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By Kunle Wizeman Ajayi
At Great Ife then, student Leaders used to mock the management for always embarking on “renopaintings” instead of “renovations.”
Buhari and Emefiele just did same. Recolouring the Naira, instead of the so-called “Redesigning” which was and is meant to be a farce anyway!
President Buhari and CBN Governor Emefiele have been running from one jamboree to the other to deceive Nigerians that they care about retrieving the lost values of the Naira. Last year, they sold the dummy to Nigerians that Aboki FX and other Junk Buccaneers were the reasons the Naira continously depreciates against foreign currencies. But I argued otherwise. I had the honour to speak at a TakeItBack Movement Symposium on the Economy at Gwagwalada, in the FCT Abuja. I posited that the key culprit in the fall of Nigeria’s currency is the Naira Devaluation policy which is now fully implemented by the Central Bank.
Devaluation simply means “deleting or depleting” the values of a currency as a result of economic fall which usually arise from political crises.
Germany in 1919, after loosing heavily at the 1st World War, was owing to the tune of Half a Trillion dollars. And there were yet internal crises that remain economic bottlenecks. This made the new Weimar Republic get forced to devalue the German Mark. The allies relied pointedly on the Treaty of Versailles, and demanded both physical and financial resources as payments. Germany’s goods were heavily added alongside money to repay the allies, while hyperinflation set in as the government decided to print banknotes (just like CBN).
“In early 1922, 160 German marks was equivalent to one US dollar. By November of 1923, the currency would depreciate to 4,200,000,000,000 marks to one US dollar.”
Germany did a whole lot to revalue its currency but had to keep battling the crises for a longer time, which led to the fall of the government into the bestial hands of Hitler and the Nazists.
The Naira Devaluation is a bad policy, especially as it compound an already rotten sore wound of neo-liberalism that has several anti-developmental economic policies like Oil Deregulation; De-Industrialisations… Instead of Emefiele to own up to this, he and Buhari keep chasing shadows. What they are only doing is to employ some jamboree styles to delay till their tenure ends. It is very clear that the Nigerian ruling class exclusively, takes dictations from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Both imperialist organizations are meant to keep the underdeveloped countries as Third Worlds. Any serious government would look into deeper reflections and return Nigeria back into some forms of state capitalism, while injecting great democratic values that is seriously led by workerist strategies and methodologies.
To get back the values of the Naira, real and massive productions should be instituted. The economy can no more be a dumpsite of European, American, and Asia finished products.
Oil is a classical example. Nigeria exports crude oil, and looses components rich in hydrocarbons, “which are mainly hydrogen (about 13% by weight) and carbon (about 85%). There is also nitrogen (about 0.5%), sulfur (0.5%), oxygen (1%), and metals such as iron, nickel, and copper (less than 0.1%.) But we get back only petrol back as finished products, which comes so expensive. The answer is to refine locally in a large format. The Warri, Port Harcourt, and Kaduna refineries have been consciously abandoned to pave way for Oil Deregulation which favours only the marketers and the private sector. This is a major cause of Fuel Price Rise as well as the massive corruption through the so-called Fuel Subsidy.
A state investment on local refining would reduce the pressure on the Naira as well as enriches the local commonwealth the more. These should also be done in other sectors from textiles to automotive industries. These are hard ways from the profiteers and billionaires, but the hard way is the safest way.
Buhari and Emefiele have ended up, not even in redesigning the Naira but recolouring. With the shallow and shadowy way the new notes are; there will be free day for criminals as the new looks quite closely like the old notes. Also, nothing has changed economically and in policing as terrorists are already demanding foreign currencies as ransoms, while the dollars is not coming downwards really.
I predict that the new jamboree will eventually crawl into the dustbin of jamborees. But the various attempts at imposing same jamborees are costly and not funny anymore. Billions must have been spent on recolouring the Naira, but no billions is spent on ASUU strike, Small and Medium Scales, Health subsidies, and building modern eco-friendly industries. This means the problems are only been mocked, not resolved.
The Naira will keep falling, once the economy keeps failing. To revalue the currency, let’s revalue the economy. We must delete neo-liberalism from our Economics if we want to build a truly pan-Nigeria and pro-masses society.
