Nigeria’s economic performance and a nostalgia for the past

Nigeria is fast becoming a place where a return to the past is something for which to seriously wish. Perhaps, one of the most important wishes of some of our countrymen today is to go back to the past – the 70s and 80s – when, as many would insist, life was better and less brutish in Nigeria. They want to go back to the past because it looks like the future has arrived unannounced; is opaque and holds very debatable promise. It may well be commonplace to hear people, perhaps everywhere in the world, say very glowing things about their past days but not necessarily wishing to return to those days. In Nigeria, the case is slightly different. In Nigeria, people are longing for a return to the past, as the present has become unbearable and the past shall not return. “In those days, life was much better. You could leave your property on the street and nobody will take it”, we hear people say. We also hear them say things like “we slept with our doors open and nobody troubled us”. “We graduated from school into the waiting arms of the Senior Service; straight from school to waiting jobs.” Today, the civil service is for unwilling servants – children of the privileged, who have no interest in the service and have no training in serving anyone but themselves – a big bad sign of what terrible civil service we are bound to have in the future. Today, our wish is to turn back the hands of the clock so we can return to the days of yore.

All these have come about because of our failure to bring prosperity to the people – not that we have not prospered. We have but the benefits are not shared by all. There was a time when it was said that Nigeria’s problem was not money but how to spend it. The man in the saddle in the 70s, General Yakubu Gowon, was quoted to have said this, and it is yet uncontroverted. Some might say that the alleged statement was an exuberant gaff or slip from a young, inexperienced military dictator with limited understanding of economic management, but could we truly deny the fact that during the golden years of military rule, Nigeria had large enough resources to have built itself a sound future? Even today, with our new crown of the home to the largest number of very poor people in the world, aka poverty headquarters of the world, can we truly controvert the general’s alleged statement? Some people around the world still think, rightly too, that we have money but do not know what to do with it. Many people would agree that even as we bow our head in the comity of nations for failing to deliver quality leadership to our people, we still have more money than we know how to manage. Many of our people would wish we return to the 70s and 80s for so many different reasons.

An undergraduate in the University of Lagos in those days was guaranteed three square meals every day for an all-in cost not exceeding 50 kobo. There were no school fees in federal universities and the best teachers taught us. And these 50k a day full meals included pap and akara in the morning, jollof rice with dodo (fried ripe plantain) and chicken, which got up to a quarter chicken on weekends, when rich kids go home to their daddies and mommies, leaving the poorer ones to dominate the cafeteria. It included a full amala and ewedu bang for dinner. All of these at a cost not exceeding 50 kobo! People travelled across the country and made homes anywhere they wanted to live. There were no tribal tags of indigenes and settlers, at least to the point of hostility. Nigeria was a haven for the enterprising. Today, killing a fellow human being has become a popular sport that is spreading like wild fire, because there is little or no reprisal for those who kill. It used to be herdsmen but cult killings are getting even more audacious, rampant and barbaric. Nigeria has become a place that people prefer their past to their present and fear their future like Ebola.

The Nigerian economy has not been growing. If anything, it is our population that has been on the rampage; rising rapidly and neutralizing any growth success we achieve. Without a clear population policy and hanging on to the misbelief that there is virtue in large numbers, we tend to see no problem in the superior growth performance of our population over that of the economy. In the past, the Nigerian economy grew at rates that made population growth a minor threat than it is today. Indeed, the economy grew at a massive 7 per cent per annum average rate over the decade of 2004 to 2014. That same economy is either stalling now or grudgingly inching forward in pains. It grew about 2.4 per cent, year-on-year in 2018, from its 1.8 dismal growth in 2017, following the recession. As we speak, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has cut further its 2019 growth projection for Nigeria to 1.9 per cent. Already some people are busy controverting the IMF projections. Indeed, the coming days are likely to bring evidence of how that Bretton Wood institution is working against our progress. That way, we shall successfully mask the challenges inducing the poor growth so that business may proceed as usual.

The need to diversify the Nigerian economy is a hot topic at the moment. It was last year and the year before and always like that. Nothing happens. Not even an insistence on the patronage of local producers. Well, it has always been mouthed but nobody walks the talk, even though events in the oil industry of late have increased the concern of everybody with the need to stir the economy away from its dependence on a single product, oil. Time is running out on us. Our country is losing grounds on all indices of a healthy economy and nation. Politics should have its say but let our national survival have its way and pre-eminence, hoping without assuming, that we have got a common understanding of that concept – national survival.