•Nnaemeka Obiareri
Former President Muhammadu Buhari has been accused of wasting the N23 trillion Ways & Means printed under his tenure without any tangible development to show while President Bola Tinubu has, in seven months printed N7.8 trillion yet still borrows.
Nnaemeka Obiareri, a Development Economist/Investment Banker stated this on Monday when he appeared on Channels TV to speak on the state of Nigeria’s economy.
He said that the pressure the country presently faces in the foreign exchange market, especially on the dollar side of the market is 60 percent driven by criminality.
The Development Economist/Investment Banker called for restructuring of the economy, stressing that much progress would not be recorded if the present constitutional framework is maintained even if an angel is brought in, he would not be able to fix the country.
“Nigeria needs to be restructured. From 1991 till date, we’ve progressed in error… Even if you bring an angel into this country, he cannot fix it under the current constitutional framework that we run.
“The pressure we are feeling on the dollar side of the market is because it is 60% driven by criminality”, Nnaemeka Obiareri said.
On the protests that rocked Minna in Niger State, and Kano, he stated that “Nigerians are not lazy. They are very resilient people. They are not protesting because they cannot work, they are protesting because they have seen the insensitivity of the political class”.
According to him, “If you look at the history of this country from 1999 till now, you will notice that we have progressed in error.
“Former President Obasanjo was the best that has happened in the fourth Republic. Yar’Adua, that good man came but illness took him away. When Former President Goodluck Jonathan came, we thought he was the worst.
Buhari came, under eight years he printed N23 trillion and wasted it. Under President Tinubu in seven months, we printed N7.8 trillion and we are not talking about that. What did they do with the naira and we keep on borrowing and Nigeria keeps worsening?”
He pointed out that in, “2015 former President Muhammadu Buhari inherited a foreign exchange market that was N199 to $1 at the parallel market rate and N197 to $1 at the official rate. Remember that under ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo the naira lost N38 from N88 when he became President to N154 when he left. Under Presidents Jonathan/Yar’Adua the naira lost N78 to $1 which is even bad, but under President Buhari it went overboard; we lost over N600 to $1.
“And it had nothing to do with honest economic transactions because within 2016 to 2023 our total import volume was $451 billion total; our export volume within that same period was $406 billion but Buhari inherited foreign reserves of $29 billion unencumbered and within that period we had inflows of over $168 billion through foreign diaspora remittances.
“We had excess net dollars coming into this country on very lawful transactions. The then Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor Godwin Emefiele against the extant laws of the Federation printed and handed over to Buhari over N23 trillion about $60 billion by the exchange rate of that time. What Nigerians have not bordered to ask is what did they do with that naira at the time. Most of the governors were doing bazaar.
The pressure we are feeling on the dollar side of the market is because it is 60% driven by criminality”.
Continuing, he said, “On the crude oil side, we were doing 2.5mb/d in 2011. In fact, Buhari inherited 2.3mb/d. Buhari left with less than 1mb/d.
The NNPCL Managing Director Mele Kyari told us that on a monthly basis Nigeria losses about $1.9 billion through crude oil thefts and inefficiency, that is a whooping $22 billion that is supposed to come to the Federation Account that are lost to thieves and inefficiency. Till today nobody has been arrested and prosecuted. The output has not yet been ramped up to 2.5mb/d, which is the major source of our foreign exchange earner for Nigeria”.
On how to solve the challenges, Nnaemeka Obiareri stated: “The problem we have here is fundamental, we should tackle the fiscal side. We must fix the very foundation of this country, the constitutional, the fiscal, the resource production and the distribution architecture of Nigeria to 1963 when we had the regions, autonomous and independent and producing whatever they wanted to consume. They kept 50%, 30% to the port and 20% to the Federal Government of Nigeria to run simply foreign and defence. Most of the items that we have today in the exclusive list were job of the constituent units from seaport to roads. We must look back at what works for us. At that time, politics was not a do or die affairs.
“The short term intervention is for us to put in measures to stop the bleeding. And to stop the bleeding, we must tackle corruption. What we are doing now is that we are applying the elixir. We are talking about productivity, the people, human capital, the land, the capital, funding and the machinery are the factors of production.
When Nigeria was productive there was physical and structural arrangements that enabled it to work. We had a resource control framework. When you do it every state will look inwards. Niger State alone can generate nothing less than $5 billion annually from the agro value chain but we will discover that almost 13 communities or Local Governments have been taken over by terrorists and bandits.
“How do you engender productivity in that area when there is no security? And to fix security it also goes back to constitutional framework. We must amend the architectural structure of our security to allow the communities, local governments to train and equip themselves. Between 1960 and 1963, we had region police. In fact Eastern Nigeria had a more efficient police. When they wanted to maintain peace in Cameroon Republic they invited them to go there. Devolve security task to the communities”.
He submitted that “Interestingly, Bola Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress (APC) have been in the forefront of fiscal federalism, Sovereign National Conference and State police. So what is happening now that he is the Commander in Chief? All the National Assembly has to do with the Presidency is to bring out the 1963 Constitution, dust it and delineate it from four regions to six regions that we currently are, and pass it as the new Constitution of Nigeria. The National Assembly can do it in four weeks. The State Assemblies can do it in less than a month or two. “Everyone of us has agreed today that Nigeria needs to be restructured.”
