find employment for idle hands, millions of ostensibly jobless Nigerians have adopted survival strategies based on crime. They have resorted to all forms of crime for their livelihood —kidnapping, armed robbery, banditry, cyber crimes, rituals, Ponzi schemes, traffic robbery, hacking corporate and individual accounts and illicit drugs .

The Police, the DSS, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Nigerian Customs Service and National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, are overwhelmed with cases. There are no official estimates available, but from my own vintage point, it would appear that for every criminal caught by the law, at least three or four escape. That explains the rise in regularity of some types of crime.

It is estimated that at least 60 per cent of youths in one Local Government in Lagos State live on crime. In an article titled THE SURVIVAL OF THE UNFITTEST published in 2009 and based on research, it was estimated that only about 30 per cent of the youths in the LG lived on crime.

The increase in percentage is frightening enough. The actual numbers are almost four times higher. Indeed, virtually every young person there is either fully or partly engaged in crime. In seven years, Nigeria has nurtured over 50 million young people who have not been engaged in lawful work; and who might spend the rest of their lives living on crime.

Incidentally, in April 2017, the FG launched the Economic Recovery and Growth Programme, ERGP. Among other unfulfilled promises, the ERGP promised to create 15 million new jobs. Instead, more jobs were lost; particularly to COVID-19 pandemic. While many other countries have recovered from COVID-19, Nigeria has not; and might not as a global recession might start soon.

That is Time Bomb number two.

SCHOOL ENROLLMENT

“Upon the education of the people of this country, the fate of this country depends.” Benjamin Disraeli, 1804-1881.

When the late British Prime Minister delivered that speech in the House of Commons on June 15, 1874, he was only restating what many others had recognized long before his time as civilizations developed. Furthermore, it was quickly realized that education is not static; continuous improvement is required to push forward the frontiers of knowledge.

The most advanced nations therefore have one thing in common. They invest most in education and make school enrollment mandatory – at least up to secondary level. The dividends are there for all of us to see around us.

It is one of the worst tragedies of our own era, that at the end of its seventh year, the Buhari administration has set back education more than any of its predecessors who also tried their best to ruin Nigeria’ s education. I was an undergraduate in an American university when two Nigerians arrived to start their Master’s Programme in Mathematics. They had no problem adjusting to their studies; in fact, they were ahead of their American classmates. Today, few Nigerian graduates can proceed to Master’s abroad without prior assistance.

The current situation with Nigerian education, under Buhari can be summarized by directing our minds to two recent statements.

UNICEF recently announced that 10 million Nigerian school age girls are out of school. Buhari’s Northwest is responsible for the largest number – with Sokoto leading the parade. Zamfara and Katsina are not far behind. There is abundant evidence to prove that if you want to educate a nation, you must start by sending the girls to school.

Educated women almost invariably encourage their kids, boys and girls, to get educated. Illiterates, on the other hand, especially those given away in marriage at an early age, seldom develop the urge for sending their children to school. You can’t give what you don’t have. Most of those 10 million girls would ordinarily not send their kids to school. But, now those who might want to do so have additional reason for being discouraged.

When Mrs Alheri Emmanuel, mother of Deborah Samuel, unhappily announced that “None of my children will go to school again”, she spoke for millions of parents in the North, especially Niger, Kaduna and Zamfara, who are just praying for a really traumatic school year to end.

Few Nigerians ever imagined that we could ever relive the Chibok experience. The school year 2021-2022 has exposed our national delusion. Several schools were invaded and students carted off into slavery; just for making the mistake of wanting to be educated in Nigeria’s North.

When this school year ends next month or so, thousands of parents with children in Northern schools will move them out; many of those who cannot will keep them at home. As one father told me on the phone “Dele, I prefer my child to be alive even if you call him illiterate than to bury him”.

Most of us have lost count of the number of times public universities – Federal and states – have gone on strike since 2015. Right now, the academic session means absolutely nothing when the first semester was not completed and most of the second semester is also gone. Final year students cannot leave; new students cannot be admitted. We run the risk of having an entire set of secondary school leavers with no place to go.

Yet, the amount in dispute with the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, is far less than the amount being mis-managed on dubious School Children Feeding Programme.

That sums up the situation on education in the seventh year of our President. And that’s another time bomb ticking.

POWER SUPPLY

“He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.”

