SAM OHUABUNWA'S PARADIGM

Most Nigerians are aware that our economy is in dire straits. The economic indices bear witness. Low oil prices,foreign exchange scarcity resulting in rationing, low Naira value against foreign currencies, growing inflation, chronic fuel scarcity, electric power scarcity, worsening unemployment and overal low GDP growth. Many other comparative indices are also on the decline; Foreign Direct investment(FDI), Global competitiveness index( GCI),and Ease of Doing Business while the misery index has worsened. Those Nigerians who do not understand the economic jargons experience the misery index.  This current economic crisis has been caused by the wrong choices we have made. Most in the past and others in the present. President Muhammadu Buhari( PMB ) blamed it on two issues; squandering of our National Patrimony and the fall in oil prices. Squandering of our National patrimony arose from the choices our leaders have made over time. And even the impact of the low oil prices has been ag...

In our Country, it is popular to criticize our public institutions as being ineffective and inefficient. Infact, some have been fully written off. For example, most Nigerians have nothing good to say about our Police or Customs . They are accused of all sorts of dismeanour but mostly corruption. Recently, our Judiciary has come under severe attack following their decisions on electoral matters. Those who won the cases in court hailed the courts as the last hope for the common man, while those who lost, castigated the courts as being influenced by political and pecuniary considerations. Though the Chief Justice of Nigeria criticized the Appeal Court Judges for giving contradictory judgements which was kind of unusual self criticism or self censorship. I have never seen any police chief criticize another or accept any criticism, they are always on the defensive. But we must be fair that while it true that many of our Agencies are performing poorly, some of our institutions are working r...

Since this year, we have been facing worsening energy crisis. But in the last two weeks or so, the problem assumed excruciating dimensions. In the many years of Nigeria's unmitigated Nigeria's energy crisis, many people who could not get electricity power, depended on hydrocarbon fuels to fire their generators. But in the current escalation, we do not have electric power and we can not find petroleum products to operate our generators, especially the small and micro operators and most households who use petrol fired generators. It has never been this terrible, except in brief periods of National strikes. What is most disconcerting is that the present government in Abuja came to power promising change and the suffering Nigerians are asking : when will this change happen?. All we hear is that NNPC is being restructured or reorganized. Sometimes we hear that it will be broken into 30 companies and latter we hear it will broken into 7 companies. Then the House of Representatives ...

 Desperation to win elections in Nigeria is not in decline one bit. After the gracefulness of accepting defeat without a whimper by GEJ last year, one thought that politicians would take a cue and begin to take it easy with trying to win elections by all means, the do or die syndrome. My hope was buoyed by the ANTICORRUPTION credentials of PMB, his personal experience of the malady and the belief  that electoral malpractice would decline in a regime that preaches discipline and anticorruption. But as can be seen, old habits die hard. Last December at the Gubernatorial elections held in Bayelsa, South-South Nigeria, the desperation to win was evident. Governor Seriake Dickson of PDP had won in Six out of the seven local government Areas of the State. He won in Yenagoa, Sagbama, Ekremor,Brass, Ogbia and Nembe. Then Timipre Sylva and his APC party went extremely desperate and was prepared to cause maximum mayhem in the only outstanding LGA- Southern Ijaw. Elections were held in ...

My friend Lai Mohammed is running the risk of losing some of his followers and becoming difficult to believe.Following his translation from the Spokesperson of a Fiery party( APC) to the Spokesman of all Parties( Nigerians) as Minister of Information and Culture, I had given advice to him in this column to try and shed his extreme partisan toga. He was a great party spokesperson but he needs to be a great spokesperson for Nigeria. The two require different skills and slant. I just hope he found time to read the piece. I knew that the transition was not going to be easy, but I just hope and pray that he will continue to try.  I also know that some level of propaganda and spin are inescapable in the job of National information management, but it is critical that he knows where to draw the line. I wish that he will leave partisan matters to the party spokesperson. Or is he combining both jobs? If so, It will be nice for APC to appoint its partisan spokesperson, so that Lai can focus o...

