A vast majority of us Nigerians still don’t
understand how we have wrecked our country with our own curious choices. Most
Nigerians now see the CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele as incompetent and should be
sacked, because the naira was now exchanging at 309 or so to the USD.
It is amazing that this is the view and
sentiment being expressed by many Nigerians who actually think there is some
magic POLICY that can make the Naira strong in the near term.
An understanding of simple economics and the
way the world works shows that with only oil accounting for over 90% of our
revenues, we really don’t have much of an economy. We hardly produce anything,
we import even toothpicks, so exactly what policy is going to be implemented
that will turn Nigeria into a top exporting economy in the near term?
There was a time Nigeria had a truly strong
economy and the naira was one to the dollar – even exchanged for higher than
the USD, but that Nigeria is not this Nigeria.
Back then we had a booming economy. We were
either the top, or among the top exporters, of timbre, cocoa, groundnuts,
rubber, palm oil, etc, in the world. Nigerians not only holidayed at home in
their villages, at Yankari Games Reserve, at Obudu Cattle Ranch, at Oguta Lake,
at Ikogosi springs, at Gurara Falls, at Mambilla Platueau, etc, we attracted
international tourists who brought in loads of foreign exchange.
Even Nigerian schools were foreign exchange
earners because they attracted foreign students. We had different car assembly
plants – Peugeot, Volkswagen, Anamco etc. Nigerian government officials only
bought vehicles assembled in Nigeria for official cars. Our textile industry
was alive and well. We had a thriving sports industry.
We were not Man United or Chelsea fans. We
were Rangers or IICC fans. We had the Nduka Odizors, people made money from
sports. We also had companies like Lennards and Bata producing school shoes in
their thousands, we had the thriving Nigerian Airways and the Aviation School
in the north that produced some of the best pilots in the world. In those days
if you were brilliant you were respected much more than the crass
money-miss-road contractors of today. Even Religion is no longer spiritually
fulfilling, because it is now materially driven.
Today however, no thanks to our parents
(and we must call them out the way Wole Soyinka did his generation) and many of
us (and we should be remembered for failing our children if we continue like
this), we have destroyed everything.
Today for instance Nigerian football (which
comes easy to me obviously) doesn’t appeal to us, we have to fly across
thousands of miles to watch ‘our’ clubs play. Every year we collectively burn
billions of Naira being fans of clubs that give us nothing back, but some
‘entertainment value’ – simple pleasures for which we are ready to destroy the
future of our children.
Even with our little money we all want to
wear designer clothes and carry designer bags, Armani, Givenchy, Louis Vuitton
etc. We all want to drive jeeps with American specs, our children must now
school overseas and acquire the necessary accents to come back home and
bamboozle their ‘bush and crass’ contemporaries that they left behind. Who
holidays in Nigeria anymore, is there Disneyland here? No one buys
made-in-Nigeria school bags for their children, after all no Superman or
Incredible Hulk or Cinderella on them.
We are no longer top exporters of anything
and the demise of oil means we are falling to zero. A country of 170m
fashion-conscious people have no textile industry. We take delight in showing
how our made-in-Switzerland Aso Ebi is different class to everyone else’s. When
we help our musicians grow and pay them millions, they repay us by immediately
shipping the monies overseas to produce their “i-don-dey-different-level”music
videos. It makes no difference that distinctly Zulu dancers are dancing to a
Nigerian highlife song.
Our local celebrities also wed and holiday
overseas to impress us all. All the musicians who acknowledge their Ajegunle
roots now speak in a cocktail of strange accents to symbolise how much they
have blown their monies overseas.
Were we a more serious people, the highly
popular Kingsway Stores of the past would probably have a thousand outlets pan
Nigeria today supporting a massive agriculture industry among others, but today
we have the likes of SPAR, Shoprite, dominating the retail industry while
Kingsway is dead.
And we Nigerians make it a special point to
shop from the Oyinbos who have ‘cleaner shops’, ‘better this and better that’.
For our personal pleasure we don’t mind them dominating us in our own backyard
and shipping proceeds overseas.
It goes on and on. Even as you are reading
this, stop for a moment and look around you. What you see will probably explain
why we are lucky it is not N1000 to the USD yet.
And don’t think for a moment that it cannot
get there. Just continue to wear your Armani gear and Swiss-made lace, continue
to spend your money on Man United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Barca and encourage
your children to do same.
Don’t curtail your interest in choice wines
(we were the number one champagne consumers in the world in 2015), continue to
love your American specs, cheer the education ministry for letting schools sink
to pitiable levels, don’t fight them to improve our schools, don’t chide them
for letting schools drop Nigerian history and embrace British, America and
whatever else curricula.
Carry on with your love of French wines and
Chinese silk, don’t bother about Jamiu Alli when there is Roger Federer. Stock
up on your Italian, American, British products which you cannot live without,
including the ‘baby soft’ toilet rolls produced only in that small unique
village in England – the days are long gone since you were a broke student who
used wet newspapers to wipe your butt.
Don’t even consider holidaying in Nigeria,
it’s too dangerous. Please keep dressing in fine silk made in some exotic places
so you can be addressed accordingly.
Finally keep letting corrupt leaders who
have looted your commonwealth and shipped all the monies overseas get away
because to attack them does not fit your political narrative. Let us continue
with the fine life, let us all continue to work for Whiteman.
But don’t forget that
there is payback time. Well people, payback time is here. Emefiele is not the
problem. Time for us all to look in the mirror and take responsibility."
Extrapolated from Afolabi Akanbi
Comments
Post a Comment