• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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BusinessDay

Unhappy Nigerians and where to find them

Nigerians

All happy Nigerians have some things in common, unhappy Nigerians are unhappy in their own way, to rephrase Leo Tolstoy, the Russian novelist. Based on inflation and unemployment, what economists call the “twin evils”, Nigerians everywhere, irrespective of geopolitical location, are unhappy. Some are just unhappier than others.

Using a combination of price levels and rates of unemployment BusinessDay published a list of the happiest and worst states to live in Nigeria lately. The misery index – originally developed by Art Okun, an economist, and updated by Steve Hankes, another American professor of economics – measures how happy citizens are with their lives at a particular moment.

Osun, Oyo, Katsina, Lagos and Ogun states were the least miserable in Nigeria. Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Kano, Bayelsa and Borno were the bottom five. The index measures misery in relation to other states. It is not a right to brag that my state is better than yours.

A relatively lower cost of living and rate of joblessness is what the top five have in common, except for Lagos with an inflation rate higher than national average of 11.31% (as at April 2019).

Bayelsa, however, has one of the lowest rates of inflation but an unemployment rate of 32.56% (way above the 23% for the country). This makes its citizens among the most miserable in the country. Its fellow oil-rich state, Rivers, is the second-most miserable despite being the third-largest recipient of money the federal government allocates monthly. It received N119 billion in 2018 from the Federal Account Allocation Committee (FAAC). The large quantities of oil pumped, and consequently a bigger allocation, has not provided the citizens of Akwa Ibom any relief. The coastal state has the highest unemployment rate.

Elsewhere, inflation and unemployment are politically sensitive issues. A slight rise in the price of bread has caused riots and almost toppled governments.

In Nigeria, a coping mechanism to “manage it like that”, to hope tomorrow will be better, to equate the rice and cash shared during election campaigns as a share of the “national cake”, allows politicians to get away with murder – the millions of children and women that die daily from preventable diseases, the thousands that die on bad roads, the poor, uneducated youth forced into banditry, terrorism, kidnapping, and prostitution.

As newly and re-elected governors will have discovered within their first week in office, their states are in terrible financial conditions. There is debt to be repaid, unpaid salaries to pay plus a new minimum wage, all of which the monthly hand-out from Abuja cannot cover. The recovery and eventual sharing of some of the Abacha loot won’t do either. The excess crude account has been squandered.

What’s more, the money each state gets from taxes and levies i.e. Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) is meagre. In addition, despite showing signs of a slow but uneven recovery during 2017/18, the economy is still a long way from the average growth rate of 6.22% in 2014. Besides, oil, the major source of government revenue, is one shock away from a calamity.

Consequently, the situation is unlikely to be same as usual. Governors should expect their citizens to demand delivery of promises made on the campaign. To expect otherwise would be to underestimate the visible and direct effects of unemployment and inflation. Job loss and an income unable to keep up with the price of food are clear and present worries.

As usual, most clueless governors will probably play the divide and rule game.

For the five others who will and are able to do something, we suggest they be less FAAC-focused. They need to appoint capable advisers with ideas on how federal powers, on say, the sale of some assets can be transferred to them. This should be in order for them execute capital expenditures not on the basis of the votes it can reap in four years but on the jobs they can generate, the lives they can save and the number of children they can educate.