  Late last year I made a call asking that we should declare a state of emergency on our economy. As I watched the oil prices plummet without restrain, as I watched our income drop with with such rapidity, as I watched our Naira depreciate against the dollar and other foreign currencies at rates never seen before and as I watched President Muhammadu Buhari( PMB) take unusually long time in assembling his economic team, I went into panic.    I was troubled, that right in our faces, our economy was unravelling and the response by the only government institution that was working at the time- the CBN, though apparently sensible, only seemed to complicate the situation. The ban on 41 products from accessing Forex from Government funded Forex market made sense. If you did not have enough money to pay for all your needs, you would naturally prioritize and decide to go without some. If that caused you to have gastric ulcer or made you sweat profusely in the heat, that wil...

In the last six months or so, I have been under some intense pressure from two angles. Those looking for Jobs and those asking for financial help-outright dash or soft loans to pay Children's school fees or to pay for Accomodation . It is not as if any of this is new. In my days as CEO of Pfizer/ Neimeth, I was practically a one-man employment bureau. The biggest file in my office with several volumes bore the title: JOB SEEKERS. And if I went to church or travelled home with any amount of cash, I mean any amount, I never came back with any. And that was why I was one of the early supporters of CBN Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi's 'Cashless Lagos' campaign which later metamorphosed into ' Cashless Nigeria'.  But as I have found out, that did not help matters for long. The arrival of Mobile banks in mobile phones has worsened the situation. The excuse that I have run out of cash( which most solicitors never believed), or that the banks have closed or that ...

 A couple of weeks ago following the worrisome sack of many PDP governors and Legislators by the Court of Appeal, I wrote an article " The Judicial decimation of PDP & Its Implications". Among other things, I drew the attention of Nigerians to the dangers of a one- party state. With the way things were going, it looked like most of the subdued electoral victories of the PDP in the States and in the legislature were being reversed. The matter disturbed all fair minded Nigerians. Even the Chief Justice of Nigeria noted the glaring inconsistency in the judicial declarations of the Justices of the Appeal Court. But in the last week or so, the tide seemed to have changed and the Supreme Court weighed in strongly on the side of PDP. This piece is therefore to bring a balance to the earlier one that spoke of Judicial decimation, because what has happened in the last couple of days is judicial resuscitation.   The Supreme Court confirmed the elections of Governors Ayade o...

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 I have been in Singapore in the last week attending the Global Leadership Prayer Summit organized by the Full Gospel Global Forum and hosted by the FGB Gatekeepers Singapore, where among other things we have been praying for our Nations. In between our sessions, I have found time to move around Singapore and I have been awe stricken by the simple sophistication and splendor of a Country that got its Independence in 1965( 5years after Nigeria) and that was a third world country like Nigeria in the 70s, now a thoroughly advanced Nation in the First World, in the same league as The USA, Uk, Germany and France. The transformation is mind boggling.   Singapore is one of the four Asian Tigers- Hong Kong, South Korea , Taiwan and Singapore that transformed within three decades of purposeful leadership anchored on sound economic policies and a Spartan work ethic to achieve consistent high growth rates, high income levels and high quality of life. Today Singapore is a global i...

  There was a time in the biblical Israel when money was said to have failed . At that time, I believe there was famine for about three years because there was no rain. People had money but there was nothing to buy. It got so bad that women were eating their Children in turns and it was actually when the King reigning at that time was called to settle a quarrel between two women, because one of them reneged on the agreement of surrendering her own Child for cooking, after she had participated in eating the other woman's son that he really became acutely aware of how things were. Thereafter he went in search of the prophet who had shut down Heaven, prohibiting it from sending rain .   Since after the Nigeria-Biafra which was fought partly because of oil, Nigeria has lived on Crude oil and it's associated gas. In the 70s following the Middle East crisis, prices of oil jumped and Nigeria got high on Petrodollar. That was when as alleged Gowon made the famous declaration...

  Last week, I was surprised that many Nigerians were shocked that the US dollar exchanged for over 300 Naira. Our Senators seemed to be in greater shock than many, no wonder they have summoned the CBN Governor to appear in their chamber this week to explain why the Naira is being pummeled in the parallel market which as I said last week is the true foreign exchange market.    O-level Economics taught me that the price of every product or commodity is fixed at the point where supply intersects with demand. If supply remains constant while demand increases, price goes up and when supply dips in the presence of high demand, the price goes further up. And that's why I am surprised that any body is asking why the Naira is losing value rapidly, competing to join the league of Italian Lira, the Greek Drachma, the old Ghanaian Cedi, the  Gambian Dalasi or the old Panya money. For a while now, I believe it started when Prof Chukwuma Soludo was CBN governor and intens...