The 1st of January, 2023 may go down in history as one of the dates that heralded the brightest hope in Nigeria. Citizens looked forward to a free and fair elections that will birth a new Nigeria which was scheduled for February 25th, 2023. Yakubu Mahmood of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) promised heavens and earth in a free and fair election that will usher in a new Nigeria. With it, people believed that the incompetence and dishonesty of the past administration will inevitably come to an end which will promote economic prosperity and political stability and above all guarantee the security and welfare of the people of Nigeria.
What happened during the election is already public knowledge as by the admission of INEC under Mahmood, the presidential election was technically glitched, leading him to announce results in the middle of the night which Nigerians were not told how he came up with the figures he announced till date contrary to his promise that the polling units results must be shown to Nigerians through the INEC Results Viewing Portal before any result is announced. He was later to go to court to recant his promise that election transparency was not mandatory but optional. The court agreed with him which enabled INEC to graduate in the off-cycle elections in Bayelsa, Kogi and Imo States to the level of pre-filled result sheets where result sheets were given to the highest bidders before the election and allowed to fill any results they so wish which they will give to INEC polling officers to announce and transmit on election day. INEC, with this ignoble performance, was described by one gubernatorial candidate of a major political party in Kogi State as an arm of the ruling party. This is very correct because the ruling party appointed known and card carrying members of the ruling party as Federal Commissioners and Resident Electoral Commissioners of INEC against the Constitution and extant laws and the ruling party’s controlled Senate simply told them to bow and go. It’s important to note that elected members of the opposition party didn’t raise any dust about this illegality signifying that all the elected politicians of all the divides performed abysmally during the 2023 year with our political stability left to pay the price.
The primary purpose of government is the security and welfare of the people. The performance of this government in security in 2023 can be summarised in what happened on Christmas eve. The residents of Plateau State were preparing to celebrate Christmas, the birth of their Saviour, but ended up harvesting the deaths of more than 200 of their citizens by terrorists. The Vice President and all the Governors decided to pay Christmas homage to the President, who himself was celebrating his own Christmas in Lagos, rather than paying condolences to the bereaved families in Plateau State. The Governor of Plateau State, Caleb Mutfwang, revealed that the terrorists were criminal land grabbers who attacked three local governments of Bokkos, Barkin Ladi, and Mangu. Twenty three villages were attacked with more than 221 houses burnt and there were 36 distress calls in Plateau State within same time the terrorists were attacking. The assault continued overnight without any confrontation by the security forces. It’s important to note that the terrorists reported no casualty at all. The Governor attributed the large success of the terrorists attack to lack of political will by government to confront them, exposing the fact that these terrorists are inhabiting known territories on the Plateau, and warning that if nothing is done now, time will come when citizens will be left with no option than to pick up arms and defend themselves.
Fourth of December witnessed the unfortunate killing of about 85 citizens of Kaduna State who were bombed by the armed forces on the mistaken belief that they were terrorists preparing to attack innocent Kaduna State indigenes. The truth is that as terrible and regrettable as this killing may be, it’s attacks like that of the Plateau that leads to mistakes such as that of Kaduna, signifying a total failure in intelligence gathering. Non-terrorists are killed as terrorists while terrorists are left to kill innocent citizens with reckless abandon. The security agencies, trying to thwart attacks such as that of Plateau should carry out preemptive attacks in prevention rather than wait and regret after the attacks which usually leaves indescribable traces of deaths and destruction. However, human life has no duplicate. Such preventive attacks must be done based on actionable and verifiable intelligence to ensure that such Kaduna catastrophe does not repeat itself. Even the security agencies attack each other while working together on the mission to defend the citizens indicating lack of discipline and lack of coordination among the security agencies. The army recently murdered two police officers during a scuffle while on duty. There are many other untoward security incidents, gaps and gaffes that claimed lives and property of citizens during 2023. In all these incidents, the government will come out with the usual statement showing concern and sympathy and assuring that they will wipe out the insecurity.
