SAM OHUABUNWA'S PARADIGM

Between 1958-1966, Nigeria's economy was making steady and enviable progress, depending on intense Agricultural production and solid Minerals export to earn foreign exchange which was sufficient to meet its import needs. The North exported mainly Groundnuts, Cotton and Hides & Skin. The West focused largely on Cocoa and Timber. The Mid-West harnessed Rubber. Eastern Nigeria produced and exported mainly Palm Produce (Palm oil & Palm Kernel) and Coal. Within the same period, the seeds for a bludgeoning industrial Base were being laid across the Nation for the production of consumer goods, essentially for the domestic market. Nigeria had no balance of Payment challenges and did not need any loans to meet its budgeted expenditure. Salaries were paid on due dates. All the Schools had teachers and many Students went to School( Home & Abroad) on Scholarships. The Hospitals and Dispensaries had Doctors and Nurses who never went on Strike because of emolument disputes and the o...

Three news items dominated the air waves last week. China grants Nigeria, 6 Billion Dollars loan, Nigeria agrees a yuan swap with China and Nigeria shuns IMF loan. All happened last week. That story shows how things have changed rapidly. For long, America seemed to have opposed the growing influence of China in Africa. Is the game lost in Nigeria? May be not.  President Muhammadu Buhari ( PMB) in continuation of his global travels went to China last week and came back with a basketful of goodnews. Perhaps the best in all his travels. The generous loans are exciting especially at this time. Nigeria is in dire need of funds to meet its large deficit in the 2016 budget. This loan will be applied to infrastructural development and the development of other economic sectors like Agriculture and mining. Some of the facilities were offered to a couple of Nigerian Private sector companies including Dangote industries( Cement) the North-South Power Company Ltd( Power), Granite and Marble N...

  There is an advert which has been running on Television over the last couple of weeks, sponsored by the Ministry of Information and Culture, I believe. A couple of elderly Nigerians make comments about the country and the the President. The Minister of Foreign affairs said that PMB is the face of the Nigerian Brand and the President himself concludes with the statement quoted above- Our actions will speak for us. Which means that he will be a man of action, not of words. I quickly agreed with the President that His actions will speak for him and his government. And then I tried to listen in my mind, what his actions were speaking.  But I had some problems as I was hearing two voices speaking at the same time. When I tried to discern what these voices were, I found that one voice was speaking for the president which represented his actions. When I interrogated the other voice it said that it was speaking for the inactions of the President . That helped to resolve my co...

Only a few years ago Brazil was taunted as a rapidly emerging Nation. Growing at over 4% annually, the GDP grew decently and put Brazil on the BRICS categorization. President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva and his Workers Party( Partido des Trabalhadores-PT) led the Nation through what was regarded as an impressive growth trajectory to become the toast of Nations, lining it along Russia, India ,China and South Africa as the World's next economic growth frontier. I remember that in Nigeria, we were unhappy that we were not included in this class, prompting us and some of our friends in the West to push for our inclusion and the adjustment of the acronym to read BRINCS- Brazil, Russia, India, Nigeria, China and South Africa. After all, Nigeria was growing at a decent 6-7% annually for about a decade. But in the last two years, things have fallen apart and the centre seems not to be holding. Brazil's hitherto impressive growth stalled in 2014 and contracted by 3.8% in 2015, which is ...

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...