President Muhammadu Buhari may have succumbed to pressures from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to implement policies which will obviously increase hardship in Nigeria and ultimately make life miserable for Nigerians. The IMF had in its recent report, compelled President Buhari to fully remove petrol subsidy, a claim by the government that has been widely questioned by Nigerians of goodwill, as well as the creative electricity tariff, which again, its real existence is questionable, or at best deliberately created by the government as a decoy to unnecessarily increase electricity tariff to the detriment of Nigerians.
Curiously, the IMF admitted that the actions would cause hardship in Nigeria but advised President Buhari to pay compensation to the poor.
While the IMF, in its imperialist economic reform being recommended for the Nigerian government made over-emphasis on Nigeria realizing more funds or addressing foreign exchange crisis through creating hardship for citizens and increasing cost of domestic production, the IMF never advised the Nigerian government on the path of stimulating local production and wealth creation. For IMF, Nigeria will continue to import, even what the country can produce, and be inflicting citizens with high cost of living while the economies of European countries are boosted by the misfortunes in Nigeria. the IMF did not anyway subscribe to export drive by the Nigerian government.
Apparently, the Nigerian President has come up with a reflective IMF policy “to
replace fuel subsidy with N5,000 transport bonus for 40 million poor Nigerians.”
Meanwhile, some stakeholders of goodwill in Nigeria have x-ray the mathematical component of the N5,000 transport bonus to the subsidy ratio in the country’s budget.
From the mathematical computation, N5000 for 40 million beneficiaries will amount to N200 billion monthly. In one year, the government will be spending
N200 billion by 12 months, which amounts to N2.4 trillion. However, assumed annual subsidy in 2021 is N1.8 trillion.
President Buhari is, therefore, perceived to be replacing public expenditure of N1.8 trillion with unreliable N2.4 trillion disbursement.
The imperial policy adopted by Buhari will continue deepen Nigeria’s misfortune of being incarcerated in the periphery of the global political economy, which will ultimately emasculate capacity building and capacity utilization in the country’s domestic economy, obstructing growth and development.
The N2.4 trillion disbursement is not guaranteed because most times, government makes claims of having distributed billions of Naira to millions of Nigerians but the beneficiaries are in most cases invisible.
Moreover, the N5,000 intervention bonus, which the IMF recommended as compensation, would be exhausted in one or two transportation cost, excluding the high rate of electricity tariff.