The economy witnessed the greatest thunderstorm during the 2023 in view. The shock in the economy came with the illegal and ill advised declaration, during the inauguration of President Tinubu on May 29, 2023, where he quipped, “fuel subsidy is gone”. This automatically changed the pump price of pms from N185.00 to unstainable N540.00 and N660.00 and more in some places today. It was illegal because there was already an extant law that fuel subsidy should end by the end of June and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd had already stocked fuel that was to last more than one month in advance. This was usually the normal practice and the stock was based on the subsidised fuel price which was provided for in the 2023 budget. The one month would have given the incoming administration time and opportunity to consult widely and formulate appropriate policies and palliatives to cushion the effects of the removal of the fuel subsidy before its removal, but unfortunately, the dictatorial tendency of the current regime prevented it from consultation leading to the inflation rate of 28.2% on goods and food inflation of more than 32%.
Accompanying this unfortunate untimely subsidy removal policy, was the unification of the dual exchange rate which saw naira depreciate by more than 100%. The truth is that this is not anything near unification of the dual exchange rate, it is simply an ill-advised depreciation of the naira. Unknowingly, this administration and its advisers failed to understand that this singular action has instantly doubled the value of the debt the government is owing foreign entities in dollars. When this government came in, the dollar exchanged for about N480.00 official rate, but today, it exchanges for about N900.00 and black market for about N1,200.00, meaning that the purported single exchange rate touted had failed and debt owed by the government valued at N480b to a $1b before the unification will now need about N900b to pay back, rather than N480b because of the incompetent devaluation of the naira.
Another damaging policy related to the above includes the lifting of the ban on accessing foreign exchange from the government of 14 items, including the importation of tooth picks and rice, that were hitherto banned from accessing official exchange rate. With this, importation will now be encouraged more than exportation, as traders will find the imported products cheaper than locally manufactured products leading to the closure of local manufacturing companies. Great companies like GSK pharmaceutical company has packed their baggages and left and P&G had followed in their heels. Nigeria is becoming a ghost town of manufacturing companies to the detriment of the economy. Of course they had to go because there is no steady electricity to power their plants, no money to buy the ever increasing price of diesel and pms to power their generators, no security of their lives and property, even Nigerian naira has become scarce in cash, naira is losing value every day with almost all the infrastructures decaying. Many foreign airlines are planning to leave Nigeria because they are owed more than $780m of their hard earned money which Nigerian people have already paid in naira for flights conducted but of which the government has failed to remit the dollar equivalent to the airlines. Unemployment is at all time high with more people thrown into multidimensional poverty.
This government inherited a debt of about N77 trillion and within 7 months the debt had risen to about N88 trillion. It first borrowed about $800m, then about $1.5b, then the NNPCL staked our crude oil to borrow $3.5b, then the government borrowed about $10b, probably to fund its budget, totalling about $15.8b within 7 months of existence. Incredible! This government spends about 98% of its revenue to service debts. One would have thought that this government will cut its expenditure to help this economy but since inception, this government has hired about 48 Ministers in the most bloated Federal Executive Council ever in Nigeria history, purchased about 469 imported suvs at about N165m each for members of the National Assembly, budgeted more than N5b for the feeding pleasure of the unelected first lady, budgeted N15b to renovate the Vice-President’s official residence, and N20b for the official residence of the unelected Chief of Staff, who is a personal employee of the President. This total of about N40b will contribute nothing to the productivity of this country and will cost an average of N27m every day for the life of this regime while this government earmarked only about N1,000.00 a day, which is less than a dollar a day as wage award for the suffering and productive workers of Nigeria. It’s obvious that this state of the nation paints a grim and gruesome 2023 for Nigeria and Nigerians that should prompt any person of conscience to pray and say, may 2023 never again happen to Nigeria and Nigerians. We will try to profer solutions in the next edition when, by the grace of God, we will be in a new year. Happy new year in advance.