What A Country!

“Oil below $60 as FG presents 2015 budget to N’Assembly” was the headline in one of the national dailies on Wednesday, December 17. The question I asked myself was: How come we squandered our petrodollars in times of plenty and now that crude oil price has slumped, we are biting our fingers and imposing short-sighted austerity measures? The same crude oil selling for less than $60 per barrel sold for well over $100 dollars consistently in the past four years. What did we do with its proceeds? Those who think we will continue to accrue bumper oil money should think again, as things have changed on the international market.  Things are changing fast, but like the bad planner that we are, we haven’t changed our economic dance steps to the rhythm of global realities.

Characteristic of our leaders, what we get is contradicting reports. Today, the President says “no shaking, oil prices will not affect us”, tomorrow the Minister of Finance would say “brace up for austerity measures”! Talk is cheap; all we do is talk about diversifying our economy to depend less on oil. But it ends there; nobody is thinking about the devastating disaster a sharp and continued drop in global demand for our crude oil would portend. The value of the naira drops daily, we all know the effect that has on our economy. Here we are!  Our appetite for immediate gratification has ensured that our country’s resources are plundered. As a result, we its people have become blind to sustainable routes to economic growth and development.

Now the queues have returned to filling stations, just in time when people are making plans to travel for Christmas and New Year festivities. Nigerians are still being charged the expensive old petroleum price when it has crashed. The truth is, at 97 naira per litre, even with total removal of subsidy, we are still paying too much for petrol going by the present reality. But our immediate gratification assumes topmost priority when we sell our God-given petroleum as crude oil and import it as finished products through some unwholesome middlemen. That is what we are paying for. So whilst I agree with PENGASSAN, we groan at the pain it causes us. But we must bear it and support them.

There are no measures attesting to our ability to ask: “what-if?” We do not even follow global trends to understand that today’s global economy does not support and cannot sustain our leaders’ avarice.  While we spend our petrodollars on concurrent luxuries such as exorbitant salaries and allowances for political office holders, those we sell to are getting closer and closer to energy self-sufficiency. In practical terms, our crude oil may be worth a lot less in an ever-changing world. Developed nations are dealing with this situation as they have lost so much of their manufacturing base to the Far East. We cannot afford to get caught with our pants down.       

Nigeria’s earnings from oil continue to plummet this year. It has been estimated that this might result in a $12billion shortfall of budgetary estimates, or more. And despite dipping our hands into the Excess Crude Account (ECA) to augment the deficit, we are still playing catch up. State governments have experienced as much as a 50 percent reduction in their allocations. The account that is supposed to be our Sovereign Wealth Fund, which should insulate our economy from external shocks, has also been plundered and drained. 

If oil price continues its free fall, production is disrupted and the 80,000-barrels-a-day oil theft goes on unabated, we will keep dipping into the ECA until it runs dry, as there is no magic to progress.

    

According to the Gross Summary of Statutory Revenue Allocation and VAT released by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) in March 2013, apart from Akwa Ibom (N22, 205,383,781); Bayelsa (N13, 350,351,654); Delta (N17, 057,045,907); Rivers (N20, 934,686,737); Kano (N12, 333,095,855) and Lagos (N14, 219,026,551), no other state got up to 10billion naira from the Federation Account. In many of these states, internally generated revenue is near zero. For instance, Plateau State got N6, 099,168,412 during the month in review, and has only succeeded in generating just over 6billion in IGR between January and October. The state makes roughly 600million in IGR per month; a paltry 10 percent of its monthly allocation. This is why any reduction in the Federation Account allocation creates panic among states. This simply is not good enough.

The way to go is to look inwards. The Minister of Agriculture has promised that agric would be Nigeria’s petrol. Enugu should be saying the same about coal and Zamfara about gold. I could go on and on. But where will we find the investment today to make this a reality?

We need sound leadership, so apart from our security challenges, the economy should be another crucial reason why we must “shine our eyes” before casting our votes come February and thereafter protect those votes. 

OUR MEDIOCRE SITUATION

We are just having primaries and look at the rigging that is going on already. These are people of the same party, flouting their own rules; cheating themselves. Internal democracy has eluded both the ruling party and the so-called opposition party. What hope for the common man on the street? Where will we find this discipline that we so badly lack? This is why things just don’t work the way that they are supposed to over here. We are so insincere. We can turn it around in a very short time and very quickly enjoy the standards that we only witness elsewhere in the world. But are we prepared to do what it takes to achieve that?

We cannot think that we have either come to this world to only suffer or purely to enjoy. We must collectively all make sacrifices, otherwise our situation will implode and we will not have a country, either to lead or to be led in.  Remember the deal we have with God? He gave us something called “A free will.” A huge responsibility, we are allowed to do as we please but there are always consequences, either for the good or the bad. We shall atone for our actions. But it goes even further than that.  Each one of us has a built-in success mechanism, we are actually built to succeed but we have a free will! We are human and we will make mistakes and or make right or wrong choices. The quantum of these right or wrong decisions determines whether we are successful or not in the long term.

Why do some societies do better than others? It is because they are better prepared.  What patterns in our behaviour, in our environment make one set of people or certain individuals more disciplined, quicker to learn and more success-orientated than others?  Are we too uncomfortable or maybe even too comfortable? Do we feel that we have ownership of our society or do we feel powerless and on the fringes?

I think that the problem is that some of us are just able to hold the rest to ransom.  We think we are powerless to change the status quo, so if we cannot beat them then we join them or cower in fear, muttering “God dey”. Our structures have therefore been compromised. There are no consequences for bending rules or openly flouting them. Protocols have been broken. Impunity reigns and even judges collect money. If we still wonder why our democracy still fits into Fela’s definition of it as a “demonstration of craze”, the answer is in our inability do things the right way.

Do we have the kind of leadership that can properly enforce the structures that are in place, improve on them, give us ownership and create wealth for the nation? Is the infrastructure there to allow for this enabling environment? Do our current leaders understand that we need this infrastructure and without it cannot make progress? Do we have the brainpower to implement these sets of rules and give adequate consideration for the contract between us all? Are our taxes properly applied so that we all can take ownership of this big society and feel secure in the sense that our toil will not be in vain and will provide for our future?

We need to be able to answer all these questions in the affirmative, otherwise we will continue to fracture and live in the mess that is this mediocrity.  We are already experiencing the results of the negativity that is our society. We shall continue to be impoverished and will soon be beggars and cripples, orphans and widows, prematurely in our own land. Nothing in government is done on merit anymore. Imagine what it is to be up in arms as we become more desperate. It is being experienced all around us now. There is no dignity in it.

We must be interested in the polity around us and get up and be counted. We should not allow our destinies to be dictated by a cabal. We should be more resolute each time a bomb goes off and people are killed or maimed. We should hold our leaders to account for the failure in our society. And ensure that step by step we demand equity in the polity. We should choose and associate ourselves with potential leaders based on merit. Our future depends on it.