By the time you read this article, the Easter celebration would have come and gone with many not knowing it was Easter because Nigeria is going through lots of ups-and- downs. despair and darkness. Ours is a country lost not just to corruption which has been allowed to thrive and grow, but lost to some inglorious bastards controlling various ungoverned spaces, extorting, kidnapping and dictating the life and death of ordinary citizens.
Nigeria is in crisis because even those trusted with managing the affairs of the nation have turned their back on God; they have battered and buffeted the country by colluding with dark forces from the dark womb who are determined to end this country in chaos. We have met every criterion for a failed state. Our country is no longer recognizable by those who know it. Our hearts are broken, our families are broken, our religious houses are broken, our politics is broken, our economy is broken, our energy system is broken, the future and the lives of our children are broken, our roads, rails and social infrastructure are broken, our security architecture is broken, the only thing surviving, soaring and prospering is corruption and that in itself poses a greatest contradiction.
I pray we use the holy season of Easter and Ramadan to look up to God, pray to Him and ask Him for His help in all that we do, that he forgive us as a nation and that he blesse us and our country. We desperately need good leaders with the fear of God to help us as we set for the construction of this nation. A lot of our leaders give lip service to God. They would agree we need to pray, but then, they don’t do it. They would agree that we need to work and yet do the opposite.
We must not lose faith in God because we don’t trust our leaders. We don’t have to be 100 per cent in prayers. Those who know how to pray, both Christians and Muslims, must continue to pray because God hears those prayers and may probably use those prayers to turn this nation around. I hope that our people will wake up and realise the problems and crisis we are facing in the North , the South, the West and the East. I hope we wake up and realize the extent of damages done to our country by bad leaders in the past seven years.
I pray we use the opportunity of the upcoming general election to elect leaders with the fear of God. I pray that God will touch the heart of President Buhari to allow internal democracy in his own party and also allow free and fair general election. That’s the only legacy that is expected from him as we know the remaining months of his leadership will not usher in any miracle. I pray God to intervene in INEC, so that the commission will be impartial and independent. I pray that God will touch the heart of the people in the police, the military, the judiciary and the academics who help dirty politicians win elections they ought to have lost.
For some time now I have consistently written on issues around the tumbling Naira and worsening economic crisis despite CBNs intervention in critical areas.
Truth is that we have a battered economy because of the recklessness and irresponsibility of our fiscal authorities who are either stealing or wasting foreign exchange on items we can locally afford. Why would CBN for instance use N58.618 billion to print 2.518 billion naira notes abroad? Why will the Nigeria Immigration Service contract to a foreign company the production of our travel passports? Why would INEC print ballot papers abroad, when we have the National Printing and Minting Press?
We have made in Nigeria cars but our government prefers to patronise foreign automobiles. We killed our hospitals and schools and then embark on medical and education tourism which leave heavy toll on the economy. If we are stupid, the economy is not stupid. What we reap is what we sowed.
Nigeria’s major foreign exchange earner is oil and gas. We are supposed to be producing approximately two million barrels of crude oil per day. But nearly 80 per cent of our crude oil production is stolen in a very sophisticated manner that it can no longer be classified as mere theft, thereby denying the country of much needed foreign exchange revenue. The balance of 20 per cent cannot be accounted for because NNPC has consistently reported losses, apparently the only oil and gas corporation in the world reporting zero profit.
We should be picking on the Petroleum Minister and asking him questions on this grand theft of our commonwealth. For heaven’s sake, you cannot loot 107 million barrels of crude oil worth $10bn, steal $4.3billion worth of crude annually, sell crude oil and do crude swap without appropriate remittances, and expect economic miracle.
Still peeping into our oil and gas industry; we have three major refineries which are employing thousands of workers who are producing nothing because none of the refineries are functional due to deliberate sabotage done by those who are supposed to be engineers managing the refinery in cahoots with the crooks taking subsidies in imported fuels.
Within the half of the year 2021, NNPC claimed to have spent over N1.47trillion /$3.6billion to import Premium Motor Spirit (PMS). When the import cost of the Gasoil, DPK and other mineral oil are factored, the import value of the white petroleum products may hit a half year value of over $5billion, and $10billion by year end, 2021.
The subsidy on PMS import volumes for 2022 now stood at N4tn, according to the president’s letter to the Senate seeking adjustment to 2022 fiscal frame work. Why no one is asking the simplest of questions on why and how subsidy payment rose astronomically from N653 billion in 2015 to N4 trillion in 2022 is baffling.
Refineries that refine no single drop of PMS expend N67billion annually on salaries of staff who are producing nothing and contributing nothing to our GDP. With the same redundant refineries, NNPC in their profligacy had misappropriated over N806 billion in six years in Turn Around Maintenance that turned out to be a ruse. What’s the big deal in removing the criminal subsidies that influence NNPC to inflate daily import and consumption figure of 103m litres of PMS in a country whose actual PMS consumption numbers are between 38million and 42 million litres a day?
Our economic crisis is worsened by our increasing debt profile. From the data obtained from Bureau of Statistics the national debt has risen to N39.5trillion from N12trillion in June 30, 2015, with new external debts topping over $33bn. This was the same debt trap we walked away from in 2011.
Nigeria’s trade deficit widened to N1.94 trillion in 2021 partly because we spend over $11bn importing foods we can easily produce given the fact that we boast of 64 million hectares of arable land and more than 100 million unemployed population. Available report states that only 25 per cent of our arable land is cultivated partly due to insecurity. The roads to cemeteries have become more frequented than the roads to the farms. The surviving farmers are unsure of their harvest due to the menace of herders. Today inflation has pushed to 16 per cent, the highest so far in history. It’s rather a big shame that after spending N10trillion/$25billion in six years as security expenses, our president, a decorated and retired Army General is officially conquered by criminals.
If not for the CBN’s early intervention in food production which made it possible for the country to be producing nearly seven tons of rice, maize and pursuing reasonable sufficiency in wheat production, we would be eating each other by now due to the level of hunger in the land. With hope, determination and faith in God, I believe much sooner than later locally produced food will become more available and affordable to cushion the rate of inflation and reversing our trade deficit.
While we pray for God’s intervention, the president must address squarely the issue of insecurity which makes the average Nigerian to now live in despair and under the shadow of death. Insecurity has kept away most foreign direct investors, Diaspora Nigerians and those who would have brought in the much-needed foreign exchange.
With the current state of affairs, our only hope is in God and we pray that God touches the hearts of our politicians, bureaucrats and criminals pinning the country down. We do not want to lose this country but we may finally lose it except God looks down from heaven and intervene. Let us pray!