Before You Blame Jonathan For Nigeria’s Recession

Buhari

Jonathan

The Presidency recently blamed past administrations of Obasanjo, Yar'Adua and Jonathan for Nigeria’s sliding into full recession. Before one could come to terms with that, the same presidency issued another statement putting the blame squarely on former President Goodluck Jonathan. “To avoid repeating the past mistakes, Nigerians must come to terms with what went wrong with the past, how bad things were, what was done wrongly, what the past government should have done before we come to what needs to be done to right those wrongs”,-Garba Shehu, spokesman of President Muhammadu Buhari.

Whatever may be the intention of the Presidency, we need to ask certain pertinent questions. Is it the former administrations that made a government that claimed it met empty treasury to appoint five media aides instead of economic team and advisers immediately it got to power? Is it former administrations that their cronies are turning billionaires from their gardens trading in Forex now as observed by Emir Sanusi, a former CBN Governor? “We created billionaires from Oil subsidies in the past. We are making the same mistake with Forex Subsidies. As an Emir, I can seat in my garden and make phone calls to access $10M @ N197 per $ then sell it off at nothing less than N300.  With just a phone call, I'm making a profit of over a billion naira. That is what people are doing NOW. Any system that allows you sit in your garden and make a billion naira without investing a Kobo is a wrong system”,-Emir Sanusi speaking at the 15th Joint Planning Board & National Council on Development Planning in Kano.

 Is it previous administrations that made a government of change to take six months to appoint ministers and thus showed lack of direction that drove away foreign investors, while the new Prime Minister of UK, Theresa May, who took over from David Cameron, took only few hours in appointing ministers to prove that she was ready for leadership? Is it previous administrations that after about 15 months in office hundreds of parastatals and agencies have no substantive heads and boards? Is it previous administrations that their policies forced depositors to withdrew over N2trn from banks in the past 15 months and thus from circulation in the economy? Is it previous administrations that removed N3trn from banks and domicile it in Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and away from circulation in the name of Treasury Single Account (TSA) in one fell swoop, when former President Goodluck Jonathan that introduced the policy through former finance minister Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala meant its implementation to be in phases and still expect the economy to be buoyant? Is it previous administrations that claimed the country is broke, yet the 10 presidential jets are still intact instead of selling most of them? Is it previous administrations that went round the world after taking power telling the world that Nigerians are very corrupt and still expect foreign investors to invest their money in a corrupt country? Is it previous administrations that say it would favour those who gave it 95 per cent votes over those that gave it 5 per cent which alienated the Niger Delta and militants in the region, who hastened the road to recession by bombing pipelines and cutting Nigeria's oil output and export at a time of global oil glut?

Whoever took these terrible decisions in the past one  and a half years should take responsibility for the contraction of Nigeria’s economy and the recession which a more circumspect leadership could have avoided.

Take the Niger Delta for instance, a reconciliatory leadership should have embraced the region with open arms given that one of their own just lost power. Under such condition programmes earmarked for the region by Jonathan should have been left intact just as Kaduna-Abuja rail line project sited in the north. The militants should have been taken onboard. With that Nigeria would be exporting oil uninterrupted, but the alienation, and threats of killing the militants like Boko Haram has reduced Nigeria’s export almost by half and would even get worse as the army and airforce build up in the region. A clear indication that Nigeria will not be coming out of this recession anytime soon.

The N2trillion that had been withdrawn from banks by depositors scared stiff because of all the noise about war on corruption would have been in circulation if there were less noise and more discreet investigations. Let’s make no mistake about it, those who withdrew their money from banks are not necessarily corrupt, but under a government that rule of law is disregarded as court orders like in the case of Dasuki and Nnamdi Kanu, are not obeyed, it is better to have your money transferred out of Nigeria or buried on your backyard. Meanwhile after all the noise that about N3trillions had been recovered from looters, the minister of information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed is now claiming that only N79billion had allegedly been recovered which is not enough to fund the 2016 budget. Similarly if the N3trillion taken away from commercial banks were done in phases as envisaged by Jonathan administration, banks will not be in distress and sacking thousands of workers, even as they lack liquidity to fund short term and long term investments. The lesson this government must learn is that you don’t save your way out of recession, governments spend themselves out of recession. President Muhammadu Buhari must begin to release the money in TSA and elsewhere that he has taken out of circulation because he don’t want it to enter into corrupt hands. He has taken Nigeria into recession, now he must spend the money to get us out of the mess.