By Fatoyinbo Gafar Omo-Ola, Ile-Ife, Nigeria.
Sunday 22nd May, 2016.
It is a widely known fact that Nigerian economy currently seems dead. We as a people have never had it good with the economy except when the few available position was for the few educated elites. Except in the 1960, our economy has never really been planned.
The simple fact is that the country has no savings and it's only main source of income -the Petroleum sector - isn't making enough as a consequence of the international oil market.
That we do not have enough savings and lack source of funds outside oil, is the making of PDP, but blaming PDP is not a solution.
On the long run, we need to expand and develop our productive sector. We can't be farming with hoes and cutlasses in this age. Completely
mechanizing our farming and enhancing our farm processing and packaging capabilities are good initiatives we need to imploy at this life-saving period.
The solid mineral sector should be tapped for our local industries rather than for export.
To bridge the gap between the market and the farmers, our government must bring back marketing boards. Whether completely owned by government or with some privately interests groups. These marketing boards will explore international markets for our farm produce and protect the farmers from prize fluctuations. They will have better capacity to process and package farm produce than individual farmers. Government
investment in these marketing boards is like subsiding production which is good.
These are the basics, which IMF forced us to abandon in the 1970 that lead to the disappearance of the groundnut pyramids, palmoil, cocoa and rubber plantations.
Our technological quest should start from filling the needs of these farm marketing, processing and marketing boards. From conquering hunger, housing and clothing, our advancement will take off. The farms are the basics.
On the short run, the population do not have money in their pockets. Government must put money in our pockets in a creative ways. The only positive ways is to identify key project and mobilize the people to execute those projects.
Those projects should be tied to things that can enhance our production - infrastructure (power,
roads, rails etc). We must think local and avoid imports as we build these projects. So long as the projects adds money to the people's pocket and adds value on our productive capacity, struggling to match Euro-American standard is not important. Every technology starts in crude ways. Let develop, protect and use our crude implements. They will evolve with time and usage. The government must find creative ways to protect those crude implements. Import control becomes key here.
How now do we source money for the projects?
Here is the panacea. A mixture of borrowing, quantitative easing, intelligent taxation comes to play here. Borrowing is simple and easy. Intelligent taxation, simply means taxing our luxuries, making those of us who have enough money for luxuries to remit more money to government purse. Cars, alcoholic drinks, imported clothing materials of all sorts should be taxed heavily. Executive houses in the cities should be taxed also.
The rich paying a little more to finance the government is the norm all over the world.
Now, we can't all fold our hands waiting for oil money to mobilize our people for work. The trick is quantitative: easing, which basically means printing money. Government in theorem holds and infinite purse. The only bad side is inflation; the matching of quantitative easing and inflation is the work of CBN and the Finance Ministry.
They should wake up and earn their pay.
Our present inflation is not in anyway caused by money supply. It's caused by exchange rate which is outside the money supply dynamics. I know very well that exchange rate are very speculative and within the control of a few banks which do not care for us. Let take our minds off what we can't control. Let not play a game we can't control, or compete with the referee in football match. He will always rig the laws to his favour. That is our case with the international pricing of currencies. There are currencies that will always be high because their banks have a large control on the FX international market.
If Buhari has quickly printed a few coins and awarded some few contracts , since January, the economy wouldn't have been in this shape. Als pricing and monitoring if the jobs is key; but this is normal requirement.
Squeezing an already squeezed population, in the name of tax, as they have always resorted to will not solve the problem. Only creativity will do.
Following IMF prescription will cause more problem.
I'm optimistic that the above submissions if properly considered for ratification by our policy makers will help promote the long-awaited interesting stories that Nigerians have been expecting.
Nigeria shall rise for better glories!
God bless Nigerians!!
Fatoyinbo Gafar Olalekan (Socrates)
Is the convener, Movement for Democratic Agenda (MDA), Obafemi Awolowo University Chapter. He is a student of Social studies Education in the faculty of Education, OAU Ile-Ife.
He is a political analyst , social critic and crusader of good governance.
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