Confucius, 551-479 BC, Chinese philosopher.

On May 29, 2015, President Buhari declared that the 4,000MW of power distributed to Nigerians was unacceptable. We clapped in appreciation. The record since then should embarrass all of us. Power generation reached a peak of 5,008.9MW on December 7, 2021. it has dropped below 4,000MW everyday from 2015 till today.

Just before the 2019 elections, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the Minister of Information and Culture told Nigerians that APC has fulfilled all its promises. Obviously, Lai was suffering from his usual memory lapse. He forgot the promise to deliver more power – which remains unfulfilled even now. The average daily power supply since 2016 has been less than the 3,600MW recorded in 2015. We have laboured for seven years only to find ourselves behind the starting point.

POVERTY

Two pieces of third party evidence is all you need to know where we stand on poverty. They are presented below.

“In the last 40 years, the real per capita income has been inflation adjusted, and per capita income in Nigeria has not grown. What it was in 1981, 1982 is what it is now in 2021, 2022.” The Country Director, World Bank, Shubham Chaudhuri.

Report, PUNCH, April 17, 2022.

That was bad enough. Most Nigerians have never heard of Hanke’s Annual Misery Index, MI, a global socio-economic study of all nations on earth. It is published by Professor Steve Hanke of John Hopkins University, Maryland, USA. The 2021 report, just released ranked Nigeria as the eleventh worst nation on earth in which to live.

The results are based on four economic variables: interest rates, unemployment estimates, inflation and Gross Domestic Product, GDP growth. It was just as well they excluded power supply and exchange rates.

The verdict is damning. In Africa, Nigeria is only better than other hells on earth like Angola, Sudan and Zimbabwe – which has never recovered from the dead hands of old man Robert Mugabe.

Nigeria remains the poverty capital of the world and we add more people to the number every blessed day. There is no light at the end of the tunnel into which Buharinomics has driven us. Unfortunately, we have one more year of this misery to endure.

POVERTY ALLEVIATION

The principles of economics respect nobody whether president or pauper. The subject is also highly quantitative. Those not comfortable with Mathematics and data generally can be regarded as illiterates. One of the enduring issues in economic policy management has been alleviating poverty.

So far mankind has failed in this regard – irrespective of the type of government or the leaders in charge. Thus, when Buhari promised in 2015 to reduce the number of people living in poverty by 10 million in ten years some of us were skeptical. History does not always support such promises.

Fortunately, economics has created a short hand metric for determining whether or not poverty is being reduced in any economy. It is so simple that one must wonder why Nigerian government officials fail to understand it. Two variables are involved – population and GDP.

If the GDP grows faster than the population, then the citizens are getting richer. If the GDP grows less than the population, then poverty increases. If we apply this to the Nigerian economy under Buhari from 2016 to 2021, (2015 and 2022 are excluded because 2015 was shared by two governments, and 2022 is still in progress) this is what we get.

TABLE

YEAR 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

POP. 3% 3% 3% 3% 3% 3%

GDP -1.6 0.8 1.95 2.25 -1.8 0.1 (all %s)

“Even God cannot change the past.” Agathon, 447-401BC. That is also a cardinal principle in economics. But, last year, on the sixth anniversary of his tenure Buhari’s speech writers attempted to do just that. The Nigerian President declared to the whole world that his administration has lifted 10 million Nigerians out of poverty. He also announced that the list of the ten million lucky citizens was available. It was a disgraceful performance before a global audience for two reasons.

Given the table above, Nigeria must have written a new economic theory which runs counter to established norms. It would have been the first time in history for a country tottering annually on the brink of recession to at the same time be lifting millions out of poverty. Furthermore, nobody in that government has been able to produce the list of those rescued from poverty till today.

But, don’t worry. This review is being written without having an idea what President Buhari will announce on poverty alleviation. One thing is certain, however, he will repeat the bogus claim of 10 million Nigerians lifted from poverty. And, the world will groan again. They never expect the truth from our leaders anyway.

CONCLUSION

Seven years can be used to deliver a nation as the Biblical Joseph did in Egypt; it can also be used to deepen national misery. The challenge to this government, including Vice President Osinbajo, is for somebody to point to one aspect of our economy which has improved since 2015.

To be quite candid, electing Buhari was a colossal blunder. It will require three governments to clean up the mess he will leave behind in 2023.