Buhari has failed, more trouble for Nigeria, says expert

Nigerians have been charged to rescue the country and stop thinking selfishly as no nation has been more mismanaged in recent times than Nigeria.

Tope Fasua, CEO at Gbloba Analytics Consulting Limited gave the charge in piece tittle: “Fears for the Nigerian economy in the years ahead.”

In the piece, Fasua said even President Muhammadu Buhari himself did confirmed that the worse is yet to come when in December 14, 2018, announced to state governors that Nigerians should tighten their belts because the economy is in bad shape and there was a need to think of new way out.

Fasua debunked the claims by the present administration that during the 16 years of PDP, Nigeria was producing 2.1 million barrels per day of crude oil and selling for an average of $100.

According to him, at the tail end of the Obasanjo regime and until the late Yar’Adua administration reached a peace deal with militants, production dipped to almost 800,000 barrels per day, and crude oil average price was much lower than $100.

“The president, like most other people of ‘influence’ in and out of government, has ignored analyses that show that crude oil isn’t worth this almost eternal, total emphasis and reliance.

“For a product which you cannot manufacture on your own, on which almost 50% is cost of production, for which the world has found alternatives, and for which there are other products that your people have been producing for ages which give much higher returns on investment, anyone who encourages crude oil as the pivot for this economy is simply a non-patriot. Even if we were bewitched, hypnotized and sedated, there comes a time when we must unshackle our minds from toxic habits. Now is the time.”

According to him, Nigeria managed to escape a life of borrowing in 2006, but no sooner had Okonjo-Iwealla completed the deal which saw Nigeria coughing out $12Billion to her foreign friends, than the country started digging the hole again.

“By the end of the Jonathan regime we owed $63 billion. Most of these loans were domestic – denominated in Naira (roughly 80%). And so Buhari, alongside his former Finance Minister, came and devalued the Naira from N199 to the dollar, to N305.

“Upon doing this, the domestic loan component of about $50 billion as at 2015 fell to about $33 billion. This is because N10 trillion divided by N199 (resulting in $50 billion), was suddenly being divided by N305 (resulting in $33 billion). If we add the $33 billion with the foreign loan component as at 2015 (about $13 billion), we arrive at $46 billion. If we are at $76 billion today, it means that this government has added at least $30 billion to our loans and the figure is still climbing.”

“There’s no way we would be able to exit these new, larger debts today when Nigerians have become far more corrupt. Perhaps the plan is to sell Nigeria wholesale and we are almost there.

Fasua explained that under former Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun, what Nigeria had was almost criminal economic management because the country was using loans to paper over serious economic cancers.

He said the chicken has now come home to roost, and that President Buhari cannot feign ignorance, because the president predicament of the country was foisted on the people by his administration.