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A combination of lower demand as a result of acute global economic paralysis arising from the outbreak of the deadly coronavirus pandemic and oversupply arising from a Russo-Saudi energy war has sent crude oil prices in the international market crashing down to a record low of below $25 per barrel. The ravages of the coronavirus, otherwise known as COVID-19 pandemic, which has left nearly two million people infected and has resulted in about 200,000 deaths, is an existential threat to mankind. To contain COVID-19, a viral disease that has no known cure or preventive vaccine, a pandemic that is highly contagious through human-to-human contact, the nations of the world have shut down on economic 
activities domestically and internationally through enforcement of lockdowns and social distancing of the human race.
In addition to the harvests of death, the COVID-19 pandemic has set off a chain of reactions that may see the world slide into a global economic meltdown.
Nigeria, a mono-economy, which derives over 80 per cent of its national income from crude oil revenues, is set for another tumultuous episode of economic recession that may inevitably result in a depression. With current realities, Nigeria’s 2020 national budget of N10.59 trillion, which was benchmarked on a crude price of $57 per barrel at an output of 2.18mpb and signed into effect in December 2019 by President Muhammadu Buhari, has become an unrealistic piece of fiscal fiction. To this end, the Buhari administration has proposed a wide range of fiscal adjustments to confront emerging global economic realities.
As a result of the steep decline in demand and a corresponding fall in prices for crude oil in the international market, the Federal Government of Nigeria is proposing a downward review of the 2020 budget benchmark crude oil price from $57 per barrel to $30 per barrel and cut in output from 2.18mpd to 1.7mpd. These adjustments will translate into a scaling down of revenue projections by N3.3 trillion from N8.41 trillion to about N5.08 trillion in the 2020 fiscal year, in addition to the initial cut in the budget by N320 billion from N10.59 trillion to N10.27 trillion. Despite a truce recently reached between Russia and Saudi Arabia, which may see multinational oil cartel, OPEC, making an unprecedented crude oil production cut of nearly 10 million barrels in the coming months, the prospect of a price rebound is substantially diminished by the COVID-19-induced global economic meltdown.
For Nigeria, a heavily indebted country of nearly 200 million people, with more than half of its population miserable, hungry and poverty-stricken, the initially proposed budget estimate of N10.59 trillion [$33.8 billion] was barely enough to fund its enormous infrastructural and human development needs. Burdened by a combined domestic and foreign debt of over $80 billion, Nigeria’s incredibly high debt service to revenue ratio of 60 per cent makes a substantial cut of 40 per cent in its grossly inadequate budget of $33.8 billion economically disastrous for the Nigerian people. Nigeria seems poised to be one of the worst affected countries in the world in the impending COVID-19-induced global economic meltdown.
Nigeria’s overt reliance on a single commodity for the bulk of its national income has made it susceptible to shocks in the international oil market, leaving its economy vulnerable to perennial dislocations. The lack of a diversified source of foreign earnings and over-reliance on crude oil revenues are an indication that Nigeria’s complex web of economic problems predates the impending global economic meltdown caused by the worldwide outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Like a ray of light in a dark tunnel, the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequent global economic crisis should ignite a new conversation on the state of the Nigerian state. Successful nation states in the modern world are those whose basis of structural formation and corporate existence are economically configured to compete in the race for global resources. Whether as liberal democracies, civilian dictatorships, monarchies or military regimes, successful modern nations whose structures of state are economically configured are usually well-managed, competitive corporate entities with a distinguishing feature of national cohesion. These nations are made up by citizens whose hands are mobilised on the deck by a purposeful political leadership towards converting their internal economic potential into an export-driven national economy. These nations will pull through the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic and make economic recovery afterwards with mutually beneficial collaborations with like nations without necessarily asking for help.
On the contrary, Nigeria as a country is a collection of ethno-geographic nationalities yet to achieve nationhood. The structure of the federating units of the Nigerian state is delineated along primitive ethno-geographic fault lines, which effectively makes national cohesion impracticable in a fiercely competitive world. This faulty structure of state has rendered Nigeria a country of indigenes of the innumerable ethno-geographic nationalities and not a cohesive nation of citizens. Unfortunately, this primitive structure of the Nigerian state has entrenched a culture of ethnic identity politics in the selection of Nigeria’s political leadership whose major role is to aggregate the sectional interests of the disparate sections of country over their share of Nigeria’s oil mineral revenue.
With a polity, leadership and indigenes that are fixated on the sharing of oil mineral revenues, also known as the national cake, in furtherance of their sectional interests, there is little consideration for national interest of the Nigerian state. Rather than compete with other nations for global resources, Nigeria’s ethno-geographic nationalities are competing among themselves for revenues accruable from the exploitation of Nigeria’s internal deposits of oil mineral resources. However, with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become manifestly clear that only well-managed, cohesive nations of citizens that have been economically competitive in the global race for resources through exports and overseas investments are able to adequately cater for the welfare and security of the people at this trying time. The political leadership of the Nigerian state, a politically configured wasteland of economic opportunities, has been going cap-in-hand seeking external help in the form of billions of dollars of loans in order to keep the ship of state afloat in this perilous period of COVID-19 pandemic.
Going forward, if Nigeria survives the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic, its continuous survival in a post-COVID-19 world depends on its ability to restructure or re-configure its structure of state from a politically wired-to-fail-country to an economically programmed-to-succeed-nation by first replacing ‘state of origin’ with ‘state of residence.’ This is the first step towards the transformation of Nigeria from an unproductive country of national cake-sharing indigenes into a productive nation of national cake-baking citizens.
